However, Fastrack Institute, which is an organization that dedicates itself to helping cities modernize and revamp its infrastructure, announced that they will launch a 16-week program in an attempt to address the mobility woes in Miami-Dade County. The non-profit organization which is based in Medellin has been able to take on this project in Miami thanks to a $500,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and local real estate developer and investor Armando Codina.
It has been disclosed that Fastrack will use the funding allocated to them to develop a series of public workshops and consultations in order to gather community feedback and ideas to explore solutions to the city's traffic woes. It has been further disclosed that Knight and the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority are each investing $200,000, while Codina is contributing $100,000.
Figures from Washington-based Inrix found that productivity loss due to traffic cost South Florida around $3.6 billion last year. Miami-Dade is the most affected of the three counties, and boasts both the largest population and also has two if its expressways, the Palmetto and the Dolphin were also subsequently found to be some of the most clogged motorways in the US last year.
South Florida first became aware of the Fastrack Institute in June, when it partnered with the University Miami Center of Computational Science. The Latin American non-profit organization has developed a stellar reputation for providing solutions to issues that impact the community across a wide scale, ranging from problems in healthcare institutions to ill-equipped school systems.
Director of Miami-Dade County's Department of Transportation and Public Works, Alice Bravo stated that she believed the initiative would be groundbreaking and said the program represented a great opportunity for the region to finally tackle its traffic congestion issues head on. Bravo said, "This is a great opportunity to think beyond the mobility solutions available to us today. We believe the Fastrack Miami Program will help us break the mold by taking an innovative approach."