In the game
Both trailers use the same establishing shot: a wide, flat highway over open water on a low bridge, traffic streaming across, palms on the median, the downtown towers on one side and the ocean glare on the other. In the first trailer it is daytime traffic; in the second it is the approach to the city.
Fans matched it to the MacArthur Causeway, the natural fit. The MacArthur is Miami’s main road between downtown and South Beach, wide and fast, passing the port, the cruise ships and the celebrity islands, and it has been the establishing shot of every film and TV Miami since the 1980s. We call the match likely rather than strong because a six-lane causeway with a skyline behind it is a generic image and the game clearly has more than one causeway. The look is the MacArthur; the road may be a blend.
The real place
The causeway opened in 1920 as the County Causeway, two lanes on fill dredged from the bay, and was renamed for General Douglas MacArthur in 1942. Today it is six lanes of I-395 and the A1A, running about three miles from the downtown interchange across Watson Island, past the exits for Palm, Hibiscus and Star Islands, to Fifth Street on South Beach.
Driving east, the port and its cruise ships are on your right and the islands on your left. Driving west at sunset, the whole downtown skyline fills the windshield as you come over the last bridge, which is the shot everyone knows. The detail a GTA fan will recognize is that framing: water both sides, palms down the middle, towers dead ahead.
Go there
Drive it, ideally both ways; there is no toll. From South Beach take Fifth Street west; from downtown take I-395 east off I-95. Go west in the last hour before sunset for the skyline. Without a car, Miami-Dade Transit buses cross between downtown and Miami Beach for a couple of dollars (route numbers changed in 2024, so check the transit app), and a rideshare is $15-25.
Watson Island, the first island out from downtown, is the place to stop: Jungle Island, the children’s museum, a marina, and a public waterfront with the causeway traffic behind you and the skyline across the channel.
On the Beach side, Fifth Street runs straight into the south end of Ocean Drive; on the downtown side, the causeway lands a few blocks from Bayside and the arena.
The honest warning: the MacArthur is a highway. There is a path for bikes and walkers, but it is loud, exposed and beside fast traffic; the Venetian Causeway a mile north is the one to walk or cycle. And the downtown interchange has been under reconstruction for years, with a new signature bridge going up, so expect lane shifts and closures.
Nearby
- Ocean Beach: the Art Deco strip: the causeway delivers you to the south end of the strip.
- The waterfront mansion pool party: the islands are off the causeway’s north side.
- The causeway toll booths: the old, slow causeway with the toll plaza runs parallel just north.
- The port cranes on the skyline: the cranes and ships are on your right heading to the Beach.
On the map
Photo: yanivmatza via Pixabay. Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.
