I-95/(et al.) 'Golden Glades' interchange, North Miami Beach, FL

(map scale is approximately 1 km per fine line grid square)

This is one of those highway places where the long term *best* thing to do to clean things up might just be to scrape the whole thing off and start over...

The 'Golden Glades' interchange in the northern part of the Miami, FL metro area is one of the most amazingly complex tangles of ramps that I know of. It is named after 'Golden Glades Drive', a local surface street that passes east-west through the area and is interrupted by the interchange. It connects I-95 (running from due south to the northeast) with FL 826 ('Palmetto' Expressway-going due west) and FL 91 (Florida's Turnpike-northwestward) along with an impressive array of local streets of various status, plus a few other things (possibly including a new transit park and ride lot/station). This collection of roadways shows what to me are the classic signs of something that started small and simple and just 'grew' into what it is today. It is likely that there has not been a major period of time where some form of addition or improvement has not been under construction (in fact, if you look closely, you will notice that a relocation of the ramp from SB I-95 to NB FL tpk and WB Palmetto is under construction, the source map is dated in the early-mid 1990s).

*Apparent weaknesses*
**There is *no* connection visible from NB I-95 to SWB FL 9 (but there IS one in the opposite direction - it runs westward from the '14' and is a left enterence to I-95)
**The only connection from the EB Palmetto to the NB FL tpk is a 90 degree intersection left turn.
**Several other connections that look like they would be major through routes are extremely tight (NB I-95 to WB Palmetto) or convoluted or 'mazelike' (the EB Palmetto to NB I-95 connection even appears to pass through a couple of surface street intersections)
**There appears to be a local neighborhood street intersection on the ramp from the SB FL tpk to the WB Palmetto.

I am unaware of any plans in the forseeable future to substantially re-engineer and simplify this interchange.

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