Miami's Monday Drive In Is Normal. The Drive Home After 11 P.M. Is Not: Westbound I-395 Closes at Biscayne
The causeway runs both ways this morning. Tonight at 11, westbound I-395 shuts at Biscayne Boulevard until 5:30 a.m. for drainage work, and the Dolphin Expressway detour is the way around it.
Monday's morning drive across the MacArthur Causeway is a normal one — no closure is in effect for the AM drive, and the westbound I-395 lanes that shut overnight reopened at 5:30 a.m. as scheduled. The Traffic Desk's caution for the morning is the weather, not the work zones: the station's live feed carries rain showers (code 82) over Miami today at a 45 percent chance, and a wet causeway deck is the morning's main variable.
Tonight is the closure that matters. Westbound I-395 closes again at Biscayne Boulevard at 11 p.m. Monday and stays closed until 5:30 a.m. Tuesday while crews do drainage work, the second of three straight overnight closures on the project, as this station reported from the Florida Department of Transportation's project alert. The signed way around it is the Dolphin Expressway (SR 836), by way of NE 13th Street, NW 14th Street and NW 7th Street — a detour worth planning before a late shift, a late flight into Miami International, or a late night downtown, not after the cones are already in view.
There is a payoff at the end of the sequence. Tuesday night's closure is the one that opens the new southbound I-95 ramp on Wednesday morning, roughly 500 feet sooner than the ramp drivers use now, with the old merge removed. Until then, the pattern holds: causeways open for both rush hours, westbound I-395 dark from 11 p.m. Plan the late trip tonight; the morning reader of this story has nothing to dodge but the rain.
