Is U2C serious? Help me make it make sense....

[jaxlongtimer]

^ Wonder if the approval by the Feds was expedited by Bezos kissing Trump's ring.  Today, never know if Feds are taking care of Trump's pay-to-play friends or acting professionally on behalf of the citizens of the USA.

[marcuscnelson]

NAVI making a detour today for the Jaguars game:

https://www.jtafla.com/rider-guide/current-detours/#navi-02

NAVI DETOUR #2

TIMELINE

Friday, August 28, 2026
12:00 PM - 7:00 PM (service stops at 7:00 PM)

REASON FOR THE ROUTE CHANGE

Jumbo Shrimp and Jags Home Game

DETAILS

There will be a temporary route in place for the Jags home game today starting at 12:00 PM.

NAVI service will stop today at 7:00 PM.

CUSTOMERS MAY BOARD AT:

• Riverfront Park (Temporary Stop)
• Main Street and Bay Street (Temporary Stop)
• Julia Street and Bay Street

Now one might look at this and ask, what is the point of spending tens of millions of tax dollars building a transit line to a sports complex that has to be turned off if there are any sports at the sports complex?

Good question! One JTA and apparently also the City spent a decade refusing to ask, let alone answer.

[thelakelander]

^Yeah seriously. What's the point of spending hundreds of millions on a transit system that must be shut down because it can't serve a potential critical mass of riders? Excluding the ridiculous elevated jogging path idea, none of those other options with spiked cost estimates, have this issue. They are actually designed to willfully move large quantities of transit riders.....which is a major freaking core reason for investing in public transit.

[Steve]

What a fantastic situation.

- Let's build a transit system to a stadium.

-Great, so it can handle the stadium crowds, right?

-Well, we won't run it during big events.

-Why?

-Because it can't work with the stadium crowds.

-Why not, sir?

[jaxlongtimer]

^ Just to pile on  . The Skyway has the same problem which is why extending it to the stadium doesn't make sense.  Cars are small, stations small. Would need longer "trains", longer station platforms, and shorter headways to make a real dent in the thousands approaching the stadium.

I once rode the Skyway when the Jazz festival ended and it took an hour to finally board at the JWJ park station and that was with every car crammed in.  If I knew ahead of time, I could have walked my trip faster.  Imagine that same scenario with many thousands more at one time. 

Skyway only looks good next to NAVI. 

[marcuscnelson]

^The whole value of building upon existing infrastructure like the Skyway is that there can be a very tangible difference between the 2-car monorail trains as they stand, and the potential 4-5 car equivalents with modern high-frequency technology given the length of the existing platforms.

With leadership that cared, there could relatively quickly be a substantive difference through, for example, a focus on replacing JTA's Gameday Xpress with a Skyway extension to the Sports Complex that then means high volumes of Jaguars Fans can use an automated, elevated train to leave the stadium and then connect to buses at Kings Avenue (which could be standard First Coast Flyer trips instead of a specialized separate service) to get home.

The real tragedy of JTA's adventure with autonomous vehicles is that enormous public resources were wasted chasing a concept of self-driving that didn't actually produce effective mass transit.

[thelakelander]

^The whole value of building upon existing infrastructure like the Skyway is that there can be a very tangible difference between the 2-car monorail trains as they stand, and the potential 4-5 car equivalents with modern high-frequency technology given the length of the existing platforms.

This is the power of fixed transit that NAVI will never be able to achieve without dedicated ROW / transit lanes. Trains can be expanded or run at higher frequencies to meet the demand.

The study and cost estimate I saw to rehabilitate the Skyway vehicles for less than $100 million included rehabilitation of existing vehicles with the third car (original plan) added. So there was increased capacity for that option, which stretched life another 10-15 years before the system would need to be addressed again.

I'm still unclear to how JTA came up with their estimate, but it appears that they've selected to ignore that one.

[Charles Hunter]

^The whole value of building upon existing infrastructure like the Skyway is that there can be a very tangible difference between the 2-car monorail trains as they stand, and the potential 4-5 car equivalents with modern high-frequency technology given the length of the existing platforms.

This is the power of fixed transit that NAVI will never be able to achieve without dedicated ROW / transit lanes. Trains can be expanded or run at higher frequencies to meet the demand.

The study and cost estimate I saw to rehabilitate the Skyway vehicles for less than $100 million included rehabilitation of existing vehicles with the third car (original plan) added. So there was increased capacity for that option, which stretched life another 10-15 years before the system would need to be addressed again.

I'm still unclear to how JTA came up with their estimate, but it appears that they've selected to ignore that one.

Would be a good question to ask at their upcoming public meetings.

Do you have a link to that earlier study? Would love to read it.

[marianne10]

I'd like to see the software costs broken out separately from the building and charging infrastructure. What actually requires custom development, what could use existing tools, and how much ongoing support is included?

If AI is part of the proposed scope, I'd also ask what measurable problem it solves and whether a simpler approach was evaluated. WTT Solutions has a guide to ai development solutions covering vendors and partner-selection criteria. It isn't a transit cost study, but it could serve as a starting point for questions about the AI development partner—not as justification for the overall project budget.

[Ken_FSU]

Brutal op-ed by A.G. Gancarsky today:

https://jaxtoday.org/2026/10/25/opinion-why-jta-nightmare-will-never-end/

Here's my modest proposal for people who want to be in city government, on the JTA Board, or leading JTA as the next CEO.

Spend a month exclusively using the bus to get from home to work to whatever leisure time activities you do. During that time, breathe deeply and take in the evocative, robust aromas of vehicles last deep-cleaned during COVID.

Talk to your fellow passengers. Find out what they think of the service. How they might improve it. How service failures have adversely affected them.

In doing so, I guarantee they will learn much more about how the city works — or doesn't work — than they would in a lifetime of community conversations, charrettes or town halls.

Go ahead. In the words of Pulp, live like common people. Do whatever common people do.

Find out what it's like.

And maybe all those pretty words about servant leadership will finally have some ballast when you find out what it's like to be a slave to a system that commodifies your needs, fails to deliver, shuffles the crony chairs on the cruise ship deck, and restarts the pitiful cycle all over again with no path toward delivering for the people.

[Charles Hunter]

Interesting task for prospective JTA leadership.

Just for giggles, I used JTA's trip planning tool to recreate  using the bus to get to and from work (although I retired a day or two ago)

Based on an 8am-5pm work day, I'd have to leave the house about 5:30 AM to walk 1.2 miles to the closest bus stop. They say that's 29 minutes. Maybe, but let's play along.
Then a 46 minute bus ride, followed by a 10 minute wait for the next bus (office is not downtown), which take 17 minutes to get to the stop near the office, then about a 5 minute walk. Total time 1 hour 47 minutes

Getting home starts with a 3[?] minute walk to the bus stop, 17 minutes to the downtown transfer stop, a 26 minute wait, then a 45 minute ride home, followed by the 1.2 mile walk home (29 minutes). Or 1 hour 51 minutes, arriving home about 7:07 PM

That's a 13 and-a-half hour day.

And that's if their walk estimates are correct, and the buses are on time so I can make the transfers - especially in the morning.

[thelakelander]

^You would have been fired by the end of your first week on the job. Without a doubt, on one of those days, a bus you need will not show up and you'll be SOL. However, empty NAVI vans would still be blocking traffic on Bay Street.

[marcuscnelson]

No kidding about that op-ed. Not the biggest fan of Gancarski but when he's right, he's right. I still think about having asked those JTA executives more than three years ago now about the risk of this turning out... well the way it has.

Today was Nat Ford's first day at DART, where in a press conference he has (unsurprisingly) blamed the state of JTA on the economy and not anything he did:

Perhaps also worth noting that JTA has updated the Skyway web page with alternative bus routes to use instead.

[jaxlongtimer]

^ Credit Ford for slickly answering the tough questions asked  .  However, I don't think the Dallas media was buying it based on the never ending series of follow up questions about his JTA service.  Interesting how much time the DART board chair had to spend defending his vote for Ford and the hiring process. Not sure what the DART chair was referring to regarding service to surrounding Jax counties. Certainly not comparable to light rail in DFW area. 

I note he acted as if Holon was up and running.  No mention of continuous delays by Holon in getting out of the ground or not giving recent credible updates.  No mention of how NAVI failed to meet any benchmarks for autonomy, ridership, role out, costing, etc.  No mention of how JTA was going to be Holon's lead customer and, now, maybe not.  No mention of how he "surprised" his board and City officials with sudden large losses given, per his own explanation, a developing financial "storm" dating back to COVID.  No mention of his cutbacks to the bus system, NAVI and the Skyway. No mention of why he chose this time to leave JTA.  No mention of numerous other details now being investigated in Jacksonville.

I wonder how the locals in Dallas will have confidence in his requests for support given recent developments and his track record in Jacksonville and if that will prevent him from being successful there.  It appears that he is already digging out of a PR hole from Day 1.

[marcuscnelson]

^ Credit Ford for slickly answering the tough questions asked  .  However, I don't think the Dallas media was buying it based on the never ending series of follow up questions about his JTA service.  Interesting how much time the DART board chair had to spend defending his vote for Ford and the hiring process. Not sure what the DART chair was referring to regarding service to surrounding Jax counties. Certainly not comparable to light rail in DFW area.

I do think a genuine success for Ford is that during his tenure, both Clay and Nassau counties have concluded that there is little to no benefit in running fully separate transit operations, and thereby contracted those operations to JTA. Economy of scale is a unique power JTA holds, but it only matters as much as JTA avoids making it irrelevant. Ford also did a terrible job at maintaining that relationship, hence Clay County opening discussions to moving on.