The hits just keep coming for Miami transportation-related construction projects.
Last week, President Donald Trump’s administration informed the city that it was canceling a $60 million federal earmark for a long-planned urban park designed to reconnect previously highway-divided neighborhoods.
Now the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is saying that a repeatedly delayed project to double-deck a portion of the Dolphin Expressway and erect a “signature bridge” flourish over Interstate 395 in Miami is, well, delayed again.
It’s not going to open until at least 2029 — two years later than the last delayed deadline and six years past the date when shovels first hit dirt on the long-planned development.
Oh, and it’s now going to cost $866 million, up from $840 million estimated in 2023 and $64 million more than the original price tag Florida and Miami-Dade County put on it in 2018.
The reasons, an updated fact sheet for the project says, are “weather or other unforeseen circumstances.”
Florida Politics contacted FDOT spokesperson Cynthia Turcios to learn what those unforeseen circumstances were — the reasons given two years ago were “supply chain issues, among other factors, including weather and holidays” — but did not immediately get a response.
Turcios told Miami Today that work on the project is constant. Other updates included:
— Two of six arches are complete on the “signature bridge” portion, which resembles a fountain (or a “high-tech tarantula,” depending on whom you ask), spanning 1,025 feet over I-395 by Northeast Second Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard. All precast segments of the tallest arch have also been finished. Turcios said in 2023 that four of the six bridge spouts and nearly half of the 345 arch segments for the bridge had been cast.
— Construction of foundations and piers for the two-tier viaduct on the Dolphin Expressway (State Road 836) is ongoing, with crews using a tailor-made gantry to install bridge caps and beams between Northwest 17th Avenue and the Miami River.
— All concrete replacement work on the I-95 portion of the project — an enhancement of the corridor’s northbound and southbound lanes that also includes construction of a new connector ramp to the Dolphin Expressway — is done or nearly finished, with railing replacements still pending.
Shovels first hit dirt in 2019 on the massive project, funded by state dollars and $242 million in toll revenues from what is now called the Greater Miami Expressway Agency, which oversees six Miami-Dade tollways.
The I-395/SR 836/I-95 Design-Build Project is more than three decades in the making. It was conceived in the 1990s, after which it underwent myriad changes and studies, including roughly 150 public presentations just between 2004 and 2009.
The contractor, Archer Western-de Moya, is composed of Atlanta-based construction company Archer Western Construction, a subsidiary of the Walsh Group; and the de Moya Group, a Miami highway and bridge builder specializing in complex infrastructure projects in Florida.
Engineering companies HDR of Omaha, Jacksonville-based RS&H, Miami-headquartered Metric Engineering and Tallahassee-based Corven Engineering are also involved.
Plans remain for a 33-acre urban park below I-395 known colloquially as the “Underdeck” but officially named the “Rev. Edward T. Graham Greenway.”
That project’s $82 million cost depended largely on $60 million that ex-President Joe Biden’s administration allotted to Miami in March 2024.
But last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation told Miami the money isn’t coming anymore following the passage of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
City Commissioner Damian Pardo, who chairs the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency that is involved in funding the Underdeck project, called the loss of funds “a profound setback.” He vowed to work with “residents, community partners, and stakeholders, and all levels of government to find alternative solutions and funding sources.”
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