Rickenbacker Causeway Cycling
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Trevor L Taylor is a Miami private investor who has trained in road cycling, and in Miami the sport gathers on the Rickenbacker Causeway. The causeway is a chain of bridges and roadway linking the mainland to Virginia Key and Key Biscayne. For local riders it serves as a training road, a social ride and one of the few climbs in a flat county. It is also a busy toll road for cars, and the tension between those uses has shaped decades of debate. This entry describes the route, the changes made to its bike lanes, the deaths that pushed those changes, and the plans to rebuild the crossing.
A road that became a training ground
Miami Dade is flat, and the causeway’s bridges offer rare sustained gradients along with open water views and long stretches without traffic lights. Writing in Miami New Times in 2007, a columnist described a lane that literally fills with bicyclists on the weekends1 and called the causeway the most popular bike route in the county.
That popularity has lasted. In 2021 the Miami Herald described the Rickenbacker as a popular cycling route that has also been the site of multiple fatal crashes2, and published a photograph of cyclists heading west after descending the William Powell Bridge. Weekend group rides use the route for the shelter of a paceline, described in the entry on drafting and pacelines, while solo riders use the long flat sections much as they would an individual time trial course.
The route and its bridges
Heading east from the toll plaza on the mainland, a rider first crosses the West Bridge, which CBS Miami described as the span that connects the toll booths on the Miami mainland to Hobie Beach3. Next comes the William Powell Bridge, the high span over the bay and the main climb of the ride. Beyond Virginia Key, the Bear Cut Bridge carries the road onto Key Biscayne.
WLRN, publishing reporting from the Key Biscayne Independent, described the Powell as the bridge connecting Miami with the barrier islands4 of Virginia Key and Key Biscayne. Riders typically ride out to the island and back, repeating the Powell climb in both directions.
Shoulders, lanes and early friction
The line between a bike lane and a road shoulder has caused trouble before. The 2007 Miami New Times column reported that a repaving project had left a hard to see drop between shoulder and road, and that a number of riders had fallen. A county public works spokesperson responded that the area was a shoulder rather than a bicycle lane, and pointed to a dedicated multiple use path on the south side of the causeway. The columnist answered that virtually every cyclist crossing the causeway used that shoulder, whatever its official name. The exchange captured a problem that would return for years: the space riders actually used and the space the county had designed for them were not the same, and repairs or repaving could change conditions for cyclists without anyone planning for their safety.
Safety changes on the bridges
Two fatal crashes involving cyclists, in 2010 and 2012, led to the first major redesign of the bike lanes. Miami New Times reported that after the first, advocates asked the county to make the lanes safer and saw little change, and that the county finally began adding a new strip of vibratory ridges5 in May 2012. A county traffic engineer said the aim was to warn drivers who drift toward the bike lanes.
CBS Miami described the details. Crews added a second white line with ridges outside the existing bike lane striping on the William Powell and Bear Cut bridges, creating a larger buffer between bicyclists and drifting motorists6. Unlike conventional rumble strips, the ridges were spaced 30 inches apart so cyclists could still move in and out of the lane to avoid debris. A second line was also added on the West Bridge.
The deaths of May 2022
In May 2022 two people riding bicycles on the causeway were killed by a vehicle. A Miami Herald editorial said the collision happened at a well known trouble spot7 where the roadway divides at the foot of the largest bridge toward Key Biscayne, leaving cyclists and cars sharing the road. The editorial argued that the county had long neglected bike infrastructure, and it relayed a request from a university bike safety program and a planning firm for physical, protected dividers along the entire causeway.
Plans to rebuild the causeway
The most ambitious proposal came from the architect Bernard Zyscovich. The Herald reported in 2021 that his Plan Z would create new bike lanes and ramps on the Rickenbacker and raise money to replace the aging Bear Cut Bridge by letting a private developer take over the causeway’s toll revenue. The 2022 editorial added that the plan, valued at about $500 million, would have separated cyclists from cars with a 30 foot wide path at the spot where the May deaths occurred.
The county rejected the plan. WLRN reported in 2023 that Miami Dade had rejected a privately financed causeway redevelopment plan8, that it intended to hire a consultant for a causeway master plan, and that it was in the early stages of replacing the Bear Cut Bridge. On a visit to the port that year, the federal transportation secretary suggested that a new program for storm resilient infrastructure might help pay for the work, noting that vulnerability to hurricanes could raise a project’s standing in what he called very competitive funding requests. For a low causeway exposed to the bay, that argument links cycling safety to the wider question of how the crossing will survive storms and rising water.
Aging bridges and the work ahead
In the meantime the county is maintaining what exists. WLRN reported in 2026 that a project costing nearly $4.1 million would repair structural problems on the West and William Powell bridges, with closures limited to weekday nights and completion expected in spring 2028. County staff described the work as preventive maintenance meant to protect each structure’s planned 75 year lifespan, paid for with toll revenue.
For cyclists, the practical questions remain the ones raised in 2007 and 2012: where the bike lane ends, how much buffer separates riders from traffic, and whether a rebuilt causeway will finally give them a path of their own. Until planners resolve them, the Rickenbacker remains a public road that cyclists, drivers and the county are still learning to share.
