The Case for a Jacksonville Metro

[marcuscnelson]

I was surprised to have someone bring this to my attention, and I thought it'd be a discussion that warrants its own thread.

Dion Thompson-Davoli at Georgetown on Twitter opened with this article from Governing last year about how Washington's metro system is one of the best in the country, identifying three key factors that made it the best:

1) the city wasn't shot through by highways (MARTA's big issue)
2) its suburbs didn't work against it (BART, MARTA struggled)
3) the region was poised to grow quickly

He then, very interestingly, pointed out that:

There's an American city that roughly meets these three conditions,  doesn't have a subway system, and has a similar population as the DC region did in the 1960s (~1.5 million).

And to my complete surprise, despite others mentioning cities like Austin, Phoenix, Columbus, Raleigh, and others, his answer was:

The Bold New City of the South, Jacksonville, FL

consider:

-1.6mil ppl in metro, growing 20% every decade
-Consolidated city/county government
-weak core, but space to grow (not hemmed in by n'hoods or highways)

"But Dion," you might say, "Jacksonville is so auto dependent and sprawly!" That's true so far as it goes, but take a look at this job density map: strong clustering on clearly defined corridors and nodes. Perfect for WMATA style hybrid commuter/subway rail

Now of course, yes, almost anyone on here is probably well aware of our city's current transit plans, but I thought it was really interesting to have someone lay out an argument for why we at least should be doing much more than we are. And it's not like we really can't afford to: FDOT informed the TPO in February that there are $5.2 billion worth of road projects on the books for Northeast Florida, including nearly $1.5 billion in just resurfacing. The discussion on our poor prioritization of that money is worth having. But generally, I thought it'd be interesting to bring this line of thought over here.