The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) will begin construction on Oct. 8 on a pedestrian bridge at Southwest 109th Avenue. This bridge will connect Florida International University’s (FIU) campus with a residential area.
The project aims to create a safe passage on 8th Street between the university and the area of Sweetwater where students live. Accidents have occurred on 8th Street, some resulting in pedestrian deaths.
The new bridge was designed by FDOT and is engineered to endure Florida’s weather conditions.
FDOT will also be upgrading pedestrian signals and implementing signalized crosswalks. Advanced sensing technology will also be implemented to detect pedestrians and adjust the signal timing.
“At FDOT, we are very focused on the completion of this project and making sure that we are maintaining a safe work environment for everyone,” said Jeff Baquedan, the community outreach specialist at FDOT. “Safety is our number one priority.”
FDOT will reroute traffic onto FIU’s campus to accommodate temporary street closures during overnight construction, which will take place in phases.
The new bridge will replace a previous bridge that collapsed during its construction in March of 2018. The collapse took six lives and injured several others.
Funding for the $38 million bridge comes from the federal government, the state and a federal transportation grant. The bridge is expected to open in the fall of 2026.
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Source: FDOT, FIU
