Florida State Road 112

State Road 112 is an east–west state highway connecting Miami International Airport in Miami to Miami Beach in the U.S. state of Florida. Between the airport and Interstate 95, it is locally known as the Airport Expressway. Between Interstate 95 and Alton Road (SR 907A) in Miami Beach, SR 112 is signed only as Interstate 195 as it crosses Biscayne Bay on the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Between I-195 and its eastern terminus at Collins Avenue (SR A1A), the SR 112 signs are present but infrequent.

Eastbound SR 112 is tolled from State Road 9 east to I-95.

Route description

Airport Expressway

The Airport Expressway is maintained by the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority. Eastbound automobile traffic is charged a $1.25 toll at the booths near Northwest 27th Avenue (SR 9) midway between the airport and the Interstate highways (the westbound toll booths were removed in March 1984).

I-195

The 4.91 mile (7.90 km) section of SR 112 connecting Interstate 95 in the west with Miami Beach in the east is also designated as I-195. This portion of the route is signed as I-195, with SR 112 becoming an unsigned highway. I-195 and SR 112 cross Biscayne Bay by traveling over the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Past Alton Road (SR 907), I-195 terminates while SR 112 continues east as Arthur Godfrey Road.

At-grade section

History

Construction of SR 112 began in 1959, and the expressway was opened to traffic on December 23, 1961 (six months after the Palmetto Expressway, SR 826). Its initial name was the 36th Street Tollway, but use of the name eventually faded in favor of the more popular Airport Expressway. Initially the toll road did not reach the air terminals but instead had its western terminus at nearby, congested, LeJeune Road (SR 953), Northwest 36th Street (SR 948), and Okeechobee Road (US 27/SR 25). In 1990, SR 112 was extended southward and westward onto the airport property—the two ramps are noted for a pair of oddities for expressways in the United States:

• They have an at-grade railroad crossing near the eastern end of one of the airport's runways, and
• There is a stretch (including the railroad crossing) over which the carriageways are reversed, in which the traffic appears to be driven on the left side of the expressway.^[1]

The numbering of SR 112 is an anomaly in the current grid-based system. The road was assigned its number while it was in its planning stages; it retained the number as FDOT made widespread changes in the numbering of State Roads in southeastern Florida in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Spur Interstate 195

On December 23, 1961, three signed roads along the route of SR 112 were opened: the 36th Street Tollway (now the Airport Expressway), Interstate 195, and Spur Interstate 195. Spur Interstate 195 was the surface portion of the east–west state route along Arthur Godfrey Boulevard in Miami Beach, connecting I-195 and SR A1A. The Spur I-195 signs disappeared from the road shortly after the designation was decommissioned by the newly formed United States Department of Transportation in the late 1960s.

Future

While repeated attempts to secure funding for extending SR 112 along SR 948 to the Palmetto Expressway and the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike have failed, the Florida Department of Transportation is constructing a connector between the Dolphin Expressway and the Airport Expressway as part of a massive project (the Miami Intermodal Center) tying together expressways, rail lines, and the airport. It remains to be seen if the connector will have its own FDOT designation or if the SR 112 will be extended over it to connect the Miami area's two primary east–west expressways.

Exit list

The entire route is located in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

References

External links

• FDOT GIS data
• Florida @ SouthEastRoads - Interstate 195 and Florida 112