Miami's Metrorail has always been a good train trapped inside an incomplete system — but two simultaneous 2026 investments are changing that calculus, street by street and station by station.

Miami's New Bicycle Master Plan Turns Cycling Into a Transit Strategy

On May 28, 2026, the Miami City Commission approved an updated Bicycle Master Plan, replacing a framework that had been on the books for 17 years. The new blueprint — shaped by more than 700 resident survey responses and hundreds of additional public comments, according to Public Works Director Juvenal Santana — commits the city to completing 10 priority cycling projects by June 2031, pairing local capital funds with grant dollars to close the network gaps that have made biking feel like a gamble rather than a commute.

  • 10 priority projects must be completed within five years, by June 2031, under a binding accountability structure.
  • Community input included more than 700 survey and interactive-mapping responses plus over 300 additional public comments shaping project selection.
  • Equity criteria prioritize lower-income neighborhoods, zero-vehicle households, and areas with elevated crash rates — not just high-visibility corridors.
  • No sharrows: the plan explicitly excludes painted-pavement markings from its project count, requiring protected or dedicated infrastructure instead.

Transit Alliance Miami, working alongside Bike Coconut Grove and Healthy Little Havana, pushed hard for those accountability guardrails — and the commission listened. That kind of community-to-policy pipeline is exactly how durable infrastructure gets built.

The Plan's Multimodal Logic Makes Every Metrorail Station More Valuable

The real strategic insight in the 2026 Bicycle Master Plan is that it treats cycling not as a recreational amenity but as the connective tissue of the transit network. The plan explicitly calls for integration with high-ridership Metrorail and Metrobus hubs to enable first- and last-mile travel — the short, awkward distances between a rail station and someone's actual destination that have long been the weakest link in Miami-Dade Transit's chain.

  • First/last-mile connectivity to Metrorail and Metrobus stops is a named selection criterion for all 10 priority projects.
  • The Underline, a 10-mile linear trail and bike path running beneath the Metrorail from Brickell to Dadeland South, is scheduled to complete its third and final 7.36-mile phase in 2026 — giving cyclists a fully protected route the length of Miami's busiest rail corridor.
  • Citi Bike Miami, operated by DecoBike LLC, already maintains more than 160 stations and nearly 2,000 bikes across Miami and Miami Beach, offering a ready fleet for short connections once protected lanes reduce the friction of reaching those stations.

When a protected bike lane ends at a Metrorail platform, that Metrorail station suddenly serves a far larger catchment area than its walkable radius alone. Every completed bicycle project in this plan is, in effect, a transit investment.

The Metromover Upgrade Completes the Downtown Piece of the Puzzle

Miami-Dade Transit's (MDT) $153 million Metromover Comprehensive Wayside System Overhaul, funded in part through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), is the downtown anchor that makes the rest of the network click. The overhaul — which covers guideway rehabilitation, modernization of 21 electrical substations by Eaton, software and signaling upgrades, and track switches — is designed to extend the Metromover's lifespan by 30 years and increase vehicle frequency. Work began in 2022 and continues through at least the end of August 2026, with MDT providing free shuttle buses on affected Saturdays so no rider is stranded during the maintenance windows.

  • $153M overhaul covers guideway, 21 electrical substations, central control systems, and operating software.
  • 30-year lifespan extension is the stated engineering goal of the project.
  • 7.68 million rides were recorded on the Metromover in 2025 — roughly 25,600 per weekday in Q4 — proving that a free, frequent downtown circulator generates real demand.
  • MDT provides free shuttle buses on maintenance Saturdays so riders face no gap in service coverage.

Commissioner Raquel Regalado has also opened a broader conversation about what the Metromover's next generation could look like — a healthy sign that Miami's leaders are thinking past today's repair cycle toward a more dynamic future for the corridor.

When These Investments Land Together, Miami Gets a Genuinely Multimodal City

The timing here is not accidental — it is an opportunity. The Bicycle Master Plan approval, the Underline's final-phase completion, and the Metromover overhaul are all arriving in the same calendar year. A Miamian who lives in Little Havana will, for the first time, be able to ride a protected lane to a Metrorail station, take the train downtown, and step onto a fully upgraded, frequency-improved Metromover to reach their office — without a car. That is not a distant dream. The city commission voted for it on May 28, 2026. The tracks are being re-wired right now.

South Florida is often measured by the scale of what it has yet to build. But the most durable transit networks are assembled incrementally — one protected lane closing one gap, one overhaul extending one system's life. Miami, in 2026, is doing both at once. That is worth celebrating, and then getting back to work.