Quote(https://photos.moderncities.com/Transportation/JTA-Skyway-U2C/i-MH9nsZq/0/20944a32/L/GrantImage-L.jpg)
Desiring to lead the charge for autonomous vehicles, the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) leading the is working to pilot their Ultimate Urban Circulator system in Downtown Jacksonville in the coming years. The renderings are reminiscent of Tron, but can this technology truly transform the future of mobility in a revitalizing urban core? There are plenty of elements to this project concerning the perceived failure of the previous system, the unprecedented territory that comes with autonomous vehicles, and the conditions of the city as it continues to redevelop. Check out Scott Gann's Bold Cities Project video that covers the topic, and feel free to share your thoughts!
Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/the-future-of-mobility-the-ultimate-urban-circulator/
Scott, nice video and thanks for sharing. That said, its hard putting lipstick on this pig.
Here are a few comments:
* The Skyway was, per JTA's expert consultants, supposed to carry 10,000 fare paying riders a day when it was first built. Until it was free, it had trouble reaching 1,000. And now, over 30 years later, with a metro area population of about double, per your own data, it remains at 1/3 of those estimates at best. The estimates were not predicated on 10,000 people living downtown either but rather the commuter population mostly.
* The Skyway was supposed to be a savior of Downtown. Instead, it accelerated its demise with years long construction running off the last of major retail, etc. It certainly isn't street friendly hulking over the streets it runs down and remains a symbol to many in the City of the overall failures of Downtown for the last 5+ decades.
* The first leg of the U2C being built on Bay Street is, in my opinion, another bone being thrown to Shad Khan by the City. There is no other reason to select this corridor for a test. Further evidencing this is your notation that half of the $25 million initial federal grant went not toward the U2C, but tearing down the Hart Bridge ramps for Shad.
* As noted many times on the Jaxon, there are numerous technical, capacity, practical and financial issues with this project that make it clear it is not justified and will probably add another black eye to the Skyway if it (likely) fails.
* The proposed plans for the U2C will likely be just another Jacksonville pipe dream (I certainly hope so) never to be completed. The sad part is if the same funding and energy was put into other forms of mass transit, the City would be far better off in every way.
Bottom line, the video segments provided by Disney and JTA are unrealistic and far fetched fantasies (hence the Disney video? LOL) offering promises that will never be fulfilled. Instead they are red herrings designed to keep the existing Skyway afloat to feed JTA egos and jobs. That's how I see it.
You appear to be a young man. Maybe in your lifetime, mass transit in Jacksonville will finally grow up and be something worthwhile. It's starting to appear for this older lifetime resident, who used to share the young man dreams you aspire too, that Jacksonville won't be doing so in my lifetime based on projects like this moving to the JTA forefront.
Quote from: jaxlongtimer on December 23, 2020, 10:16:07 PM
Scott, nice video and thanks for sharing. That said, its hard putting lipstick on this pig.
Here are a few comments:
* The Skyway was, per JTA's expert consultants, supposed to carry 10,000 fare paying riders a day when it was first built. Until it was free, it had trouble reaching 1,000. And now, over 30 years later, with a metro area population of about double, per your own data, it remains at 1/3 of those estimates at best. The estimates were not predicated on 10,000 people living downtown either but rather the commuter population mostly.
I'll add. The original Skyway plan was for it to extend outside of downtown. The initial line was supposed to run between UF Health Jacksonville and County Courthouse on the riverfront. Future expansions extended it to Riverside, San Marco, the Gator Bowl and Gateway Mall. Gateway is about five miles north of downtown, so it would have been more than a downtown circulator or first mile, last mile system. This plan is likely where the 10,000 riders a day prediction came from. That would have been possible if extending from San Marco to as far north as Gateway. Here's a map of the original line vs what eventually ended up being built:
(http://www.metrojacksonville.com/images/skyway/original-route-map.jpg)
(http://www.metrojacksonville.com/images/skyway/original-actual-map.jpg)
Quote from: jaxlongtimer on December 23, 2020, 10:16:07 PM
* The Skyway was supposed to be a savior of Downtown. Instead, it accelerated its demise with years long construction running off the last of major retail, etc. It certainly isn't street friendly hulking over the streets it runs down and remains a symbol to many in the City of the overall failures of Downtown for the last 5+ decades.
The savior of Downtown line sounds like something Jax politicians and cheerleaders like to say about every big ticket publicly subsidized project to gain enough support to get it passed and access to the spending. Lot J, the Landing, the District, convention center, Unity Plaza, the Jags, etc. The reality is, there is no single savior. The savior is the sum of all parts when they complement and are clustered together to stimulate a pedestrian scale and friendly environment.
Quote* The first leg of the U2C being built on Bay Street is, in my opinion, another bone being thrown to Shad Khan by the City. There is no other reason to select this corridor for a test. Further evidencing this is your notation that half of the $25 million initial federal grant went not toward the U2C, but tearing down the Hart Bridge ramps for Shad.
The first leg is a Smart Cities corridor for testing emerging technologies. An actual transit need for public transit users it is not. If it were wildy successful, it would not even have the capacity to move big crowds at the stadium or sports district. With that said, using the sports district as a terminus point helps secure federal funding for the initiative and aligns with 40 year old plans to run the Skyway to the stadium. My hope is that they don't spend a dime modifying existing Skyway infrastructure until the U2C experiment on Bay Street is deemed a success or failure, 100% linked to end user acceptance, feedback and ridership.
Quote* As noted many times on the Jaxon, there are numerous technical, capacity, practical and financial issues with this project that make it clear it is not justified and will probably add another black eye to the Skyway if it (likely) fails.
100% agree here.
Quote* The proposed plans for the U2C will likely be just another Jacksonville pipe dream (I certainly hope so) never to be completed. The sad part is if the same funding and energy was put into other forms of mass transit, the City would be far better off in every way.
100% agree here as well. This thing is turning out to be way more time consuming and expensive than what was sold in 2015-16.
QuoteBottom line, the video segments provided by Disney and JTA are unrealistic and far fetched fantasies (hence the Disney video? LOL) offering promises that will never be fulfilled. Instead they are red herrings designed to keep the existing Skyway afloat to feed JTA egos and jobs. That's how I see it.
I'm a big fan of getting the basic transit things right before spending big money on untested dreams. Totally fine with leaving the emerging technology stuff to the private sector to figure out and our public dollars being used to run a more efficient and reliable mass transit system for all users, especially those who rely on public transit the most.
Step into my Time Machine for a moment ... to the early to middle 1970s, when the grant applications and studies for the "Downtown People Mover (DPM) Demonstration Project" were being written and submitted to the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA - the predecessor agency to the Federal Transit Administration/FTA). At the time, a building boom was underway downtown the New Independent Life tower on Bay Street (now Wells Fargo) and the new Atlantic Bank building (now BB&T), and others were completed or under construction. Downtown retail was still thriving. Southpoint was a cow pasture. The JTA's plan was to intercept cars into parking lots and garages at the fringes of downtown; parking in the core would be severely restricted Also, bus riders would transfer to the People Mover ("Skyway" name came later) at the ends of the DPM route. But, the City and the Downtown Development Authority (precursor to today's DIA) weren't on the same page, and built or permitted new garages and surface lots in the core. Then t he suburban flight of retail, office, and residential happened. Should the JTA/City planners have foreseen it? Probably. Did the construction disruption of the Skyway and Hemming Plaza encourage the departure of retail from downtown? Probably.
My point is, at the time, with what they knew at the time, elevated fixed-guideway made sense.
In the mid to late 1970s, one of JTA's more successful bus services were the Downtown Shuttles, which connected peripheral parking lots to the core, and provided circulation in the core.
But, yeah, the U2C is a waste of time and money that could be better spent on "real" transit (whatever that is, but it isn't small AVs).
^ That sounds like maybe JTA knew that the parking restrictions weren't going to happen. If downtown parking was going to be limited, and thus downtown driving would be limited, they could probably have saved on costs by building a street-level streetcar system using the road space that would have been taken from fewer cars. But I'm guessing I'm not considering the urban planning mindset of the mid-70s. Plus, I imagine automated vehicles were considered a big bonus at the time.
JTA's recent decisions to perform a mini-overhaul of the existing Bombardier vehicles and build Brooklyn Station suggest that maybe they're realizing they overplayed their hand here. At best, it turns out the AV technology is further out than expected, enough so that it makes sense to overhaul the existing system in the meantime. At worst, Bay Street is all we'll see of AVs because they're in too deep already to stop it now.
It does stand out to me that in the technical assessment (https://www.jtafla.com/media/Documents/General/Skyway/1_draft_skyway_technology_assessment_report_082015/1001/1_draft_skyway_technology_assessment_report_082015.pdf) 5 years ago, they spent a lot of time discussing streetcars. Tampa is about to expand theirs, perhaps it might be worth looking into again.
As Charles Hunter mentioned, the project was the result of winning a UMTA grant for a DPM demonstration project. We were one of a few cities to win it. That's why it was built as a elevated people mover. Unlike others, I'm totally fine with it being elevated downtown. Grade separation makes a lot of sense in urban areas for transit. We're lucky to have won the grant, IMO. We just need to coordinate downtown land use policy with the fixed infrastructure investment to make the most of it.
We should have an Underline trail running underneath it for cyclist and pedestrians. We'll see the underline potential with the Emerald Trail segment that will run down Hogan Street.
Quote from: Charles Hunter on December 23, 2020, 11:49:31 PM
Step into my Time Machine for a moment ... to the early to middle 1970s, when the grant applications and studies for the "Downtown People Mover (DPM) Demonstration Project" were being written and submitted to the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA - the predecessor agency to the Federal Transit Administration/FTA).
Streetcar was mentioned a lot in that study years ago because that's what the public (especially many here) advocated for. A streetcar, trolley or tram is something that could use the existing fixed infrastructure, while also dropping to grade to cover various extensions. However, the rolling stock would have to be lighter weight than the modern streetcar systems cities like Tampa are doing today because of the structural limitations of the elevated Skyway infrastructure. Some of the JTA staff decision making to go the PRT/AV route back then, stems from that issue, along with AVs being the sexy new toy in the transportation industry. As time goes on, AVs will get bigger. That's when the U2C will make more sense as a transit option that has equal or more capacity than the current Skyway to move large volumes of people, as opposed to being an Uber restricted to a fixed guideway attempting to compete with an Uber that can go anywhere now. Stay in the mass transit lane, regardless of what's under the hood of the vehicle, and leave first/last mile ride share type stuff up to the private sector.
no one uses the Skyway today.
no one will use the UUC tomorrow.
Several thousand people were using the Skyway today, before the pandemic. It's not that no one is going to use the U2C, just that for the cost it isn't going to be an effective transit system.