Rick Mullaney Unveils Plan for Jacksonville

[fieldafm]

On this basis, we are approaching a zero value every day that goes by if we aren't already there for much of its components after 20 plus years

You're not accounting for the expansion in 2000, the parking garage, the land aquisition, and the new cars and control room that have been upgraded since the system was introduced.

There is a lot of value left in the physical assets.

What you're proposing is to spend money to rip it up, give money to the Feds for ripping it up and then spend even more money to build something else.  On the surface, that appears to be more expensive than the cost of actually using what we already have in a more efficient manner by connecting it to a well-planned multimodal transpotation network.  Neither of which we have done so far.

[stjr]

What you're proposing is to spend money to rip it up, give money to the Feds for ripping it up and then spend even more money to build something else.  On the surface, that appears to be more expensive than the cost of actually using what we already have in a more efficient manner by connecting it to a well-planned multimodal transpotation network.  Neither of which we have done so far.

Field, don't forget the millions and millions in "opportunity costs" every year spent on operations and replacement (i.e. capital expenditures but cash flow for those bent that way) of obsolete components.  Those millions, year after year, could easily pay for the abandonment (or maybe conversion to something more useful, say a "Highline" a la New York) and provide seed money and/or operational funding for street cars.  I don't see that aspect, Field, reflected in your "calculations".  One can not solely look at the one time "transition costs".

By the way, the money we spend on that "something else" (street cars?) is already something we have agreed we wish to spend regardless of the Skyway.  So, you can't call that an incremental cost of abandonment.  But, abandonment does perhaps enable the acceleration of funding of that "something else" which is not a bad thing at all.   

[fieldafm]

The Highline(which I will be visiting next week) took about 10 years from conception to reality and $50million to build.

So, lets say we do it more reasonably at $30 million.  You'll then have a park that cost $30 million that takes no one to nowhere... which is exactly the problem with the skyway now.  Add in the cost thrown at the Feds and loss of potential additional TOD in the San Marco area spurred from the Skyway(a possibility more real than you think) and you still wont have a way to move streetcars across the river.  And by doing so, you will have eliminated a transportation option that has the most riders per mile than any in the city.  You can gut the proposed BRT lines downtown(Northbank and Southbank) that mirror the exact routes of the Skyway, gut the proposed BRT lines downtown that mirror the popular PCT Trolleys, and consolidate existing bus lines along Hendricks/San Jose and Park Street with PCT trolleys that connect major shopping/employment centers to get all the operational savings you want with more riders.

JTA does a pretty poor job at eliminating operational costs with all the redundant services they use.  Why tear down what could be a better utilized asset as part of a functional transportation system just to buy more fancy BRT busses and all the fancy bells and whistles(que jumpers, ROW aquisition costs, etc) that go along with them?

Give me 30 million and I'll give you the Bay Street Pier Park and a Hogans Creek/Klutho/Confederate Park Greenbelt that will be the envy of the world.

[stjr]

Field, don't forget the millions and millions in "opportunity costs" every year spent on operations and replacement (i.e. capital expenditures but cash flow for those bent that way) of obsolete components.  Those millions, year after year, could easily pay for the abandonment (or maybe conversion to something more useful, say a "Highline" a la New York) and provide seed money and/or operational funding for street cars.  I don't see that aspect, Field, reflected in your "calculations".  One can not solely look at the one time "transition costs".

By the way, the money we spend on that "something else" (street cars?) is already something we have agreed we wish to spend regardless of the Skyway.  So, you can't call that an incremental cost of abandonment.  But, abandonment does perhaps enable the acceleration of funding of that "something else" which is not a bad thing at all.   

meh.  still peddling this phony accounting where you count the depreciation value while still claiming the capital investment?  nice.

Make up your mind, Stephen.  You don't want to expense capital expenditures via depreciation and now you don't want to count them in cash flow.  In other words, you don't want to account for capital expenditures at all.  Did you graduate from the Enron school of accounting? 

[mfc]

Recently I visited Charlotte a city that Jacksonville should take notes from. I met with one of their downtown planners and the exec director of their tourist development group. They all love our skyway but say the problem is we must connect it to our surrounding areas. It is not that it doesn't go anywhere, it just needs a farther reach. Interestingly enough the downtown planner said that although they hear very little about Jacksonville in competitive business circles he would do anything for Charlotte to have our river, historic district possibilities and retail spaces we have. He also said our people mover should be stretched down to the stadium as well as surrounding areas. While I was there I rode their rail system. It is a tremendous asset to the development of their downtown or as they call it their uptown district. The property taxes generated from this district is huge and those dollars are responsible for enhancing their education system and other quality of life factors. I say all this to say that we can not retreat our way to prosperity. Audrey Moran is the one candidate who understands this and has the courage to move our city forward. The no new tax crowd will hold us back. Just my opinion.   

[stjr]

The Highline(which I will be visiting next week) took about 10 years from conception to reality and $50million to build.

Enjoy your visit.  I walked it last summer.  We discussed it previously on MJ.  It seems to me the entire project will run closer to $150 million when completed.  Unlike Jax, NYC has public/private partnerships for projects like this as well as many of their parks.  I have advocated elsewhere for our City to embrace more of this here.

So, lets say we do it more reasonably at $30 million.  You'll then have a park that cost $30 million that takes no one to nowhere... which is exactly the problem with the skyway now.  

Field, when you visit the Highline, you will find that the appeal is in the journey, not the destination.  If the Skyway were so converted, it would be the same.  Maybe you could relate it locally to the rails-to-trails to Baldwin.

Add in the cost thrown at the Feds and loss of potential additional TOD in the San Marco area spurred from the Skyway(a possibility more real than you think) ...

In 20+ years,  the Skyway has been responsible for zero, and maybe negative, TOD.  This claim rings hollow.  And, I think San Marco has done much better than those areas served by the Skyway.  Maybe we should be careful not to mess it up by introducing the Skyway.  LOL.  Do you actually have a specific project you can name awaiting the Skyway?

...and you still wont have a way to move streetcars across the river.  

Field, we have discussed this issue several times here on MJ.  Even Ock, I think you will find, has agreed that street cars could navigate one or more of the bridges.  Based on the Skyway's traffic, it doesn't look like there is that much demand for this route anyway.

And by doing so, you will have eliminated a transportation option that has the most riders per mile than any in the city.  

You neglect to count the revenue miles of the route and that the rides still cost more than any other mode of public transit we have, on par with private transit such as a taxi or limo.  What a deal for the taxpayers.

You can gut the proposed BRT lines downtown(Northbank and Southbank) that mirror the exact routes of the Skyway, gut the proposed BRT lines downtown that mirror the popular PCT Trolleys, and consolidate existing bus lines along Hendricks/San Jose and Park Street with PCT trolleys that connect major shopping/employment centers to get all the operational savings you want with more riders.

Using your mirror analogy, street cars could mirror the Skyway in this regard and, in my opinion, do it far better.  That's part of my point.  The Skyway is a second rate solution.

JTA does a pretty poor job at eliminating operational costs with all the redundant services they use.  Why tear down what could be a better utilized asset as part of a functional transportation system just to buy more fancy BRT busses and all the fancy bells and whistles(que jumpers, ROW aquisition costs, etc) that go along with them?

I never suggested Skyway monies be redirected toward BRT.  Not sure where you got this idea.  I do think they should go initially toward street cars.  We do agree on JTA doing a poor job!

Give me 30 million and I'll give you the Bay Street Pier Park and a Hogans Creek/Klutho/Confederate Park Greenbelt that will be the envy of the world.

I am always willing to support more parks in Jax.  But I think it would be prudent to use any Skyway savings toward other rail mass transit.

[stjr]

I noted this quote from Jax architect Ted Pappas on the Courthouse Asphalt or Green Space thread (post #113, http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,10900.105.html ) and am adding it here for your viewing pleasure:

By the way, the Skyway Express cost $100,000,000 per mile back then. Not really a good investment for the ridership they have.  The Skyway is the biggest urban mistake made in Jacksonville.  Most of the businesses  that are along it (Hogan Street and Bay Street have been shut down.

We had a great opportunity to have a wonderful street (Hogan) all the way from Union Street to the river.  Now we have an elevated concrete monstrosity. We now have Laura Street, but you cannot see to the river because guess what: they closed the street for the Jacksonville Landing. How much money has the City of Jacksonville pumped into that project for the last decades.

[stjr]

I have a lot of respect for Ted, and give him proper credit for his intentions......but there have been some pretty bad ideas as well as the good ones.

Stephen, as opposed to you who only has good ideas, right? LOL.  Let me correct myself.  You only have GREAT ideas.   The rest of us can only have ideas on par with yours and if we differ, our ideas clearly suck.  More LOL.

[peestandingup]

Just woke up & expected to see some posts from the candidate. What happened to him? Did he chicken out??

Also, I'm really sorta in the middle with all of this, so I'm not really knocking it either way, but could some of the stronger proponents tell me how they think we can properly build out this system (to serve not just the core, but most of Jacksonville as well) when it costs close to $80 Million per mile, has such an obtrusive track, etc? How can we continue with something like this & really "future proof it", especially when compared to some light rail systems like Charlotte (9 miles for $460 Million, or $51 Million per mile)??

I mean, connecting the core is nice & all, but we have to do what's best for Jacksonville (a very dispersed, sprawling city). So connecting to places like Westside, Southside, hell all the way out to St John's TC & on to the Beaches, etc is something you simply have to do here to get the true connectivity you're seeking. You can't build it just for core riders because frankly, there's not enough people down there to justify the costs. Speaking of which, tax payers outside the core will NOT want to pony up the cash for since it doesn't consider them.

And before anyone says it, no. I don't think using the Skyway as an "extension" to another system (like light rail) is a good idea. No one wants to have to jump between a bunch of different systems to get where they wanna go. No one will bother, so its always best to have a solid, singular system that has a decent secondary system (like a solid bus system) to pick up the remaining slack. You dont want to have to jump between a bus, a Light Rail & then a Skyway just to get somewhere, guys. Think about it. Thats would completely suck.

So I think a lot of us here are just thinking with our "core brains" & not our "Jacksonville brains", which you absolutely must do here. I know we all love big dense urban metropolises, but we just aren't that town.

[thelakelander]

I noted this quote from Jax architect Ted Pappas on the Courthouse Asphalt or Green Space thread (post #113, http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,10900.105.html ) and am adding it here for your viewing pleasure:

By the way, the Skyway Express cost $100,000,000 per mile back then. Not really a good investment for the ridership they have.  The Skyway is the biggest urban mistake made in Jacksonville.  Most of the businesses  that are along it (Hogan Street and Bay Street have been shut down.

We had a great opportunity to have a wonderful street (Hogan) all the way from Union Street to the river.  Now we have an elevated concrete monstrosity. We now have Laura Street, but you cannot see to the river because guess what: they closed the street for the Jacksonville Landing. How much money has the City of Jacksonville pumped into that project for the last decades.

I noticed this when it was written but I let it slide since I had already hit him over the head enough about the plan to put another road between the courthouse and courthouse parking garage, along with wanting to destroy more blocks of DT for greenspace.

1. The skyway's overall capital cost was $184 million for 2.5 miles.  That breaks down to $73.6 million of which the feds (not Jax) paid as a demonstration project.

2. Within that number, we paid for two systems.  First a peoplemover and then the what you see today.

3. We made the necessary expensive investments for an extensive system first (river crossing, O&M center) and then quit.  The result is similar to building the Dames Point Bridge but stopping 9A at Fort Caroline and New Berlin Road and then wondering why the beltway is not effective.

4. The stores (Sears, JCPenney, Levy-Wolf, Furchgott's, Rosenblum's, May-Cohens) on along the Hogan Street corridor closed between 1981 and 1986.  The skyway along Hogan opened in 2000.

You don't have to like the system and that's understandable.  However, if you're going to toss something out on a public discussion board for all to see for as long as we keep paying the server bills, make sure to verify your sources.

[RiversideLoki]

With all due respect to Mr. Pappas, the tone of his comment makes it seem as though the single cause of business failure downtown along that corridor was the skyway itself.

Stjr, you hit the nail on the head... the problem was that (for whatever reason) we just quit. It doesn't go anywhere useful. That's a problem. The skyway deserves to be finished, not scrapped.

How much would it cost to demolish it versus how much would it cost to add a few more miles of track to go to Riverside, or to the stadium, or to anywhere else that would make the system actually usable?

[tufsu1]

Recently I visited Charlotte a city that Jacksonville should take notes from. I met with one of their downtown planners and the exec director of their tourist development group. They all love our skyway but say the problem is we must connect it to our surrounding areas. It is not that it doesn't go anywhere, it just needs a farther reach. Interestingly enough the downtown planner said that although they hear very little about Jacksonville in competitive business circles he would do anything for Charlotte to have our river, historic district possibilities and retail spaces we have. He also said our people mover should be stretched down to the stadium as well as surrounding areas. While I was there I rode their rail system. It is a tremendous asset to the development of their downtown or as they call it their uptown district. The property taxes generated from this district is huge and those dollars are responsible for enhancing their education system and other quality of life factors. I say all this to say that we can not retreat our way to prosperity. Audrey Moran is the one candidate who understands this and has the courage to move our city forward. The no new tax crowd will hold us back. Just my opinion.   

Exactly!

+100

[Ocklawaha]

What you're proposing is to spend money to rip it up, give money to the Feds for ripping it up and then spend even more money to build something else.  On the surface, that appears to be more expensive than the cost of actually using what we already have in a more efficient manner by connecting it to a well-planned multimodal transpotation network.  Neither of which we have done so far.

Not only that, but streetcars, buses, commuter rail, or pogo sticks will be more expensive to operate then the Skyway, motormen, drivers and engineers don't work for free. I seriously doubt that Jacksonville is smart enough to figure out how to get free labor or have people pay for the privilege.

You are also correct that they will never fund anything else as has been pointed out over and over to stjr, who apparently doesn't realize he is arguing with some of the officers over at  JTA and not just a retired railroad guy on these threads.

OCKLAWAHA

[Ocklawaha]

Add in the cost thrown at the Feds and loss of potential additional TOD in the San Marco area spurred from the Skyway(a possibility more real than you think) ...

In 20+ years,  the Skyway has been responsible for zero, and maybe negative, TOD.  This claim rings hollow.  And, I think San Marco has done much better than those areas served by the Skyway.  Maybe we should be careful not to mess it up by introducing the Skyway.  LOL.  Do you actually have a specific project you can name awaiting the Skyway?

You are wrong here stjr, and I think you know it.... The Skyway IS RESPONSIBLE for both the Omni and the Wachovia buildings being located downtown.

If it actually connected to something outside the urban core, it would probably have tripled that amount, and had JTA had any imagination or will to design it to ENTER some buildings, and connect skywalks to others, it would do better yet.

OCKLAWAHA

[billy]

what about the hotels(s) at the parking deck/station near San Marco?