Outer Beltway Dead? Now What?

[Ocklawaha]

Exactly Jeffery, if we could just recover some of what we once had, and could get over the Skywayfobia and Freewaymania, this city would rise above the micro-god politicos'.

Jacksonville, Clay and St. Johns politicians would do well to remember that eventually even Sisyphus, Ixion, and Tityus are all going to suffer punishment for their transgressions.

OCKLAWAHA

[thelakelander]

The main issue I have had with the outer beltway has been the location of the river crossing. It needs to be further north to actually relieve traffic. There is a 20 mile gap between the Buckman Bridge with its 8 lanes, and the closest southern bridge, the Shands with its 2 lanes. In between those bridges is a pretty heavy bedroom county that has the majority of its workforce commuting outside of the county daily.
The same people that complain that Clay should get more jobs would moan and groan if a company chose clay over downtown.

Commuter rail will help, when you build a route to downtown, and a route across the buckman to the southside. Both of these routes are used by commuters. Going downtown and back to the southside then reversed for going home takes longer than a car, so why would you give up you car?

Commuter rail will help more by changing the development pattern of the region over time.  By facilitating and clustering walkable mixed-use development around rail stations, the overall need for long daily commuting will decrease over time.  By the same token, developing a more connective local streets, bicycle and sidewalk network along with walkable mixed-use development will help alleviate the issue of residents being forced to drive cars for short trips to places like grocery stores, parks, schools and libraries.  Nevertheless, with all of this said, I also agree that there is a need for a river crossing between the Buckman and the Shands.  However, I believe this should be a separate issue than the need for another multi-billion dollar beltway.

[urbaknight]

I saw a city council meeting the other day, I heard something very disturbing. Someone who loves the status Que. It was a baptist minister. He basically said that Workability, quality of life, vibrancy, bike paths, public transit, things that can make JAX a better place. Well he said cut them out of the budget. We can't afford it, he then went on to equate quality of life to Saddam and Gemora. And have modern amenities would be a sinfull overindulgence. And that sums up the popular belief in this "town" not really city.

[JMac]

I saw a city council meeting the other day, I heard something very disturbing. Someone who loves the status Que. It was a baptist minister. He basically said that Workability, quality of life, vibrancy, bike paths, public transit, things that can make JAX a better place. Well he said cut them out of the budget. We can't afford it, he then went on to equate quality of life to Saddam and Gemora. And have modern amenities would be a sinfull overindulgence. And that sums up the popular belief in this "town" not really city.

I have a better idea.  Remove property tax exemptions from churches.  I think it's sinful and overly indulgent that they use public resources without contributing their share.

[Bativac]

I saw a city council meeting the other day, I heard something very disturbing. Someone who loves the status Que. It was a baptist minister. He basically said that Workability, quality of life, vibrancy, bike paths, public transit, things that can make JAX a better place. Well he said cut them out of the budget. We can't afford it, he then went on to equate quality of life to Saddam and Gemora. And have modern amenities would be a sinfull overindulgence. And that sums up the popular belief in this "town" not really city.

I have a better idea.  Remove property tax exemptions from churches.  I think it's sinful and overly indulgent that they use public resources without contributing their share.

I agree with this 100%. And then, allow churches to offset those property taxes by providing public service programs (feeding the homeless, providing for needy families, stuff churches are supposed to do) thus relieving the city of some of that burden.

[urbaknight]

I think this falls under the separation of church and state. However, I think that FBC should open their parking garages to the public, they can charge a fee and the city could tax their profits from that because it's not directly church related. Besides, those garages aten't even being used six and a half days of the week.

[fsujax]

Garages 1, 2 and 3 are open to the public all week long. Monthly parking is available. The church also pays the city taxes on the parking garages, where they recieve revenue from parking fees.

[ChriswUfGator]

Garages 1, 2 and 3 are open to the public all week long. Monthly parking is available. The church also pays the city taxes on the parking garages, where they recieve revenue from parking fees.

That's because Churches aren't exempt from sales tax on for-profit businesses, and are also generally required to pay a prorated share of property taxes on the portion of the property they converted to business use. That's the law, FBC isn't doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. This had to be addressed, in part, because the abuses were getting outrageous, the Catholics in particular would buy huge office buildings and collect commercial rents while declaring them tax-exempt. I suspect this is a large part of why so much of the FBC space is under-used, they are dis-incentivized to lease any of it out, or else they'll have to start paying taxes on the property.

[Actionville]

Is it incredibly difficult to impose gridded streets onto cul-de-sac suburbia or what. I've noticed a kind of paranoid mentality among people I speak with that as soon as their street or cul-de-sac is connected to surrounding neighborhood it will immediately become flooded with burglars and pedophiles. Same thing with sidewalks of all things. So many people have mentioned the fear that if you install sidewalks on your residential street "bad people" will invariably walk in. Weird outlook

[thelakelander]

The key in suburbia would be to attempt to develop a better connected network of collectors and arterials.  Developing these in a grid like fashion (think Metro Detroit's mile roads) can also help disperse traffic from congested arterials like Blanding.

[ChriswUfGator]

Is it incredibly difficult to impose gridded streets onto cul-de-sac suburbia or what. I've noticed a kind of paranoid mentality among people I speak with that as soon as their street or cul-de-sac is connected to surrounding neighborhood it will immediately become flooded with burglars and pedophiles. Same thing with sidewalks of all things. So many people have mentioned the fear that if you install sidewalks on your residential street "bad people" will invariably walk in. Weird outlook

I do think that mindset is partly responsible for why we find it so hard to build connectivity and mass-transit here, a lot of the suburbanites truly believe they're better off being intentionally isolated from anything that could bring minorities poor people "strangers" near their house.

[simms3]

I also believe that subdivision regulations play a large role.  Streets have to have a certain turning radius and buildings along those street have highly regulated setbacks, bulk zoning requirements, and placement management of utilities.

Also, "streets", "boulevards", and "avenues" were conceptually done away with.  Roads are now categorized as arterials, collector As, collector Bs, and feeders.  Whereas streets used to function as public gathering places and the glue that held communities together, now they function as constitutional boundaries and a means for cars to travel on.

You can thank the late 1920s all the way through the 1970s for massive zoning and subdivision regulations.  The way Savannah is laid out and built would literally be illegal nowadays.

Also, back in the day architects/landscape architects planned cities and communities.  Nowadays, because of all these crazy regulations, architects have almost no say in how a city is built.  There are land planners and transportation planners (and unfortunately those two rarely meet or coordinate).  The job of the planners is consumed with simply making sure all the individual developers and building permits comply with the strict laws.

We have probably around 5 very notable legal cases (i.e. Euclid v. Ambler) that resulted in said regulations.  There is a reason why every city in America sprawls nowadays and why it's so hard to go back to the way it was.

[jandar]

Its hard to create grid patterns when land developers own a few acres here, a few acres there, and you have golf clubs and school property in the way, as well as farm land still being used as farms.

The area north of Kingsley, south of Wells is the most grid like in Clay. There are some routes blocked by school property, but I can use this route to go from college dr to the OP Mall without once touching blanding or us17.

Most of Orange Park is like that, and is built very similar to how Cedar Hills is laid out.
The newer subdivisons south of that are land limited due to existing farmland still in use, and water management easements.

Oakleaf Plantation has amenities built in, but no jobs, so people commute.
Fleming Island was built so hodgepodge like that it has nothing but pocket neighborhoods. Hell, at one point, Eagle Harbor HOA wanted to close down lakeshore drive to keep non-residents out and away from the boat ramp on Drs Lake. And quite a bit of the land for eagle harbor and pace island is used for retention ponds to keep flooding down. The ground there is muck and sand and almost always saturated.

[cline]

The area north of Kingsley, south of Wells is the most grid like in Clay.

Considering this area barely resembles a grid, this example speaks volumes about Clay's transportation issues and why Blanding Boulevard is a nightmare.

[thelakelander]

Grids don't have to be in straight lines.  Heck, even providing more roadway network connectivity to disperse traffic doesn't have to be in the form of a typical grid, as long as alternative parallel and perpendicular routes are created in the process.  For example, could it be possible to extend Consititution Drive east of Charles Pinckney Street along, what appears to be a utility easement, to Branan Field Road?  Such a route could also tie in with potential extensions of Chestwick Oak Avenue and Oakleaf Village Parkway.

Another example would be Barlett Avenue and Parkwood Drive, just south of Orange Park Mall.  It would appear that with minimal public investment (about 710 feet of asphalt and a culvert over a ditch), multiple neighborhoods could be tied together, creating another option for residents to move around Orange Park without using Blanding and Wells. This short connection piece could also tie into a potential short two lane road paralleling the ditch, providing direct access to Orange Park Mall.

One last example, would be Wells and Collins Road.  A short connection (perhaps adjacent to the CSX track) could connect both of these streets together, providing a third option for getting under I-295.  Such a minimal investment would be another form of making it possible to disperse existing travel patterns by moving some vehicle trips away from the Blanding and Roosevelt interchanges.

I'm pretty sure if we looked hard enough, more connectivity improvment possiblities like this could be found and implemented for a fraction of the cost of building a far out limited access facility.