The cost of long-awaited North Corridor commuter rail to Hard Rock Stadium has risen again, its use has been put off again, and it no longer will have a station promised on Miami Dade College’s North Campus, the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust has learned. Furthermore, every earlier study of the system is being repeated. So now rail completion is estimated for 2037, a year later than Nilia Cartaya of the Florida Department of Transportation had told the trust in May, an update shows. Her May presentation had put the capital cost of the 10-mile elevated Metrorail extension with eight stations and seven park-and-ride sites at $1.9 billion. By December the cost was up to $2.2 billion and is destined to rise: “We’ll come back to this body with an updated figure in the next few months,” she said. The trust oversees county transportation sales tax receipts, which together with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the state are to fund the rail line. Steps to build the North Corridor were frozen after the county in 2022 pulled the plug on a call for public-private rail partners. That detour to private developers and then back again had left state studies dormant from May 2020 to November 2022. “We are taking a fresh look at all of these items as we are moving forward,” including planned use of Metrorail itself on the corridor and “the ideal locations for the transit stations,” Ms. Cartaya told the trust last month. But one station’s location drew trust fire for a shift from a once-promised college campus site to the center of Northwest 27th Avenue. “Our station in 2019 was [planned] on college property,” said trust member Harry Hoffman. “So how are students going to get to the campus?” “We would of course look at pedestrian connections at the street level and of course we would” work to encourage the nation’s most-attended public college system “to implement a shuttle service to provide that,” Ms. Cartaya replied. Mr. Hoffman, a new trust member who had been dean of academic affairs at the college’s North Campus and later president of the Homestead Campus, recalled that many issues Ms. Cartaya was relating to the trust had been discussed and decided before the state was asked to terminate planning for the route in November 2022, and now work has begun again. The public, he said, had been told that all decisions were made “except, guess what, we don’t have the money. So I’m skeptical of what you’re showing here is ever going to come out to reality because we’ve gone through this once and now we’re going through it a second time.” “This is where the taxpayer really gets hit for this project,” Mr. Hoffman said. “The college will have a shuttle to bring them to the campus? I don’t understand that. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all.” After crafting a plan that everyone accepted but was short of funding, “now we’re going to do this thing all over again.” Mr. Hoffman, who represents county commission district 11, served by Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, pointed to the probable impact of what he was hearing on elected officials. “There are elected officials in that area that need to be made aware of that we’ve already gone down the road on this and now we’re going down a second time, and if they’re elected by the people that live in that area, they ought to know that they are wasting the taxpayers’ money going down this the second time,” he said. “The first time they were ready to go, they had everything done.” “We will be going out to the community, so we’ll definitely –,” Ms. Cartaya started to reply before Mr. Hoffman cut her off to say “Oh, you’d better make sure you have a strong drink before you do that, because you will have people coming out of the woodwork to say, What is this? Why are you changing? What happened?” Ms. Cartaya said she expects the state to seek stakeholder and public comments on the plans late this year. “Good luck,” said Mr. Hoffman. “Every time something gets scrapped for one reason or another it’s like a brand-new project,” trust Chairman Robert Wolfarth said, “and all those [planning, design & engineering] studies, all those consultants. You’re right, the taxpayers are paying for it.” “I have a selfish reason” for questioning North Corridor plans, said Mr. Hoffman. “I want to see that … people can take the train to North Campus. There’s quite a few students that live in the area. And I can assure you that they have no idea that the train station that was going to be on the [campus], that was going to be multi-retail and have a gym and so forth, ain’t any more. Now you’re going to be in the middle of 27th Avenue, and you’ve got to cross over to get onto the campus….” “And by the way,” he continued, “does your go up to the football stadium, your plan?” “Yes, we do,” Ms. Cartaya replied. “And your station’s going to be in the middle of 27th Avenue?” he asked. “So for the stadium,” she said, “we’re working through that and we’re most likely going to have the station on stadium property, but again…” “So how come they can have the station on the stadium property there,” Mr. Hoffman asked, “but they can’t on the college?” “So, again,” she replied, “all of this will be fleshed out and we’ll definitely be going out to our stakeholders and our community and gathering feedback.” “There’s still an opportunity for the public to weigh in,” said Mr. Wolfarth, who added, “I don’t understand the reason.” Related Posts:North Corridor rapid rail transit still a 12-year waitBiden budget funds Northeast Miami-Dade rail startupTri-Rail due downtown this year – where will be next?Citizens’ trust doubts county’s South Dade transit vowsSouth Dade bus rapid transit coming ‘sometime’ in 2025The post Commuter rail plan deletes station on Miami Dade College land appeared first on Miami Today.