Smaller Than Jax, But I Have Rail: Lessons from Tucson

[thelakelander]

The mayor is certainly a big proponent of other forms of transit, including modern streetcars, upgraded buses and rail. She spearheaded the current push to bring the passenger train station back Downtown, and thanks to that we have a capacity grant and forward momentum for the first time in 20 years. That was achieved by taking the lead and putting all the stakeholders in a room to figure it out. There's still significant siloing between entities that will need to work together to get more done, but we're working on just that.

Give us some inside baseball... how does one approach the Mayor to show her another side to the U2C coin?  Or, has she shut down any chance to listen to other points of view.  Hopefully, not. 

Amtrak downtown is great for tourism and Downtown development but it won't do much for local mass transit.  However, $400 million redirected away from U2C to more appropriate solutions will.  Actions speak louder than words.

Politically, she is also leaving herself vulnerable on this issue and Rory Diamond along with Curry and Company are ready to pounce.

Can't say too much right now I'm afraid. The train station is just one I can speak on as it's public and I worked on it personally (Ennis also provided invaluable work on it). I'll say again, the mayor is very interested in transit and in breaking down the silos that have prevented coordination on it over the years.

IMO, getting intercity rail operations back to the old downtown train station is one of the biggest low hanging fruit that we can take advantage of on the intercity and local mass transit front, that doesn't involve a long political battle to overturn deeply ingrained good old fashioned Jacksonville nepotism, which is a major local industry in and of itself. First, you can't get far locally with anything fixed transit related (outside of the Skyway) without having that terminal back, up and running. Also, Amtrak already operates, so its maximizing and better utilizing something that already exist. Nevertheless, I also agree with anyone who believes the U2C is a generational waste of local tax dollars that comes at the massive expense of local mass transit system improvements citywide. That faster we can shift priority focus and local money to better serving transit users and local communities across the city, the better.

[Jax_Developer]

The mayor is certainly a big proponent of other forms of transit, including modern streetcars, upgraded buses and rail. She spearheaded the current push to bring the passenger train station back Downtown, and thanks to that we have a capacity grant and forward momentum for the first time in 20 years. That was achieved by taking the lead and putting all the stakeholders in a room to figure it out. There's still significant siloing between entities that will need to work together to get more done, but we're working on just that.

Give us some inside baseball... how does one approach the Mayor to show her another side to the U2C coin?  Or, has she shut down any chance to listen to other points of view.  Hopefully, not. 

Amtrak downtown is great for tourism and Downtown development but it won't do much for local mass transit.  However, $400 million redirected away from U2C to more appropriate solutions will.  Actions speak louder than words.

Politically, she is also leaving herself vulnerable on this issue and Rory Diamond along with Curry and Company are ready to pounce.

Can't say too much right now I'm afraid. The train station is just one I can speak on as it's public and I worked on it personally (Ennis also provided invaluable work on it). I'll say again, the mayor is very interested in transit and in breaking down the silos that have prevented coordination on it over the years.

What is there to break down? The city hired a guy with a Civil Engineering degree to build out a system that Trillion dollar companies are competing in with more than 15 years of a head start. JTA has zero, literally zero, employees with the technical experienced required to even make contract decisions for a system of this complexity.

As Marcus pointed out with the Mayor's interview she claims: "we've got people from Japan, people from Atlanta, people from all over the world that are looking at our system as a blueprint for how they might do their own..." is just an embarrassing statement.

All to say, the $400M of LOCAL spending is totally warranted to ALL be used by the U2C and NOT for ANY other forms of transit. Time, money & resources are not infinite. Maybe let her know that.