Best Midtown condos for Car-Free Index

The Car-Free Index measures how close a condo building sits to rail transit: Metromover, Metrorail, Brightline and Tri-Rail. Scores run from 0 to 100. A high score means the train is a realistic part of daily life from that address; a low score means the car stays.

How the score is built. 70% of the score is proximity to the nearest station. The credit halves every 800 metres (about half a mile): a building 100 metres from a platform keeps about 92% of it, 800 metres keeps 50%, 1.6 km keeps 25% and 3 km keeps under 10%. There is no plateau, so every extra metre costs a little and two buildings at different distances never share a score. 20% is density: how many stations sit within 1.5 km, on a soft curve that keeps rewarding more stations without ever capping. The last 10% is variety: how many different rail systems (Metromover, Metrorail, Brightline, Tri-Rail) have a station within 1.5 km, with full credit at two.

What we measure. All distances are straight lines ("as the crow flies") from the building's coordinates to the station. They are not walking routes: a river, a highway or a long block can make the real walk longer, so we never turn them into walking times. Frequency, operating hours, fares, elevators and station access are not part of the score. Where two systems share one station (Government Center, MiamiCentral, the Tri-Rail and Metrorail Transfer) the station counts once.

Sources. Metromover and Metrorail stations, names and coordinates come from Miami-Dade County open data (the county's Metromover Station and Metrorail Station layers, provided by the county "as is", without a guarantee of accuracy). Tri-Rail stations in Miami-Dade come from the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority's station pages on tri-rail.com, and Brightline stations from Brightline's official station pages; their coordinates were placed by hand at each station. The list is refreshed by hand when a station opens or closes.

own.miami is an independent condo site and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Miami-Dade County, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority or Brightline. Brightline, Tri-Rail, Metrorail and Metromover are the names of the services this index measures distance to.