Jacksonville Transportation Center moves forward

[stjr]

What is sickening about JTA's proposal for this transportation center is that they are NOT being smarter than a fifth grader!

First, if money is an issue, why do they need to build a new administration/office building?  That should be the last phase.  All initial monies found should go toward doing the TRANSPORTATION infrastructure to world class standards.  After all, isn't that the real purpose of this project? Or, is it to get a new office building sneaked in for JTA bureaucrats?  No office buildings for now should free up millions that could be used to do the rest of the project right.  And, turning the design upside down to accommodate the concourse connecting to the office building over locating it to provide the most direct connections for the traveling public is outright idiocy.

Second, Ock and Lake are right.  The site needs to be more compact to minimize the efforts and distances needed to transfer from one transit mode to another.  Again, let's keep our eye on the ball.  This is supposed to be an INTERMODAL facility, right?!

Next, we should cater to our most viable and desirable transit options.  Commuter rail, street cars, ordinary bus service, pedestrian walkways, taxis, and bicycles.  NOT disproven concepts like the $ky-high-way and BRT.

Finally, we should apply proven, best practice concepts for outstanding urban design.  Connectivity, street friendly, accessibility, and multi-use.  That means street level retail and entertainment, tourist and visitor draws and services, hotels, offices, public green spaces, etc. master planned to be built AFTER the transit functions are up and running.  Are those ingredients all evident here?

If we can't do this right, better to hold off.  We need to stop producing third rate projects (the convention center, courthouse, $ky-high-way, city supported developments [Hyatt, Shipyards, Cecil, LaVilla, etc.) just to do things.  It's why Jax is often spinning wheels to climb the ladder to the next level.

By the way, I don't think money is the real issue.  It's lack of planning, vision, drive, and mostly a fifth grader's COMMON SENSE!   

[stjr]

Here is a recent example of one of those City of Jax projects that doesn't stand the test of time.  An oversized ugly box hotel built so we could get the SuperBowl.  I guess no one figured what would happen for the next 50 years after that.  That would take vision.

As I recall, somewhere I read the Hyatt/Adams Mark is having these problems even after getting some $22 million in incentives/free land from the City.  And, the Hyatt people got a deal on it when the Adams Mark management was forced to unload the hotel after not doing well.

NOVEMBER 25, 2009

Helping Hand by Hyatt Hotels
A Delinquent Mortgage Is Made Current Again at a Jacksonville Property

Amid the commotion of hotel owners and hotel operators fighting about cutting costs in this downturn, there are occasions in which operators pull out all the stops to make sure that owners don't go under.

Case in point: Hyatt Hotels Corp. this month helped the owner of the 966-room Hyatt Regency Jacksonville in Florida avoid default on its $150 million securitized mortgage.

The hotel, owned by Chartres Lodging Group LLC, had gone delinquent on its mortgage last month, according to debt-rating company Realpoint LLC. The hotel's occupancy and average rate, which registered 56% and $119, respectively, at the end of June, have suffered amid the downturn and a sharp drop in corporate meetings, Realpoint says.

In stepped Hyatt, which agreed to cover as much as $5 million in payments on the mortgage in the event Chartres couldn't. Hyatt also pledged to cut its management fee in exchange for an extension of the pact's term and to pay up to $1 million in future costs for furniture, fixtures and equipment. Hyatt declined to comment. But the benefits for Hyatt likely are the extension of its management contract and avoiding disruption.

After Hyatt's contributions, the hotel's mortgage was again classified this month as current. "The loan and the property are in good standing," says Chartres president and co-founder Robert D. Kline.
â€"Kris Hudson

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703819904574556191464816208.html

[Ocklawaha]

Don't you just love our city? "Excellence in Transportation Planning everyday."

Connectivity should include the Skyway too, however I'd agree that the station is already there. As we keep telling them, no point reinventing the wheel, use what we have. I suspect all of the dollars planned for the Skyway station have something to do with the "pretty" on JTA's new office building. Even with the grand old station as a Convention Center, the Skyway station should have been built right from the start, en-training and de-training passengers directly across the street from the main concourse of the old station. I mean if we really just had to build another city blocks distance it should have been to FCCJ and not ?? on Bay.

The Skyway will be valuable to Amtrak, and intercity bus passengers going up town, to government centers, ATT, Federal Courthouse, new Courthouse, the Omni, FSCJ, or the Southbank hotels and offices. Anyone going to Landing, TUPAC, CofC, Hyatt, Florida Theater, Blue Cross, Fidelity, Art Market, Cummer, 5-points, Publix, St. Vincents and hopefully Park & King and/or Avondale.

Money the issue? Not a chance, nobody is on the street corner handing out millions, but these projects were written in stone sometime ago.  JTA is over the barrel on this too, because the City is feeling the pressure on these issues and has pretty much told them to proceed. The issue is the old Jacksonville game of "do something - even if it's wrong."  You can always fool some of the people with brick walls and rubber tired trolleys, what they haven't counted on is they can't fool ALL OF THE PEOPLE!

It appears that nowhere did the COJ or JTA look at this from the point of view of "what is missing," thus setting the most urgent priority. Greyhound has a nice station and could stay there for many more years, JTA has two intermodal facilities one on each side of the river. The Skyway already has "Urinal Central," stations that are not maintained, it sure as hell doesn't need another one in LaVilla.

Well now, who did we leave out?

Hum? Wonder?

Come on 5Th graders... Let's teach the poor dummy's.

Hum?

RAIL! Oh my God! We forgot all about rail! Oh how funny. Let's see, streetcar really doesn't need a
station, but if we're sending buses and BRT through the station, maybe we should consider reopening the Myrtle Street Tunnel and head into Riverside and Brooklyn the way Jacksonville Traction did in the early 1900's. Doing this would mean our streetcars would roll between the rail and bus sides on the original streetcar route. Besides this, imagine if we included Amtrak. Gee this is tough, we are missing a railroad station. On the one hand we need a station, and on the other we own the largest station south of Washington DC. So  obviously, putting two and two together we turn the train station into a convention Center and plan to do a "new" railroad depot in a phase II, somewhere down the road.

Damn! Just Damn!

OCKLAWAHA

[tufsu1]

First, if money is an issue, why do they need to build a new administration/office building? 

Because that building will also serve as the Traffic Management Center....which allows for the use of non-transit funding from FDOT....who btw, is the primary funding entity for the Center.

[Murjax]

If the Skyway is going to serve people getting on or off Amtrak trains like Ock says, then shouldn't the Skyway be placed closer to the platforms? I'm still bothered by that Skyway station being all the way on the other side of the Convention Center. That's a heck of a long walk. I would rather see the Skyway platforms ABOVE Amtrak's so it would be an easy transfer.

[tufsu1]

I don't think its that bad...when I was in college in Philly I made a similar walk from the 30th Street subway station to the 30th St Amtrak Station...if you don't have a car waiting for you, a 2-3 block walk is no big deal. 

[Murjax]

I don't think its that bad...when I was in college in Philly I made a similar walk from the 30th Street subway station to the 30th St Amtrak Station...if you don't have a car waiting for you, a 2-3 block walk is no big deal. 

It's not a bad walk if it doesn't take up much of the travel time. A subway will take you across town and an average Amtrak Northeast Regional or Acela trip takes between 1 and 6 hours. A 3 block walk means very little there. I see the Skyway differently though. If someone gets off an Amtrak train here and they want to transfer to the Skyway well it's clear they don't have very far to go. If your destination is FCCJ's Downtown campus are you better off having someone pick you up in the parking lot near the Amtrak platforms or will a 5 minute added walk plus Skyway be quicker?

[thelakelander]

Outside of accessing Hemming Plaza, transferring to the skyway would be completely useless under current plans.  BRT and the streetcar would take you everywhere the skyway goes and you would not have to go up and down a flight of stairs to access either.

[Ocklawaha]

This is true, however, Every single study done on the Skyway's Final Plan had it running from Jacksonville Terminal to the Stadium, and from Shand's to San Marco, plus a Riverside branch. In my mind, when we say Skyway, we are embracing all of the above. When/if this city gets leadership back at the top, we might see the little system reach some of it's potential. The technology is not as flawed as our implementation of it, going to the POCC back in the 1980's was dumb as a duck. The studies said Hogan to WATER and EAST to Government Centers. True to form, we blew that royally then tried to make excuses why the ridership never got anywhere near even 15% of the projected ridership. Ultimately we hurt mass-transit and the Skyway, perhaps beyond repair. The City must learn to follow the dotted line, quit dreaming of office towers and full stadiums and deal with what we have. When that is done the future will take care of itself.

Imagine Amtrak and a Skyway transfer to Shand's. Imagine Amtrak and a Skyway transfer to Berkman. From the Hilton to Amtrak in one easy transfer. The whole thing is in our hands, now is the time, we can't afford to let the Obama years pass without action on ALL MODES.

OCKLAWAHA

[thelakelander]

^All of that is out of the window now.  Why take the skyway to Shands if you can take BRT via Broad/Boulevard?  Why take the skway to the stadium if you can take the streetcar via Water and Bay?  Why take the skyway to St. Vincents if you can take the streetcar?  Wrong or right, the skyway has been left to die.

[tufsu1]

Outside of accessing Hemming Plaza, transferring to the skyway would be completely useless under current plans.  BRT and the streetcar would take you everywhere the skyway goes and you would not have to go up and down a flight of stairs to access either.

Agreed...but I think that commuter rail/Amtrak may happen before streetcar....so the Skyway would play a rather important role in connections to/from downtown at least on an interim basis.

[stjr]

First, if money is an issue, why do they need to build a new administration/office building? 

Because that building will also serve as the Traffic Management Center....which allows for the use of non-transit funding from FDOT....who btw, is the primary funding entity for the Center.

FDOT, JTA, COJ, the Feds... it's all taxpayer money.  If these groups can't work together to get us the best results, then to heck with all of them.  Put the traffic management center on JTA's existing property and move on with the rest of the project.  JTA and COJ, along with our public officials in the state legislature and locally, could easily leverage FDOT to do the right thing.  But, lacking vision and focus, they seem to be MIA. 

Tufsu, I don't want to shoot you as the messenger, but the explanation is unacceptable.  We taxpayers are tired of seeing our money misspent due to bureaucratic bungling and inter-agency squabbling.  This project is an embarrassing example of that behavior.

[stjr]

With all the $ky-high-way talk popping up on this thread, I thought it worthy of reposting below my comments on the subject previously posted on the original MJ thread on the JTC.

JTA and FDOT are creating our own transportation "Nightmare on Elm Bay Street" combining the JTC, BRT, and laughable $ky-high-way.

BRT and the $ky-high-way on the same block!  That says it all  Need I say more?

Separately, let's do a little virtualization of the future concept.  A commuter train arrives, deposits 300 (a low number for a train) downtown workers at Prime Osborn.  These 300 commuters then walk north the equivalent of a block and a half from the train and through the terminal.  Because JTA workers selfishly want to walk out their office door to play with their expensive toys, commuters must then walk west for another block down the side of the convention center to the "JTA office concourse".  From there, they must again walk north across the street for another half block to the $ky-high-way station.  I count that as a three block walk just to TRANSFER.

And, now for some more fun.  The 300 riders crowd the undersized $ky-high-way platform waiting for the under capacity $ky-high-way to show up every 15 minutes, if they are lucky.  Maybe, after 45 minutes, or more, all 300 have caught a ride "into town".  But wait!  During that 45 minutes or more, another commuter train arrived from the opposite side of town at the Amtrak station and dropped another 300 riders off.  Finally, by mid-afternoon, the $ky-high-way has caught up with the train loads of commuters. This was such a "success", we will repeat the process in reverse in the late afternoon.

Soooo...the question is, how many people are projected to arrive at various intervals on high-capacity commuter trains and how will the low capacity $ky-high-way ever be able to keep up?  And, who will walk three blocks just for an intermodal transfer?    And, we still haven't addressed the $ky-high-way's evil twin, the BRT, and it's added traffic load on the $ky-high-way.  Or is JTA figuring no one is going to ride any of this stuff anyway, so who cares about matching capacities.  The way JTA runs and designs things for failure, they may be right.

From MJ Thread at: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,6735.45.html#quickreply

[stjr]

I don't think its that bad...when I was in college in Philly I made a similar walk from the 30th Street subway station to the 30th St Amtrak Station...if you don't have a car waiting for you, a 2-3 block walk is no big deal. 

Tufsu, I frequently connected from the subway-surface line to 30th Street Station many years ago.  I remember the unbelievable climb from the dimly lit urine and rat infested ancient bowels of the earth (I would say at least 6 or 7 stories below grade), with no working escalators, to get to ground level, only to have to head downward again to the Amtrak lines.  An extreme workout, especially if you were rushing to catch a train!    No one should have to endure that adventure again.  And, few commuters anywhere would endure that today, I am sure.  Part of my complaint with the $ky-high-way is the up/down elevation changes, even with escalators working (which apparently isn't a reliable thing).

[CS Foltz]

Transportation Center does not need to be downtown! If the Center is to be controlling "Traffic Light Issue's" then it can go anywhere there is sufficient property to put it in. In fact there is the unused JEA Control Facility at the end of Roosevelt(US17) that is more than big enough to handle a control center......why has JTA not thought about converting something like that rather than spending money to build from scratch! Judge Moran got his new Office, even though it would have CHEAPER to rehab old Courthouse and the old Annex to achieve the same goals! Tax Payers want prudent cost effective solutions not just keep throwing money at an issue till the problem is solved......grandiose plans are just that! Lets get real with some planning and some vision and some reality just for a change of pace!