Miami-Dade to open completed 87th Avenue Bridge for South Dade relief

The completed 87th Avenue Bridge closes a gap over the C-100 Canal and gives SW 87th Avenue a direct connection between SW 164th Street and SW 163rd Terrace. Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the completed 87th Avenue Bridge Project.

The bridge is a new free-span structure with a vehicle lane, bicycle lane and pedestrian sidewalk in each direction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers measured the span at 66 feet 4 inches long and 63 feet 2 inches wide, with dredging needed to restore the canal’s design cross section beneath it. The bridge was planned to be modest in size but important in function, improving neighborhood connectivity, emergency access and day-to-day travel in a fast-growing part of Miami-Dade.

Commissioners formally advanced the project in 2021 with a resolution directing construction and appropriating $3.1 million in unencumbered road impact fee funds. Miami-Dade scheduled a notice to proceed for bridge work for May 27, 2024, after the project moved through permitting and legal review.

The bridge also became a local political fight. Cutler Bay officials counted 14 public community meetings on the project beginning in February 2021, and Commissioner Cohen Higgins created a Community Connectivity Committee to gather information from county departments and hear from residents. Supporters pressed the bridge as a long-promised fix for congestion and circuitous detours in southern Miami-Dade, while opponents raised traffic-safety concerns, neighborhood-impact objections and questions about the contractor tied to the FIU pedestrian bridge collapse.

The Florida Third District Court of Appeal affirmed that because 87th Avenue is a county-controlled road, Miami-Dade County had ultimate authority to move forward. The bridge gives vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians a route over the C-100 Canal, with fewer detours and better access through a corridor that has long lacked a direct east-west link.