Earlier this month, Renaissance hit a new milestone in our community engagement efforts: we hosted a public meeting on the beach (during the height of winter)!
About the Study
Collins Avenue Study Area Map
The meeting was conducted as part of the Collins Avenue Multimodal Corridor Study for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), District Six. For this project, Principal in Charge and Project Manager Dan Hardy and Deputy Project Manager Nicole Estevez are leading a multidisciplinary team to rethink the roadway design for a section of Collins Avenue (Florida State Route A1A) in the MidBeach neighborhood of Miami Beach, FL. The roadway was constructed in the 1960s to reflect the arrival of high-rise condominiums. As the only roadway on a 2-mile stretch of barrier island, Collins Avenue has six travel lanes and a northbound service roadway with complex merges and weaves in between signalized intersections with counter-intuitive signalization to accommodate U-turns.
Many Miami Beach residents are passionate about their community’s future. We applaud their enthusiasm, as well as FDOT District Six’s commitment to engaging residents in the area’s planning studies. To build a consensus around problems faced by all modes of travel and ensure community voices are heard, our team is deploying an extensive public outreach program, including online surveys, a wikimap, and walking audits.
Our Approach
The purpose of our recent in-person meeting was to receive public input on three different design alternatives that aim to balance the multimodal needs of the community. Along with subcontractors ISC and Caltran, we conducted the meeting in Indian Beach Park, an intimate yet open area adjacent to the Beachwalk, a continuous path along the city’s shoreline. Indian Beach Park is at the heart of Miami Beach, directly accessible to residents and visitors in the area. Our decision to locate the meeting in a nearby area illustrates our “meet-where-you-are” approach to public outreach for this project. Rather than going the traditional route of having residents make the effort to travel outside their community for a public meeting at a government building, we brought the meeting to them.
We set up four stations for participants to view and engage with pertinent memoranda, documents, and maps.
Station 1: an overview purpose and need of the Collins Avenue study, as well as an exercise for participants to mark where they live, work, and play on a map of the study area.
Station 2: contextual information on the study area, including projected population growth and traffic growth, the current state of transit and traffic patterns, and safety concerns.
Station 3: a presentation of the three design alternatives that envision different roadway layouts for Collins Avenue. Each alternative emphasized different features of transit and design considerations, including dedicated lanes for transit and protect bike lanes. Participants voted on preferred alternatives.
Station 4: information on the study’s next steps and how to stay involved.
The structure of the stations was designed to be conducive to participant autonomy and flexibility. With the stations set up from 3:00-6:00pm, our team employed an “open-house” approach, where participants were free to spend anywhere between five minutes and three hours walking through the stations, learning about the study, expressing any concerns and feedback to Renaissance and FDOT staff, and voting on their preferred alternatives. The outdoor location helped alleviate concerns about COVID transmission. To further expand our reach, we conducted a follow-up virtual meeting three days later with the same materials presented and feedback obtained via online polls and chat box dialogue.
Outcome
As a result of our “open house” and “meet-where-you-are” approach, roughly a quarter of the 40 participants joined the meeting by happenstance. In other words, our event attracted community members who were simply wandering along the beach walk and otherwise wouldn’t be knowledgeable about the study. Indian Beach Park’s visibility on a key beach access path – and, of course, the pleasant Miami weather – gave residents the opportunity to become involved in the future of their community.
The meeting also yielded a promising future for the Collins Avenue study. While there were some differences of opinion among participants, we received traction around a particular alternative to focus on – which was our primary meeting objective. We will incorporate participants’ opinions and preferred alternatives into our next technical memoranda to present to FDOT.
Renaissance is grateful for all the Miami Beach residents who contributed their time to this exciting study, and we can’t wait for similarly unique opportunities to increase public awareness in the future.