Metro Jacksonville

Mass Transit 30 Years Later: Special Report

(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/1446773694_gPhf5wM-M.jpg)

Metro Jacksonville's Bob Mann (Ocklawaha) warned JTA in 1981 that the Skyway would be a failure and that our mass transit focus should instead be set on streetcars and light rail.  Thirty years later, San Diego, one of the cities that did what Mr. Mann suggested, has an urban core full of vibrancy and excitement.  However, in Jacksonville, the core remains in decline.  During this three part series, Metro Jacksonville will revisit Mr. Mann's 1981 editorial, check out urban San Diego today and close by looking at 30 years of that city's rail transit development, ending with recommendations on how Jacksonville can implement affordable rail service and utilize it as a method to bring back vitality to the entire urban core.

Thirty years later, as the gas tax subsidizing JTA gets closer to expiring, it appears little has changed. Jacksonville, welcome to 1981.



Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2011-aug-mass-transit-30-years-later-special-report (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2011-aug-mass-transit-30-years-later-special-report)

I'm wanting to get on board. Nice article.

Is thirty years too soon to say, "I told you so!"

I have to admit that, as a kid, I was drawn into the hype about the "People Mover."  I guess that it was a fixation with Disney and its vision of 'tomorrow,' but I even wrote a letter to the editor in Folio Weekly advocating for the then-called Skyway Express back when I was in college.  Today, in hindsight, I totally regret my support for the 'Riderless Express' and wish that there was a group like MetroJacksonville back then - even if it did predate the Internet.  Imagine how we would have progressed with the right kind of transit... 

For what it is, the skyway operates just fine.  Here are three critical areas where we've made it difficult to achieve success:

1. Capital Costs

The skyway costs $184 million for 2.5 miles ($73.6 million/mile).  San Diego's original no-frills 15.9 mile LRT line was built for $86 million ($5.4 million/mile).  The reasons for the skyway being significantly higher include it being completely elevated, elaborate stations, changing from a people mover to a monorail and a river crossing.  River crossing aside, if Jacksonville had gone with LRT or streetcar, we could have had a line stretching from downtown to the airport for a cheaper price than what it cost to build the skyway.  With that said, the reason the skyway mode was selected is because we competed and won a federal grant to construct a demonstration people mover system within an urban landscape.  San Diego used local dollars to purchase an existing freight railroad that was on its way to be abandoned.

2. Route Planning

For fixed transit to properly work, it has to connect people directly to various destinations and a mix of uses.  This means, somewhere along the line, your system (no matter how large or small) needs to hit a combination of residential, commercial and cultural uses.  The original layout for the skyway was intended to go from Shands to the Stadium.  Such a route would have given the skyway two major destinations at the end points with Springfield, Sugar Hill and Downtown in the middle.   Needless to say, we screwed the pooch on that one.  In San Diego's case, their initial 15 mile line connected their downtown with neighborhoods and suburbs south of it.


Quitting

Whoever still makes the claim that we're the "New Bold City of the South" should be pimp slapped repeatedly.  When leaders took the heat for investing in a mass transit system, they basically quit on it instead of incrementally developing it as originally proposed.  In addition, we never integrated the neutered 2.5 mile with supportive land use policies, the local bus system and have actively worked for two decades to leave it and downtown handing on a vine.  In short, Jacksonville has failed the skyway, not the other way around.  San Diego, on the other hand, did the complete opposite and over thirty years a city and transit system have grown up together creating an urban environment that we can only dream about here, despite both communities having similar natural and economic demographics.

Quote from: thelakelander on August 25, 2011, 08:52:22 AM
Whoever still makes the claim that we're the "New Bold City of the South" should be pimp slapped repeatedly. 

please explain pimp slapping  :o

^^ wacked across the head/face and/or slapped to oblivion for being a trifling fool

Very simple, tufsu1.  Get this straight and you'll always have your money on time.

(http://www.thelastindependent.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/pimpslap3ty.jpg)

LOL, Lake.  Quite possibly the funniest post you've ever done.  I had no idea you had a ninja sense of humor like that!

And to the article, it's a damn shame that Jacksonville bent over backwards to screw the whole concept and prove Ock right. 

Pimp-slapped indeed.

For me the most frustrating part of this quest has been the politics of Jacksonville. The Skyway was advertised widely as a 'free gift' and nobody could change the mind of the City or JTA. I was able to cobble together a group of supporters including the DDA and 3 city council members. We attended every meeting, spoke to anyone and everyone who would listen, wrote a brief study, obtained marketing data and held as many public events as we could support. To give you an idea, the mayor refused to see any of us, while Steve Arrington over at JTA filled the information gaps with erroneous reports about streetcars. Originally it was not meant to compete with the Skyway, JTA turned it into an us against them battle. When the JCCI completed it's 'study' they released a list of conclusions that could only have originated from one place.

Streetcars are old dying technology
Streetcars are tiny
Streetcars are 'bumpy' I think 'clunky' was the word they used
Streetcars are slow
and the best of show,
Streetcars MUST compete with automobiles in the street for traffic lanes.

Therefore knowing far more then any private citizens could possibly aspire to, the decision was made to reject and stonewall the streetcar project and its supporters. We had so many people coming out in support of streetcars, including the Jacksonville Journal that when we incorporated and tried to go with a private nonprofit route, we got visits from various friends within the government.  "Bob, if you ever want to work again, get out of Jacksonville." 

In light of this is it really any wonder that the same authority responsible for the Skyway 'victory', is also the ones who came up with elevated busways being cheaper then rail. Today they are doing the same routine with the same planner still entrenched for Bus Rapid Transit. This would be why they mysteriously pulled figures from a Buffalo SUBWAY, to compare the cost of 'light rail' to their dreamed of super bus. Nothing has changed over on Myrtle Avenue.  JTA is a rogue authority who's brightest idea has gone from futuristic monorails to buses that will cost even more. Look at the track record people, and lets demand some changes:

The inaccessible and empty south side parking garage.
A unfinished core of a short monorail system which has never achieved a single original destination.
An increase in operating income from sales tax and a dwindling number of routes and services.
Plans for a 5 building 'ranch' of stations they have mistakenly labeled as a transportation center.
Refusal to consider BRT frequencies and services without massive capital infrastructure improvement dollars.
Blame the city parking garages for the Skyways failure.
On the brink of launching BRT at several million dollars a mile, directly UNDER THE SKYWAY.

Do we even want to trust them with any part of a rail system?

Here's a couple of bullet points that came out of the JCCI Mass Transit study that Ock mentioned.  It was done in 1983. Apologies in advance for the whack spacing.

-Trolleys  are  not   feasible as  a  part   of   the  mass transportation  system   for   jacksonville.

-High   capacity  mass   transit  modes   to   suburban areas   such  as  commuter rail  and commuter  ferry boats   are   not   feasible  and  will   not  be  feasible for   many  years , due  to  the  dispersed,  low  density residential   patterns  and   the    geographical characteristics  found   in  Jacksonville.

-Mass  transit  in  jacksonville   is  and  will  remain labor  intensive.

-jacksonville     doesn't  know    enough    about    the transit  needs   of    its  citizens  or    the   benefits accrued to the community to make an informed determination  concerning the   level  of   services  to provide.

You can read the whole thing here:
http://www.jcci.org/jcciwebsite/documents/83%20mass%20transit.pdf

The first Trolley paragraph sounds like Ock:

QuoteTrolley cars or a light, electrically operated rail
system could meet some mass transportation needs
in Jacksonville. In a proposal under cons
ide rat ion by the city officials, the use of
trolleys for mass transportation has been combined
with a proposal to develop a museum of
transportation with historic trolley era memorabilia
and restored cars. The low cost promised
by thi~ proposal appears to be derived primarily
f rom the use of oonated track, donated right of
way, second hand equipment, and \Olunteer labor
by railroad enthusiasts.

the second paragraph sounds like the anti-ock

QuoteTrolleys compete with automobiles for street
space, must stop at street lights and signs, rely
on overhead wires for a power source and require
individual drivers. Altrough trolley cars have
been recognized as an asset in many cities \\hich
have rebuilt or expanded their old trolley lines,
in I1'Ost cases a trolley is considered primarily a
promot ional tool and tourist attract ion. In
Jacksonville, the proposal for a transportation
museum and sro rt trolley link is advanced pr imarily
as a tourist attract ion.

I wish JCCI would revisit that study!

Quote from: fsujax on August 25, 2011, 02:12:40 PM
I wish JCCI would revisit that study!

maybe we can encourage them to do so

we should and I have been!

Now if someone could just find the marketing survey study that was done, we'd be back to square one. I can't remember the name of the company that did it, but it seems to me they were huge in the billboard advertising business. As our little group couldn't afford a large formal study to prove we had a viable plan, they jumped on board and did a small study that came up with a figure of 500,000 visitors a year. That is a half a million people pulling off I-95/10 for the purpose of seeing and riding on a historic streetcar in Jacksonville. I remember someone coming up with the idea that that would equal about 6 Super Bowl games in attendance.

The original people mover study for downtown Jacksonville was completed early in 1973.   There was some skepticism about that study, but I can't say whether or not the skepticism was widespread at that time.

I do recall that when a plan for a more extensive fixed guideway system was presented to Mayor Tanzler sometime in 1974, he used emphatic language to say that he was not in favor of it.

In 1976, about a year after I left Jacksonville, I heard that Pres. Gerald Ford wanted to bring a downtown people mover to his home state (Detroit MI) and that Jacksonville and another city (Miami?) had also been chosen for cover.  I wasn't living in Jacksonville then, but I thought that a people mover might be useful as a way to connect hotels on the Southbank to a new convention center at the old Jacksonville Terminal (the Prime Osborn). 

It's too bad that in order to get from the Southbank to the Prime Osborn, you have to change skyway trains at the Central Station, and that you also have to backtrack a little.

All in all I like the skyway and I still believe that it could be successful.   An extension of the skyway to Atlantic Blvd would make a lot of sense to me.

QuoteAll in all I like the skyway and I still believe that it could be successful.   An extension of the skyway to Atlantic Blvd would make a lot of sense to me.

DD
I'm glad to hear you say that.  I believe we went back and forth previously where you were against an at-grade extension of the Skyway... what changed your mind?

Whatever happened to stjr?  It is about time for him to opine on the skyway.

I completely agree, extend it to Atlantic, one TOD project at a time.

1) South end of Kings Ave Garage and fill in the pond with retail, office and apartments
2) East end of Lasalle Street (at San Marco Library and tennis courts) with new apartments along Lasalle (think brownstones...)
3) Atlantic Blvd to reach the East San Marco project of residential and a Publix.

Great opportunities for public private partnerships.

It's still not too late.  We can follow in Portland and San Diego's steps with lightrail that connect downtown to the beaches and JIA to the Southside.

Quote from: fieldafm on August 25, 2011, 05:44:09 PM

QuoteAll in all I like the skyway and I still believe that it could be successful.   An extension of the skyway to Atlantic Blvd would make a lot of sense to me.

DD
I'm glad to hear you say that.  I believe we went back and forth previously where you were against an at-grade extension of the Skyway... what changed your mind?

Maybe I wasn't clear.  I have long been in favor of extending the skyway to Atlantic Blvd. 

I just don't believe that you can get it all the way down to grade level, or at least not down low enough that you could walk or drive across the "track."  I also don't believe there would be a significant cost saving from bringing it down.  It's called the "skyway" for a reason.  It's designed to be up in the air.

I also think it would be a smart move to re-brand the skyway.  I like "The Pelican!"   

Quote from: Dashing Dan on August 26, 2011, 09:21:00 AM
I also think it would be a smart move to re-brand the skyway.  I like "The Pelican!"

How about "The Albatross"   ;)

Ouch

Quote from: Dashing Dan on August 26, 2011, 09:21:00 AM

Quote from: fieldafm on August 25, 2011, 05:44:09 PM

QuoteAll in all I like the skyway and I still believe that it could be successful.   An extension of the skyway to Atlantic Blvd would make a lot of sense to me.

DD
I'm glad to hear you say that.  I believe we went back and forth previously where you were against an at-grade extension of the Skyway... what changed your mind?

Maybe I wasn't clear.  I have long been in favor of extending the skyway to Atlantic Blvd. 

I just don't believe that you can get it all the way down to grade level, or at least not down low enough that you could walk or drive across the "track."  I also don't believe there would be a significant cost saving from bringing it down.  It's called the "skyway" for a reason.  It's designed to be up in the air.

I also think it would be a smart move to re-brand the skyway.  I like "The Pelican!"

Your making this too hard Dan. It's simple really, not having to build 20' high bents to support the Skyway beams saves a bunch of cash.

The Skyway would remain in the air over the FEC RY, turn south along the west side of the railroad and drop down into a fenced in depression in the soil. In that way nobody gets anywhere near the beams, the bus and rail platforms can be at the same level, and of course nobody drives over it (there are no railroad crossings in these blocks).  Disney does this in Tokyo and it works perfectly well. They cut their costs and simply fenced and planted shrubs around the sides. There have been several other ground level monorails, but to be clear, NOBODY crosses one and there is NO railroad crossing. Remember what we are talking about is ground level at the Atlantic Avenue Station area only.

I'm not yet sold on the idea that you'd save much money by bringing the skyway down to grade. 

But as long as we both agree that you would have to go above or below the skyway in order to cross it,  then this disagreement is mainly over semantics. 

Ock - what about a new name for the skyway?  What would you suggest?  Is there a famous train that you'd like to honor, like the Orange Blossom Special?  How about The Downtown Champion?

I like the Pelican - especially if we can rig it to drop little 'packages' on the cars below.

I wonder, does there exist, a city-wide blueprint, including outer neighborhoods and beyond, to show exactly how LRT would work for the city? I've been on here for quite a few years, and I've seen maps and the such. I'm under the impression that something like this Has to already exist, and that I'm probably being a little lazy. If something of this magnitude would be given to city leaders in hand, instead of ideas by word of mouth, could it have an impact?

there are no plans for LRT....just streetcard zserving the urban core neighborhoods and regional commuter rail....other than that, its BRT for Jax.

I suppose I didn't mean any city plans, I meant, somebody apart of the Metro Jacksonville crew, staff or forum members with the know how, who could present the city with something? Something to hand them, to say, "THIS is how it could work", something physical instead of vocal.

There is a physical plan and its now the city's plan.  Many of the participants at Metro Jacksonville stopped being vocal and have worked hard behind the scenes for the last couple of years to get a variety of fixed transit routes included in the adpoted COJ Visioning Plans, JTA Transit Plans, North Florida TPO's 2035 LRTP and COJ's 2030 Mobility Plan.  Now, two initial projects (Riverside Streetcar, North commuter rail) have a funding mechanism to help get them built in the next 5-10 years in the form of the Mobility Fee.  I'll post a map of the entire system later today.

Here is a link to the map, I mentioned I'd post:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,13053.msg241898/topicseen.html#new

Quote from: urbaknight on August 29, 2011, 12:57:17 PM

Quote from: deathstar on August 29, 2011, 01:24:03 AM
I suppose I didn't mean any city plans, I meant, somebody apart of the Metro Jacksonville crew, staff or forum members with the know how, who could present the city with something? Something to hand them, to say, "THIS is how it could work", something physical instead of vocal.

We could show them the 1981 article and point out that the prediction was correct. And persuade them to remove all JTA planners and hire fresh openminded people to do what these others couldn't. And while we're at, fire all of JTA management and replace them with forward thinkers.

They say JTA is run by black people, but if you ask me, they're running it like rednecks would.

Well JTA management, I hope that comment will motivate you to change your ways. I know the history between blacks and rednecks; And making this comparison boils your blood. Do something about it, become more urban oriented. That is, unless you take orders from rednecks just to hold on to your jobs.

This is not ment to be a racist post, I'm just trying to motivate JTA management to think like their urban counterparts in "real cities".

You can SAY that it was not meant to be racist - but it WAS racist. Not cool.

Why would a black, educated, mass transit director, plan the system any different then a redneck, educated, mass transit director? Less pickup trucks?

@lake
That's awesome, I knew there was something out there, thanks!

Opps, sorry, I was just trying to challenge directors of JTA to be different from many of our leaders, city ans state.