Streetcars & Waterfronts: The F Market & Wharves Line

[CS Foltz]

spuwho...........your right! Just because a cause is just and right doesn't mean the powers that be will buy the concept! There is power in numbers and that possibility is being addressed!

[Ocklawaha]

Clearly when anyone deals with a semi-autonomous political entity like the JTA, you must have your allies and political ducks lined up in advance. It seems to be a lesson you learned the hard way in your historical rail project.

Thanks, and WELCOME ABOARD OUR MJ ELECTRIC EXPRESS!

While we had several other power hitters, including the Jacksonville Journal (at that time a daily paper) editor George Harmon, we did not have the ability to network in the numbers that the City and JTA could pull out of their political black books. Several have suggested that I got a little too close to Ed Ball's parking empire, or previous dealings, others think maybe the Stockton or other interests, whoever or whatever it was, we must have struck a nerve. You are right about attitudes, we were publicly laughed at. The very thought that a citizen could have an idea that might make more sense then getting $200,000,000 in FREE transit money for an unproven "Buck Rogers Space ride" was a real knee slapper.

Worse still the ONLY source for costs and popularity of a heritage streetcar was from various museums around the country. Museums were "silly amateurs" foaming over riding trains and trams, hardly serious, educated transit people.

Today, many miles and a half a world later and I no longer need to work. Not for JTA or anybody else, EVER! I no longer need their stamp of approval and will not be sent away again. The concept is little changed from the original, though today we have stacks of facts and figures to work with and would propose a larger starter system. While we might have lost some of our tourist appeal, we sure haven't lost any potential development appeal. Facts are facts and RAIL ATTRACTS BIG $$, the only way around this for JTA is to lie, and in the face of an internet savvy public that just won't hold.

JTA? STREETCARS ARE COMING, That clanging sound you hear down on Myrtle isn't coming from your Jake-brake boys and girls.

OCKLAWAHA