System Diagnosis and Strategic Framing for Transportation Congestion Management in Miami Beach

Term Start:

September 1, 2026

Term End:

August 31, 2027

Budget:

$100,000

Keywords:

Congestion, Traffic management, Travel Behavior

Thrust Area(s):

Data Modeling and Analytic Tools, Understanding User Needs

University Lead:

The University of Texas at Austin

Researcher(s):

Chandra Bhat

The City of Miami Beach presents a unique and highly constrained transportation environment in which congestion is driven not only by infrastructure constraints, but also by the interaction of highly variable travel demand, limited access points, curbside activity, signal coordination conditions, commuter and recreational travel interactions, and traveler behavioral responses within a tightly coupled urban network. Unlike conventional urban congestion settings, localized operational disruptions within Miami Beach can rapidly propagate across the broader transportation system because of the limited number of access points serving the island and the substantial fluctuations in daily population associated with employment, tourism, events, and recreational travel activity. Accordingly, effective congestion mitigation strategies for Miami Beach require a system-level understanding of how congestion forms, how queues propagate across the network, how different travel purposes interact temporally and spatially, how curbside activity and operational friction reduce effective roadway capacity, and how traveler behavior contributes to overall network performance. Therefore, the purpose of this research project is to establish a collaborative effort with the City of Miami Beach to: 1) Develop a comprehensive understanding of network behavior under varying operational conditions; 2) Establish a framework for evaluating future congestion mitigation strategies; 3) Identify critical operational and behavioral contributors to system-wide congestion; 4) Refine the scope and priorities for subsequent strategy development and implementation phases. The effort will begin with a site visit and extensive discussions with City staff to identify transportation constraints and challenges, and to observe operating conditions. This will be followed by a data collection and analysis period, with a specific focus on system-level characterization. Specific network dynamics and failure mechanisms related to access point saturation, queue spillback, signal coordination, micromobility operations, curbside activity, and interactions among multiple travel purposes will be analyzed. Behavioral factors relating to mode choice, departure timing decisions, route selection, access-point selection, and responses to congestion will be analyzed to complete the picture at the network level. To aid in network characterization, specific evaluation metrics at key locations and time periods will be developed. Finally, these insights will be applied to propose strategic solutions designed to mitigate congestion at specific hotspots as well as throughout the network. Future opportunities to implement pilot programs will be determined in collaboration with the City, and their success will be evaluated using the metrics developed during this phase of work.

Project scope

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