Shands & The S-Line: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

[downtownparks]

Those high crime apartments are the only thing around shands! They account for an alarming amount of the crime in and around Shands.

If those apartments are replaced with hotels and retail facilities, then the odds are the crime issue will drop. Perception may not change over night, but too many people in Jax are afraid of their own shadow anyway.

[thelakelander]

And y'all seem to be making the blithe assumption that people are going to be cheerful about walking to that station from Shands, whilst the truth is that people are afraid to walk to the parking lots immediately surrounding the complex for fear of rapists and muggers.  Surely you don't subscribe to the theory that tearing down those "high-crime" apartment complex is going to eliminate the problem.

Yes, we subscribe to the theory that eliminating the two crime riddled apartment complexes and replacing them and the surrounding area with a mix of infill uses would have a positive effect on that area and the neighborhoods surrounding them.  At least this has been the recent trend in other major cities where these places have been replaced.

[PROTRANSIT]

Did you miss the school in the middle of the abandoned S-line corridor? Dah!

[thelakelander]

Did you miss the school in the middle of the abandoned S-line corridor? Dah!

If you refer back to our S-Line articles in our transit subsection, you'll find how to address this minor issue.  To sum it up, there's an existing NS rail corridor immediately next to the school that connects both S-Line sections together.  So if you relay track along the S-Line, it would turn slightly north near Boulevard run parallel to NS's track and branch off on the old S-Line ROW near Market Street.  School problem solved without spending $400k on consultants.

S-Line map

Take a look at No. 8.  Here you'll see where the path would branch off on city owned land and run parallel to the NS track, which borders the school's grounds.  Btw, you can clearly see the school on this image as well.

[Steve]

Did you miss the school in the middle of the abandoned S-line corridor? Dah!

No, we didn't - if you look at the property appraiser's web site, you can see the NS line corrisor around it.  We usually leave it out of presentations, because it's more complicated and takes time to explain, and the result is the same - it can easily be done.

[Steve]

Not to mention, this is much cheaper than buying ROW alongside I-95, which is JTA's BRT plan.