Beneath the 25-mile-long Metrorail that runs through Miami is 25 miles of unused space where grass and a crooked, worn-down asphalt path lay.
Meg Daly and Friends of The Underline are trying to turn 10 miles of that unused space into an urban trail that will attract artists, businesses and, perhaps most importantly, get people out of cars and onto bikes.
When Daly, the group’s founder and president, broke both of her elbows in a biking accident two years ago, she was forced to start riding the Miami Metrorail to work. She then began to think how a bike path and parks at the Metro stations could be catalysts for making the city safer and more environmentally conscious.
“We want this to sort of be the first great connector of a safe biking network in Miami,” Daly said. “We’re real believers that for our city to be more sustainable, we need to attract people to transit and get people out of cars.”
Daly believes getting commuters to bike to the metro instead of driving starts with creating a safe biking path to the stations.
“We don’t have enough safe trails in Miami; this is the fourth-most dangerous place to walk in the country and it’s the most dangerous place to bike in the state,” Daly said.
She explained that the space beneath the Metrorail is 100 feet wide, and they plan on placing two 10-foot wide paths in the space; one for biking and one for pedestrians.
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