JTA Greyhound plans to go before DDRB

[thelakelander]

Btw, I like how the office building is still shown on the plan but the bold text pointing it out is excluded.....nice!

[Ocklawaha]

The wall is for safety purposes, Greyhound uses angle parking spaces for their coaches, which forces them to back out. Secondly, Greyhound Corporation is responsible enough to realize that with a separate station, they won't have the traffic count to make leasing retail space attractive.

I understand from a functional standpoint of why the wall is there.  However, from a pedestrian scale standpoint, that entire block facing Houston Street becomes permanent dead space and void of any decent streetside activity.  Ideally, the goal within an urban area such as downtown would be to shield off such a large service apron with some sort of building frontage.  For example, if the old terminal was used, a significant portion of operations could take place in the surface parking lot behind the building, which could also be masked long term with a plaza or support development facing Bay Street.  Thus, you stimulate foot traffic on the streets while also buffering this pedestrian scale synergy from bus service operations.

No argument on the stimulation of foot traffic along Houston Street, but with the city blocks being quite small and with angled parking of buses, they'll only have room for 9 loading zones if the wall is built. Any effort to push that wall back to make space for retail will reduce the number of loading zones to aprox. 7, which is smaller then the current station.

Bottom line, the buses need to operate in and out of a single station, with a loading zone behind the P.O.. The station itself would be the P.O. and the 'Grand Ballroom' would become a unified waiting room for bus, rail, Skyway or JTA. Anything short of this is not a "transportation center," in the true sense of the word.

Otherwise a phone call to the DDRB revealed that they are primarily concerned with the architectural design fitting in with the downtown master plan and not wether or not it is truly functional.  The gentleman I spoke with told me they see this station as just a small part of the JRTC, and thus it won't really make a difference. Nobody seems to understand what a single point of sale JRTC would do for the viability of the station or viability of the neighborhood. Nobody seems to understand that Greyhound is every bit of 50% of the traffic and thus the success of the center. With more daily passengers then all of the other carriers combined, leaving Greyhound on a remote island finishes any chance we'll have in this generation to do this right the first time.

Imagine the savings to the citizen and city if we didn't have to build ANY new buildings, and make our historic station a one stop location. Had JTA designed the Jacksonville International Airport, we'd be boarding Southwest over at Imeson, Delta would leave from the current airport terminal, while US Air would be at the River City Marketplace.  To build just the Southwest Airlines facility over at Imeson would really be just a small part of this airline 'center.' Is it just me or does this sound crazy to anyone else?

Our readers have their work cut out for them, are you also Incredulous? By all means lets get on record at Council, DDRB and any other agency that will listen, to stop this insanity.

OCKLAWAHA

[thelakelander]

No argument on the stimulation of foot traffic along Houston Street, but with the city blocks being quite small and with angled parking of buses, they'll only have room for 9 loading zones if the wall is built. Any effort to push that wall back to make space for retail will reduce the number of loading zones to aprox. 7, which is smaller then the current station.

I've reviewed the revised site plan for the entire JRTC, which clears up some issues I mentioned earlier.



1. Houston Street, west of Johnson, will become an "operations" area, considering the JTA bus terminal's operations being on the south side of the street. 

2. There's no retail in the building because retail will be built in the JTA bus and Skyway/BRT stations on the two blocks between the Greyhound terminal and the convention center.

3. This layout pretty much cements the fact that these guys have no true intention to modify the JRTC's sprawling site plan.  Constructing the Greyhound Station in this layout pretty much sets the ball rolling to construct the rest of the JRTC, as is, capital, maintenance cost and end user efficiency be damned.

4. Still no thought/vision has been put into how the JRTC will integrate within the surrounding urban context.  At the very least, the overall site plan should be overlayed on top of an existing aerial to give a better perspective of how the location of these uses may impact existing and future private sector development opportunities on surrounding properties.

[Ralph W]

Be a good time to address the security concerns over at the wide open Rosa Parks Station. Time to wall up the sides and make all those buses back out onto State St.  Need special doors with metal detectors and bomb sniffers, too. Hey you! You can't put that bike on the front of the bus. It might have Semtex stuffed in the frame.

[Ocklawaha]

I'm reposting this from another thread to help explain why we don't need to blow millions on Greyhound or any other dog of a project. JTA says it must be built the way they designed it because it's a very complex piece of property. Yeah? FLAT! CLEARED! SQUARE! REAL COMPLEX. Next they'll tell you it's the freeway ramps that cause it to be remotely located, also false, there are ramps in and out of I-95, near the historic Jacksonville Terminal Station as well.

SO HERE IT IS FOLKS - THE JTA/FDOT SCHEME


A STATION FOR AMTRAK



A "STATION" FOR EMPLOYEES



A STATION FOR THE SKYWAY



A STATION FOR THE JTA BUS



AND A STATION FOR GREYHOUND







THE GRAND MJ SCHEME...


A STATION

OCKLAWAHA

[Doctor_K]

So that's it, then?  No other chance of consolidating the sprawl into a more compact complex?

[iMarvin]

The design is pretty boring and bland. It's too far away from the Jacksonville Terminal. It doesn't even make sense to build this "transportation center" right now since we don't even have any other transit modes right now. By the time we get serious about transit in Jacksonville, the convention center would probably be near the Hyatt and this bus station would be 3 blocks down from the Jacksonville Terminal and then it would be too late. I really think JTA should wait to build this to see what happens with BRT, commuter rail, and streetcars here.

[Dashing Dan]

As a practicing planner I'm washing my hands of this one.  Barrabbas has left the building.

[thelakelander]

Here's another reality check.  Having one centralized terminal area for all modes saves the taxpayer on capital costs and long term maintenance costs of the overall facility.  Retail wise, that clustering of passengers within a compact spot creates the necessary foot traffic density for supporting retail opportunities.  By spreading and replicating the same use out over 4 to 5 blocks, you disperse foot traffic, which kills your retail potential.  So, if the spread out plan is constructed, forget about this type of activity really taking off after the $180 million publicly funded investment.









This situation is really no different than what our entire downtown is today.  We don't have the pedestrian level vibrancy residents and city officials desire because we continue to invest, design, approve and construct sprawling concepts in what should be a pedestrian oriented environment.  You can't bring the Southside to Downtown and expect things to magically work out.  Until we end this practice, it doesn't matter what we place in the downtown area, true revitalization will be difficult, time consuming and expensive to accomplish.

[Dashing Dan]

Captions:

Reading Terminal (Philadelphia),
Union Station (DC),
30th Street Station (Philadelphia), and
30th Street Station (Philadelphia) again?

[Jason]

JTA Spokesman: "Damn you MetroJacksonville and your common sence talk!! You're making us look bad!! Quick, put an aerration fountain in the retention pond, maybe that will shut them up!"

Even given the sprawling layout, I see no reason why the JTA busses can't share a space with Greyhound.  Or if they are adamant about keeping it separate then at least combine Greyhound with Amtrak!!!!

I'm with most here in that we need to stall this proposal as long as possible and find a way to get Mayor Brown on board and push this thing in the proper direction.

[Ocklawaha]

Here is an alternative to the sprawling JRTC disaster, of course this would easily cost $130 million less and be far more functional and create street level activity and offer critical mass to retailers... But then saving money or doing anything right isn't exactly JTA's Modus operandi.

OCKLAWAHA

[thelakelander]

Captions:

Reading Terminal (Philadelphia),
Union Station (DC),
30th Street Station (Philadelphia), and
30th Street Station (Philadelphia) again?

Yelp.  I only went to two past articles.  I could pull more examples from across the US but I figured those couple of images were fine for the point.

[Dashing Dan]

It's too late now but it might not have been, if there had been an actual planning process that involved actual planners who would have been able to identify and engage stakeholders.

[thelakelander]

^Dashing Dan, what's the history on this thing?  It seems like the JRTC concept has been tossed around at least since the 1970s/80s.