Bravo to COJ - JaxRax

[fsu813]

Free bicycle racks & installation at businesses via JaxRax: https://www.coj.net/pedbike

Scroll down to request a rack, click the link to download the manual with criteria.

Bravo

[marcuscnelson]

Oh, wow. That is actually pretty cool. Hopefully businesses know about this and get a chance to use it.

Speaking of bikes, I wonder what happened to the docked rental bike thing. Feels like I haven't heard about that in a while.

[Ken_FSU]

^Bikeshare was like everything else in this city.

Issue an RFP, have five companies respond in good faith, select a winner (VeoRide), then never move forward because of "public safety concerns" that should have been identified before you even issued the RFP.

Complete waste of everyone's time.

Plausible deniability is that the pandemic derailed it and fares are down tightening the budget, but they were sitting on this thing without action for like a year and a half after the winner was selected.

[Ken_FSU]

P.S. Obligatory meme

[bl8jaxnative]

I poked around and couldn't find anything.   Does anyone know if there's a copy of the Veoride agreement out there?  Veoride + other similar companies usually rely on payments from the university and/or univeristy student fees to finance most of the venture.

I'm wondering if some folks made some sort of agreement contingent on financing from the city that never materialized.

[marcuscnelson]

^Bikeshare was like everything else in this city.

Issue an RFP, have five companies respond in good faith, select a winner (VeoRide), then never move forward because of "public safety concerns" that should have been identified before you even issued the RFP.

Complete waste of everyone's time.

Plausible deniability is that the pandemic derailed it and fares are down tightening the budget, but they were sitting on this thing without action for like a year and a half after the winner was selected.

Dammit, you've gotta be kidding me. The convention center thing was certainly a screwup, but at least that's a massive capital project where hitting the brakes might make sense.

These are scooters! Come on!

P.S. Obligatory meme

No, but seriously. Make this make sense. The pandemic hits, and budgets get tight, I can understand that.

But how it is that everything seems to be getting put on hold except for U2C? Basic, comparatively low-cost improvement projects are getting deep-sixed, yet the expensive, experimental AV project is going full-speed ahead. And based on the recent Making Moves, they're very proud of being the nation's guinea pig. What the hell is going on over there? Why is this the hell or high water project?

[thelakelander]

Stay tuned with the scooters. That's all I can say for now.

[fieldafm]

I poked around and couldn't find anything.   Does anyone know if there's a copy of the Veoride agreement out there?  Veoride + other similar companies usually rely on payments from the university and/or univeristy student fees to finance most of the venture.

I'm wondering if some folks made some sort of agreement contingent on financing from the city that never materialized.

I don't know what their contract called for, but I can tell you in very certain terms that one of the four respondents' (an established company) proposal did not call for operating or capital subsidies from JTA. Their (dockless) system would have expanded well beyond the limitations of JTA's Skyway stations, and they could have been up and running within 90 days of being awarding the contract. 

If JTA picked someone that they had to subsidize, then God bless the board's procurement process.

The biggest reason why the initial program was scrubbed was that COJ's Code did not establish a regulatory framework on how a dockless system could operate. COJ was concerned that JTA put the cart in front of the horse.  That particular issue has been solved with a pilot program that established a permitting and enforcement process early this year.  JTA's RFP is basically nullified as the new pilot program allows multiple operators to apply directly through COJ... and we should see at least two of the respondents from that previous RFP enter the fray relatively shortly (the pandemic has understandably delayed that process a bit).