Picture a Tuesday in February. You leave your office near Brickell around 5:15, and by 5:30 you're doing what everyone who lives on Rivo Alto, Di Lido, San Marino or San Marco has always done: merging onto the Venetian Causeway, the same two-lane strip of road and bridges that has been the only way home since the Collins family and Carl Fisher opened the original wooden span in 1913. For more than a hundred years, if you lived on these islands, the causeway was not an option. It was the only option.
That stopped being entirely true this year.
One Road, Six Islands, One Century
The causeway that carries San Marco, San Marino, Di Lido, Rivo Alto and Belle Isle to the mainland is a 2.5-mile, two-lane undivided road with ten fixed-span bridges and two bascule bridges crossing the Intracoastal. The current bridges date to 1926, and they're listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which is a nice way of saying they are old, narrow, and were never built for the volume or the vehicles they carry now.
Residents already know what that means in practice. On January 28, the causeway was closed for several hours, from roughly 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., to accommodate a visiting dignitary, with the bridges themselves running off their normal operating schedule during that window. It wasn't the first time a single event has shut the corridor down for an afternoon, and it won't be the last. When there is exactly one road on and off six islands, any disruption to it, whether it's a security detail, a stalled boat under the bascule span, or the county's own construction crews, becomes everyone's problem at once.
What Launched at Maurice Gibb Park in January
On January 20, that changed, at least for part of the day. The City of Miami Beach launched a free water taxi connecting Maurice Gibb Memorial Park at 1790 Purdy Avenue in Sunset Harbour to the Venetian Marina and Yacht Club, also known as Sea Isle Marina, at 1635 North Bayshore Drive on the Miami side. The City of Miami Beach's water taxi page lays out the schedule: weekdays only, roughly every 60 minutes from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., then every 30 minutes from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Each 40-foot vessel holds up to 55 passengers, and the crossing takes about 20 minutes.
Look at that schedule again. The frequency doubles right at 4:30, which is exactly the window when the causeway backs up worst, the same stretch of afternoon that used to mean sitting in the westbound lane watching the bascule bridge count down. And the dock it lands at isn't some random point on the mainland. Maurice Gibb Memorial Park sits in Sunset Harbour, the same few blocks residents already drive to for dinner. The water taxi didn't just add a way off the island. It added a way to the place islanders already go, on the exact days and hours the road is least pleasant to sit on.
Here's what changed, side by side:
| Getting on or off the islands | Before January 2026 | Now |
|---|---|---|
| By car | Venetian Causeway only | Venetian Causeway only |
| On foot or bike | Causeway sidewalk only | Causeway sidewalk only |
| By water | No public option | Free weekday water taxi, Maurice Gibb Park to Sea Isle Marina |
The car and the causeway sidewalk haven't gone anywhere. What's new is a third column that simply didn't exist a year ago.
Why the Bridges Won't Be Done Anytime Soon
It would be easy to assume the water taxi is a stopgap while the county finishes rebuilding the bridges, and that once construction wraps, life goes back to a single road with no complaints. That assumption doesn't hold up against the county's own timeline.
The Venetian Causeway Bridge Replacement project, backed by a $100.5 million federal grant, has been moving through design for years. Miami-Dade hosted a public meeting on March 18 at the clubhouse at 1000 Venetian Way to walk residents through the plans, and the county's own project page states the final design phase is expected to wrap by summer 2026, with construction advertisement to follow, subject to permit coordination. The new bridges will be 16 feet wider than the current ones, built with a 75-year design life, and designed to raise vertical clearance and add resiliency against sea-level rise.
None of that means the work is close to finished. Miami Today reported in July that the county is putting another $3 million into the project specifically to relocate water and sewer mains along the bridge connecting Biscayne and San Marco islands, and that this funding is meant to keep the overall project on track toward a scheduled completion beyond 2032. Summer 2026 marks the end of design. It does not mark the end of construction. If you live on these islands, the honest way to think about the bridge project is as a multi-year undertaking that is only now entering its early stages, not a renovation that wraps this year.
The Piece That's Actually Finishing This Year
There is a second, separate infrastructure project on the causeway, and this one has a much shorter runway. The City of Miami Beach has been replacing the aging aerial water and sewer mains that run along the north and south sides of the causeway bridges, work distinct from the county's bridge replacement. According to the city's own project page, substantial completion of this phase is anticipated for late spring to early summer 2026, with final completion expected by late summer 2026. Some of the digging has used horizontal directional drilling, a trenchless method meant to install pipe underground with minimal disruption to the road surface above.
So the sequence for anyone driving or biking the causeway this year looks like this: the water and sewer work that has been part of the background noise for a while now is on track to actually be done by the end of summer, while the far bigger job of rebuilding the bridges themselves is only finishing its paperwork. Two projects, two very different clocks.
Closer to Home This Summer
The changes aren't limited to the road. On Belle Isle, the condo at Nine Island Avenue, designed by Sklar Isaac & Associates and built in 1981, has been in the middle of a multi-year renovation of its pool, spas, fountains, landscaping and amenities, with the work expected to finish this summer. It sits on one of Miami Beach's largest bayfront parcels, and residents there have spent more than one season looking at plywood and staging areas that should finally clear out.
Belle Isle Park itself, tucked along Island Avenue, remains the low-key anchor for daily routines on the islands: two separate dog runs, an ADA-accessible drinking fountain with an attached pet bowl, a perimeter walking path, and a playground with shaded climbing structures and swings for both toddlers and older kids. Parking on Island Avenue has required a residential permit since 2005, when the Standard Hotel opened and traffic from its guests prompted residents to petition the city for a dedicated parking zone, a small but telling reminder of how carefully these islands manage the little bit of land and road they actually have. The Belle Isle Residents Association, formed in 2004, still exists specifically to weigh in on issues like this.
Down at the Standard, Lido Bayside Grill remains one of the only sit-down restaurants actually located on the islands rather than a short drive away, which is part of why the water taxi's Sunset Harbour terminus matters. It puts a wider set of options within a 20-minute boat ride instead of a causeway crossing.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
None of this changes the fundamental geography. Six islands, one road in and out, and that will still be true next year and the year after. What's different in 2026 is that for the first time, getting off the islands during the hours you're most likely to want to isn't entirely dependent on that one road holding up. The water taxi won't get you to a downtown office or an airport run on a Saturday, since it doesn't run weekends yet, and it won't help at all if you're headed anywhere other than Sunset Harbour or the Omni area near downtown Miami. But for a weekday commute or a dinner run, there's now a second column on that chart that wasn't there in 2025.
The bridges will keep the causeway a construction zone in some form for years to come, and the honest expectation, based on the county's own funding announcements, is a horizon that stretches well past 2032. The water and sewer work under the road surface is closer to done than that. And the small, on-the-ground stuff, from Nine Island Avenue's amenities to the dog runs at Belle Isle Park, keeps moving along at its own pace, mostly indifferent to the bigger infrastructure story happening around it.
If you've lived on the Venetian Islands for a while, none of this should surprise you as a set of facts. What might be new is seeing them laid out together: the reason the water taxi launched when it did, the reason the bridges won't be finished quickly, and the reason this particular summer is when the smaller, more immediate disruptions finally start clearing up.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for your own place on the islands, whether you're weighing a move, curious what a renovation like Nine Island Avenue's does to values around it, or just want someone who tracks this corridor closely, Nancy Jimenez is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
