Weakest Links For Miami Beach As Seas Rise May Be Vulnerable Causeways

[hatrack]

Miami's cross-bay bridges are a treasure. Some of the city's purest joy comes when you're careening over the Julia Tuttle or Rickenbacker Causeway with the windows down, watching Biscayne Bay sprawling out under you as you laugh maniacally at how cool your life is compared to your college friends' lives up north. It's a small joy Miamians get to experience year-round. That is, of course, until the rising seas swallow those roads whole.

According to a November Miami-Dade County Commission report on global warming, Miami's causeways — the Tuttle and Rickenbacker specifically — are some of the most vulnerable roads in the county. The report was compiled from information in a 2015 Federal Highway Administration study as well as subsequent investigations.

Causeways "to the barrier islands such as Key Biscayne and Miami Beach were found to be highly exposed, in part due to the low elevations, and also due to the long detour lengths that would result if a roadway was impacted," the new study concludes. A map from the Highway Administration paints a gigantic red warning sign on the Tuttle and Rickenbacker. Key Biscayne could eventually be cut off from the rest of Florida:



EDIT

Importantly, the study also recommends Miami-Dade take a hard look at its evacuation plans, to make sure routes don't vanish under the ocean in a decade or two. And this includes the causeways. The report also mentions that both the Florida Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration are working diligently to prepare Miami's roads for climate change. But given the fact that state and federal governments are headed by people who consider climate change and the flat-Earth theory roughly equivalent, we might be in for a very wet century of driving.

EDIT

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/study-miamis-causeways-highly-vulnerable-to-sea-level-rise-8991914

[Nay]

1. One thing Miami could do is STOP BUILDING huge hotels, etc., next to the water!

I was in Miami earlier this year and was astounded to find buildings going up as if there was no flooding at all. All these plans and workarounds are just for show -- the real estate industry runs Florida totally, and stuff will be built on the edge of the beach until the beach caves in. There will be no common sense. There will be no retrenchment so that 20 years from now there can be a buffer, nothing like that. It will go until it stops in disaster. That's the capitalist way.

[hatrack]

2. Bigger idiot economics at its finest . . .

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