Streetcars Coming to Downtown Jacksonville?

[Jason]

What about Cummer and their aggressive plan to increase square footage and become the second largest museum in the state?  The major con of running down Park (just south of I-95) is we would miss one of our most popular urban core tourist destinations by three blocks.

Then revise the 5-points route to include the Cummer.  Maybe use Post to connect to Riverside instead of using Margaret.  That would set up a nice extension down Post & College.

[GatorShane]

I still dont understand why Bay street and the sports comlex are not a priority in these routes.

[fsujax]

No one lives on Bay St except Berkman Plaza. The streetcar system can't be built all at one time. Unless some private donor is going to pay for an entire system to built at once. Miami started off doing their streetcar studies and the goal was to keep the system to a phase one, then it kept growing and growing, costs are now over $200 million and it may never get built. We have to keep the size of ours manageable at first. The sports complex, bay st, lavillla, springfield and the rest of riverside/avondale will all follow a succesfful initial segment. We have to keep it realistic!

[thelakelander]

fsujax makes a good point about Bay Street and keeping initial costs down.  The most reasonable way to stretch out the initial phase is picking a single bi-direction route and eliminate the loops (couplets).

Go single with passing sidings instead of 100% double track for phase one.  It won't get you everywhere, but it will stretch the dollar more, generate higher ridership and spur more development.  In other words, its one of the most important things to do to make sure the initial phase is highly successful.

[Joe]

^ Single with passing sidings sounds like a fantastic idea in theory. It would obviously save tons of money.

However, how exactly would that work with a Streetcar? Don't they tend to share lanes with automobiles? This would make a bi-directional single track impossible (or at least an impossible legal liability). Especially for a Riverside Route, wouldn't you pretty much have to share the ROW with automobiles in some capacity?

[thelakelander]

Depends.  Streetcars can share lanes with automobiles, run in medians or on their own ROW. 

An example of a single line bi-directional system: Tacoma Link








A single bi-directional route would need to travel on streets that allow this possibility to happen.  For example, Water Street has medians and Park is a four lane lightly traveled local street (keep two lanes open, make one parallel parking and the other streetcar).  If you can get away with single track in these areas, it allows you to stretch out and double track others.  In this scenerio, the double tracked corridors basically become the passing siding sections.  The amount of track saved along stretches like this could then be added to the ends of the plans mentioned in the preliminary study.  The benefit is you then end up stretching into urban neighborhoods like Springfield or Riverside for the same price range.

[tufsu1]

Agreed...the loops proposed double the length and, thereby, the cost.

The Tampa line is single track for much of its 3 miles...with occasional double tracking so trains can pass each olther.

[Charles Hunter]

Does the Tacoma line have passing areas, that are just not shown on the map? 
And Park is only 4 lanes between Post St. (5 Pts) and downtown, the rest is a moderately wide 2-lane street.  Might be enough room to put a single line track down the middle, and still leave one lane each way.

[thelakelander]

Does the Tacoma line have passing areas, that are just not shown on the map?

Yes, roughly half of it is double tracked to allow cars to pass each other.

And Park is only 4 lanes between Post St. (5 Pts) and downtown, the rest is a moderately wide 2-lane street.

The JTA alternatives don't show potential streetcar lines south of Five Points.  All of their routes also have a huge one way loop in the Five Points area.

Might be enough room to put a single line track down the middle, and still leave one lane each way.

There's enough ROW on Park Street to run track between the existing road and sidewalks.  Unfortunately, doing this would also remove a ton of parking for the small offices in that area.  Personally, I'm not sold on running streetcar track down Park, south of Five Points.  In my opinion, it would be a pretty expensive option because you would have to deal with a good amount of utility relocation.  I prefer Oak, since it was an original streetcar line that's still lined with commercial and multi-family uses between Five Points and Park & King/St. Vincents.

[thelakelander]

As tufsu1 mentioned, a significant portion of Tampa's TECO line is also single track.

[Charles Hunter]

And Park is only 4 lanes between Post St. (5 Pts) and downtown, the rest is a moderately wide 2-lane street.

The JTA alternatives don't show potential streetcar lines south of Five Points.  All of their routes also have a huge one way loop in the Five Points area.

Might be enough room to put a single line track down the middle, and still leave one lane each way.

There's enough ROW on Park Street to run track between the existing road and sidewalks.  Unfortunately, doing this would also remove a ton of parking for the small offices in that area.  Personally, I'm not sold on running streetcar track down Park, south of Five Points.  In my opinion, it would be a pretty expensive option because you would have to deal with a good amount of utility relocation.  I prefer Oak, since it was an original streetcar line that's still lined with commercial and multi-family uses between Five Points and Park & King/St. Vincents.

I agree with you about Park and Oak Streets south of 5 Points, but was commenting on one of the routes proposed by another poster here, and just wanted to make clear to folks who might not know the area that Park changes at 5 Points.

Great pix of Teco, too.