MODELING THE PHASE II EXTENSION OF THE US-1 EXCLUSIVE BUSWAY IN SOUTH MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA

South Dixie Highway, also commonly known as US-1, is one of the most heavily traveled corridors in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The section of the Florida East Coast Railway corridor that parallels US-1 between Kendall at the Dadeland South Metrorail station on the north and Cutler Ridge on the south, successfully opened to Phase I busway operations in February 1997. District 6 of the Florida Department of Transportation contracted for the proposed 11.5-mi (18.8-km) Phase II extension of the busway from Cutler Ridge south to the cities of Homestead and Florida City in the far south of the county. The detailed planning, preliminary engineering, and environmental work for the Phase II exclusive buslanes extension was successfully completed during 1996-1997. This extension was to offer a typical section, in nominally 100-ft (161-km) of right-of-way, substantially similar to the Phase I busway: namely, a two-lane, two-way dedicated busway facility with a bicycle path in the right-of-way. The extension is therefore important not only to the transit operator, but also to the cycling public. The subject of this paper is the travel demand modeling that was conducted as part of the Project Development and Environmental Study, for detailed planning in support of the Phase II extension of the exclusive buslanes project.