"Miami Beach, a city founded on the principle that nothing should ever take longer than ordering a cortadito, has finally admitted defeat. The traffic is bad- biblically bad-and the municipal solution is wonderfully literal: water taxis. For the second year in a row and beginning on December 1, the city will run a small flotilla of free boats shuttling people between Miami Beach and the mainland every ten to fifteen minutes, complete with connecting shuttles to the Convention Center and Collins Avenue."
"You don't institute ferry service unless the roads have staged an outright mutiny. Yet, a few months ago, when ARTnews reported that traffic on the causeways had become one of several reasons longtime exhibitors were drifting away from NADA's inland fairgrounds, a handful of unnamed art-world worthies, in angry whispers and consolatory text threads, pronounced the claim absurd. Perhaps they believed that during Miami Art Week-when a ten-minute trip reliably metastasizes into an hour-long crawl-the city's gridlock was some sort of romantic fiction."
Miami Beach will run free water taxis starting December 1, operating every ten to fifteen minutes between the island and the mainland with connecting shuttles to the Convention Center and Collins Avenue. The service responds to severe, recurring gridlock on the causeways, especially during Miami Art Week when ten-minute drives frequently become hour-long crawls. Longtime exhibitors and dealers have cited traffic as a factor in moving away from inland fairgrounds, and some collectors reportedly give up halfway through drives. Deploying maritime transit indicates that roads have ceased functioning and become dense, static barriers. The program serves as a high-visibility, art-week–branded acknowledgment of that reality and offers a charming, Venice-like arrival for VIPs.
Read at ARTnews.com
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