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Mayor’s Message

City of Fort Lauderdale

he final nail was driven into the coffin of the Wave streetcar project recently
when the Broward County Commission and the Florida Department of
TTransportation joined the chorus of voices led by our city and voted against the
continuation of the project.

It put an end to the 14-year effort to build the Wave streetcar as its ever-increasing
price tag simply made the project unaffordable. Not only was the price exorbitant --
$144.7 million to design and build a 2.8-mile loop downtown, but time and
technology passed the Wave by.
Overhead wires and in-ground tracks were simply not a good fit for our community.
And the route was problematic. Rather than encompassing major destinations like the
airport and seaport in order to reduce traffic, it was to run between government
offices, the courthouse and the hospital in the hopes of spurring new development.
But is accelerating development what we really need right now?
With the Wave behind us, let’s find the best technology out there and craft a plan

Dean Trantalis that better fits our vision for a modern downtown. The world is full of cutting-edge
Mayor, examples for us to explore – battery-operated buses, microbuses, driverless buses,
City of Fort Lauderdale rapid-transit circulators.

I’m pledging to work with the federal, state and local governments to find a new
common-sense solution for our needs. With our growth downtown, we must have
some form of enhanced mass transit. But it shouldn’t be a tool for more development,
but rather be designed to alleviate congestion.

Goals for 2018-19
The new City Commission recently laid out a bold agenda of goals for the next
year — eradicating homelessness, improving traffic flow, increasing affordable
housing, upgrading infrastructure and combatting climate change.

Homelessness was at the top of the list. The encampment next to the main library
downtown is more than an eyesore. It’s an ever-present sign of this community’s
failure to properly address homelessness.
We can expect some significant steps in the coming months.

Our police department and the judiciary plan to create a special court division where
individuals are not jailed for offenses like panhandling but are diverted to the services
that they need. We also are working on triage for homeless people arrested
elsewhere in the county but released from jail downtown.
Most significantly, a new task force of business leaders has formed to determine how
to expand rapid re-housing and social services to get people off the streets. At last,
we have found a new source to fulfill our funding gaps.
Regarding traffic, city staff has been tasked to work with the county and state to
synchronize traffic lights on our main streets. We expect Sunrise Boulevard to be re-
timed between Interstate 95 and the Gateway intersection by the end of the year.
Broward Boulevard is also being worked on.
Staff will report back on how to synchronize other key streets like Federal Highway,
CITY OF FORT LAUDERDALE Oakland Park Boulevard and Commercial Boulevard within the next couple years.

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