Metro Jacksonville

Now, even the City is getting on the "JTA is being mismanaged and playing games" bandwagon!  Articles like this are popping up almost every week.  Has JTA developed a behavior of arrogance, mischief, mismanagement, and incompetence?  A full fledged investigation and audit is due to find out.

What about the non-BJP projects?  Does JTA play "god" over those the same way, outside input be damned? Who is JTA accountable to?  Is there an equivalent outside and independent auditor of JTA management (not the same as auditing its financials) like the City has?

QuoteJTA accused of road construction mismanagement by council auditor
City Hall won't reimburse agency; nearly $36 million in limbo

   * By Larry Hannan
   * Story updated at 7:39 PM on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010

City Hall auditors say the Jacksonville Transportation Authority used about $50 million in Better Jacksonville funds for projects that weren’t part of the voter-approved plan and won’t release the money for those JTA projects.

In response, JTA says it has done nothing wrong and is waiting for the city to reimburse about $35.6 million in Better Jacksonville money that has been spent in the last two months.

The City Council is being asked to look into the matter and determine if JTA is violating the Better Jacksonville agreement.

Better Jacksonville road projects are split between the city and JTA, and under an agreement both must approve any changes to the plan’s road project schedule. JTA works on state-owned roads; the city works on roads it owns.

JTA has $50 million that was supposed to be used for countywide intersection improvements. Some of that money ended up in projects that could not be classified as “intersection improvements,” Assistant Council Auditor Janice Billy said in a memo to the council this week.

The largest of those projects was an $8.5 million realignment of Soutel Drive between Pritchard Road and the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. This was not an approved Better Jacksonville project, Billy said.

JTA also didn’t do its projects in the order they were ranked. For example, the overpass at Kernan Boulevard over Beach Boulevard was built before the new interchange ramps at Butler Boulevard and Interstate 95, even though the Butler project was ranked higher.

“It’s our job to point out that JTA doesn’t appear to be doing what it’s supposed to do,” Billy said. “But it will be up to City Council to decide if JTA should get paid.”

On Thursday, JTA Executive Director Michael Blaylock said JTA was never required to do the projects in the order they are ranked. He denied wrongdoing, and said that no Better Jacksonville projects had been delayed, which the council auditor didn’t address.

He said he was disturbed by Billy’s memo and plans a response in the next few days.

“We’ve been doing our projects the same way for nine years and no one has complained about it until now,” Blaylock said. “When Better Jacksonville began it was agreed that we’d need some flexibility and that’s what the $50 million fund is for.”

That fund was never designed just for intersection improvements, JTA Deputy Executive Director Blair Fishburn said.

“The full name of that fund is the 'Countywide Intersection Improvements And Miscellaneous Construction Fund,’ ” Fishburn said. The word “miscellaneous,” he argued, gave JTA permission to do more than intersection improvements.

Billy disagreed. She said the city has a similar fund for its Better Jacksonville projects, and all of that money has been spent on intersection improvements.

The city holds onto all the Better Jacksonville money and reimburses JTA after the agency submits invoices to the city. Fishburn said the city has refused to reimburse JTA for Better Jacksonville projects since December.

JTA is now waiting for $35.6 million, $14.1 million of which neither side disputes.

“We’d at least ask the city to reimburse us the $14.1 million that is not in dispute while we settle the rest,” said Blaylock.

The Council Auditor’s Office looked into all the Better Jacksonville spending after the city and JTA agreed to a revision last fall that would lead to $245 million in road construction projects being completed in the next 18 to 24 months.

Council President Richard Clark, who sponsored the bill that had the auditors examine the spending, said he wasn’t suspicious of JTA when he wrote it.

“This is what auditors are there to do,” he said. “We have hundreds of millions being spent on Better Jacksonville and you want to have a lot of eyes on this.”

Councilman Ronnie Fussell, chairman of the council’s Transportation, Energy And Utility Committee, said it was his understanding that JTA had the right to do projects like Soutel Drive under the $50 million fund.

He said he will meet with all the parties in the next few days to determine who is right.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-02-25/story/jta_accused_of_road_construction_mismanagement_by_council_auditor

Instead of "City" shouldn't the thread title read "Assistant Council Auditor"?  I don't think she speaks for COJ.

Quote from: urbanlibertarian on February 25, 2010, 09:48:02 PM
Instead of "City" shouldn't the thread title read "Assistant Council Auditor"?  I don't think she speaks for COJ.

This sounds like the "city" to me:

QuoteThe city holds onto all the Better Jacksonville money and reimburses JTA after the agency submits invoices to the city. Fishburn said the city has refused to reimburse JTA for Better Jacksonville projects since December.

You say "where there's smoke there's fire".  I say "where there's smoke sometimes there's just dry ice".

Quote from: urbanlibertarian on February 25, 2010, 10:26:44 PM
You say "where there's smoke there's fire".  I say "where there's smoke sometimes there's just dry ice".

Beware, dry ice "burns" and suffocates (via oxygen displacement) also!  ;D

See MSDS at:

http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/carbon_dioxide_solid.htm

I was just thinking of all the JTA "success" stories:

$ky-high-way - hardly used big-time money loser built with support of grossly misleading JTA studies
Bus system - under utilized due to continuing poor routes, headways, service
Bus shelters - potentially sacrificing entire city sign ordinance banning billboards because JTA can't find some pocket change to build bus shelters that should be integral to a bus system to begin with.  Supported by JTA attorney and a city council rep with conflicts of interests and misleading/incomplete data on costs and stops.
BRT - billion dollar boondoggle
No street cars/trolleys
No commuter rail
Intermodal terminal that is disastrously designed both functionally and architecturally
9B - FDOT co-conspirator - Urban sprawl road not needed
Outer Beltway - FDOT co-conspirator - Even bigger urban sprawl road not needed
Better Jacksonville Plan - millions spent on non-prioritized projects and $100 million for mass transit projects unaccounted for
JTB - I-95 Interchange - poorly designed originally and now poorly being fixed for millions more.  Will be spending millions again to rebuild in a few years.

And these guys get paid for this performance?

To be fair, the original BJP list was loosely put together and the cost estimates were rough at best...I see nothing wrong with JTA re-prioritizing projects to get the most bang for the buck....plus priorities change over time...for example, FDOT and the NFTPO adopt their project priorities in ranking order every year.

Quote from: tufsu1 on February 25, 2010, 11:01:25 PM
To be fair, the original BJP list was loosely put together and the cost estimates were rough at best...I see nothing wrong with JTA re-prioritizing projects to get the most bang for the buck....plus priorities change over time...for example, FDOT and the NFTPO adopt their project priorities in ranking order every year.

Tufsu, the ranking/prioritization of projects should be transparent and determined by a process, not at the whimsy of a bunch of backroom bureaucrats.  JTA's unilateral behavior is exactly what tops my complaints about them.  Next, is how they operate beyond the reach of anyone else.  With their bag fulls of missteps, less than candid MO, and fiascoes, why are they left alone, unsupervised?

Per below, it also appears at least some projects were done that weren't ranked at all.

QuoteThe largest of those projects was an $8.5 million realignment of Soutel Drive between Pritchard Road and the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. This was not an approved Better Jacksonville project, Billy said.

Good, now let's clean house.

Quote from: stjr on February 25, 2010, 11:08:11 PM
Tufsu, the ranking/prioritization of projects should be transparent and determined by a process, not at the whimsy of a bunch of backroom bureaucrats.  JTA's unilateral behavior is exactly what tops my complaints about them.  Next, is how they operate beyond the reach of anyone else.  With their bag fulls of missteps, less than candid MO, and fiascoes, why are they left alone, unsupervised?

stjr....not that I think JTA does this welll,  but every project that has been done has been publicly advertised and noticed.

and btw, they do have a Board...so unsupervised seems a bit of a stretch.

Quote from: tufsu1 on February 25, 2010, 11:19:47 PM
stjr....not that I think JTA does this welll,  but every project that has been done has been publicly advertised and noticed.

and btw, they do have a Board...so unsupervised seems a bit of a stretch.

Tufsu, I guess, then, that the City of Jax isn't reading JTA's ads anymore than anyone else.  Further, do you really think any citizen or group thereof can stop JTA from proceeding on a project it has already decided to do?  Would you waste your time going to a hearing where you know you are going to be ignored and steamrolled?  Is JTA (or FDOT for that matter) really going to abandon the substantial investment it has in moving a project forward at a last minute perfunctory public hearing?  

Given that the JTA board appears pretty toothless, I would hardly call JTA supervised.  Can you name one time the JTA board killed a project the JTA staff recommended?  Let's face it, the board members are "honored" political appointees that are not likely to stir the pot with hard hitting questions of the staff.  Rubber stamp is more like it.  And, the permanent JTA staff is likely to intimidate most board members who lack their "expertise" [sarcasm here].  Further, I would suggest the JTA board lacks the capacity of a full time auditor to ferret out the misdeeds and malfunctions of an agency the size of JTA.

It's clear that JTA is broken to many of us.  It's nigh time someone fixed it.

Quote from: stjr on February 25, 2010, 10:40:25 PM
I was just thinking of all the JTA "success" stories:

$ky-high-way - hardly used big-time money loser built with support of grossly misleading JTA studies
Bus system - under utilized due to continuing poor routes, headways, service
Bus shelters - potentially sacrificing entire city sign ordinance banning billboards because JTA can't find some pocket change to build bus shelters that should be integral to a bus system to begin with.  Supported by JTA attorney and a city council rep with conflicts of interests and misleading/incomplete data on costs and stops.
BRT - billion dollar boondoggle
No street cars/trolleys
No commuter rail
Intermodal terminal that is disastrously designed both functionally and architecturally
9B - FDOT co-conspirator - Urban sprawl road not needed
Outer Beltway - FDOT co-conspirator - Even bigger urban sprawl road not needed
Better Jacksonville Plan - millions spent on non-prioritized projects and $100 million for mass transit projects unaccounted for
JTB - I-95 Interchange - poorly designed originally and now poorly being fixed for millions more.  Will be spending millions again to rebuild in a few years.

And these guys get paid for this performance?

Okay y'all, let's pile on from a constructive critique and see what we can add - subtract - change or demand. TUFSU? LAKE? sharpen your pencils.

Skyway - A transit project pushed by government, studied by professionals, and built by stoic monolithic numb skulls. Constantly compounding the problem by not selling a fix to the city while becoming proficient at besieged bunker mentalities.

Bus system - A failure due to lack of coordinated scheduling, lack of needs-demands-solution. A fleet that is seeing it's leading position in Florida eroding away through a lack of creativity in attracting and keeping choice riders. This includes headways, transfers, ticketing, fare collection, stop planning/placement, equipment, intermodal, marketing, sales, and employee satisfaction and attitude.

Bus shelters - A management and legal failure due to being unable to take a simple concept, IE: 3RD party pays for new shelters, and lobbying or selling the idea to the city. This has been a painful and graphic demonstration of an inability or lack of desire to bargain and negotiate a compromise that leaves everyone happy.

BRT - billion dollar boondoggle as originally proposed, watered down under a public attack to the point where it has lost almost all benefits of BRT, but will still manage to cost us a few million per mile to implement. With the new Broad Street/Boulevard route on the construction schedule, we can catch a bus today at Bay and Broad and ride to Shand's Hospital. Tomorrow, and several million dollars poorer, we'll have BRT, and we'll be able to catch a bus at Bay and Broad and ride to Shand's Hospital.

No Streetcars This is a 30 year omission by choice, when we should have rightly been the very first city with a Heritage Streetcar Line. The continued anti-rail bias within mass transit "experts" in Florida reeks of big oil, big auto, big rubber, big asphalt, big concrete, and the various highway lobby think tank "Facts" which purport to prove BRT "might" even carry more people then rail. This is the curse of having a highway builder as a mass transit operator, and exactly why no other serious city in the nation has saddled mass transit with such interference.

Light Rail  -  Another flat out failure but directed at key, heavy corridors where commuter rail isn't practical, and streetcar too slow or too small (which generally means city transit bus size). Refusal to even seriously consider the Light Rail Option, in the face of wide open natural routes such as Arlington - Beaches, JTB - Town Center, and Blanding - Orange Park. It was JTA's new chief planner that recently said "Light Rail is not a good fit for Jacksonville," yet it was advertised that he was hired due to his vast multi-modal designs on Jacksonville. By the time the JTA bureaucracy chewed him up and spit him out, he couldn't even spell LRT.

No commuter rail - The easiest application of all, allies at the Port with mutual needs, grants available to build the terminals, and the chance to obtain a fleet of (NEW) manufactured RDC cars at a bargain price for quick action. The clock is ticking, and the lack of a focus on this goal may cost us in another area as Central Florida pulls away from us on the mainline.

Intermodal terminal that is disastrously designed both functionally and architecturally, agreed, in fact a STOP order should go out from City Hall, and force them to remove the convention center and condense the plan, before JTA screw's it up for the next 50 years by building something wholly impractical, inadequate and with none of the tracks, roads and services we need to hold our long time position as the railroad gateway of Florida. Asking for a tragedy by removing 200,000 cubic yards of fill dirt in the rail side of the terminal, to depress the tracks low enough to get under a bridge where failed planning allowed JTA to build an average of 8 - 10 feet too low for railroad clearance. This plan negates the lessons learned on the first two "union stations" which flood waters from McCoy's Creek completely destroyed. Add to this list of disasters, a plan to tack a train station on the Jacksonville Terminal, and a plan to dig up the remaining concourse tunnels in favor of an overhead sidewalk.

9B - FDOT conspirator - Urban sprawl road not needed, The argument for a truck bypass could ring true if the Port traffic climbs as it is expected to do. So why isn't JAXPORT JPA as involved?  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CO-CONSPIRATOR!

Outer Beltway - Even bigger urban sprawl road not needed. Agreed, however the bridges are needed

Better Jacksonville Plan - $100 million for mass transit projects unaccounted for will someone please step up and explain to us why the money that could have built 5-10 miles of streetcar, or a COMPLETE commuter rail system, or the missing 3 miles of the Skyway, just freaking got up and walked out of the room.

JTB - I-95 Interchange -Something that should have been done long ago.

Commodore Point Expressway - Like the Skyway, a big idea that was never completed to Town Center as it was promised, and JTA hasn't even engineered it to an improved, limited access Southside Boulevard.

Southside Parking Garage - Largest of it's kind, and we don't even build the Skyway into it? We miss the hotel?  and plan the building so well that a car from anywhere on the southside must pass the garage, travel into the edge of downtown, then double back just to get to an access road. The state rebuilds the Overland Bridge handing us an opportunity to correct these defeciencys, but people laugh about the Skyway so JTA has gone underground.

MLK at 20TH street interchange - Since 1960, where is the port interchange and entry off of what should be the best trucking access to a deep water port in the state of Florida.

Dames Point Bridge - Maritime interests told JTA it was far too low, and they didn't want the center span to have support towers in the water. JTA knew better, cut a deal and built a bridge that we can't get post Panamax ships under.

POTATO CHIP TRUCKS - JTA has insulted the intelligence of our community by pawning these hokey looking rolling abortions on a city of transit virgins and telling them we don't need streetcars, we already have trolleys!

Electric Trolley Bus - Failure to even investigate this mode, which for average routes, is the wolds quietest transit, and it operates at only 20% of the cost of diesel bus routes. Considering we already have a massive electric vehicle maintenance facility in the Skyway Barn, we would scarcely need to do a thing more after the wires went up. Deaf ears.

Transfers - An urban bus system without transfers cannot even track it's passengers connections. Knowing that more people transfer from the A route to the Z route, then from the A route to the B route is critical knowledge that Jacksonville ignores.

Incentives and Marketing - urban bus pass retailers, bus prizes, most complimented driver, and dozens of other programs that should of, could of, and would of, been done 50 years ago in a progressive system.

Amtrak - What train? We didn't see any train! So the Federals are handing out BILLIONS, we can't even afford to send a contact person to represent our city in what might be the pinnacle event of Florida railroad history.

Aah but perhaps I should tell you how I really feel! I'd like to hear from you on these issues. I'm left wondering if the JTA board members know the difference between a whistle pig and a clown wagon?


OCKLAWAHA

Ock, thanks for adding a few that I overlooked to the list.  I think we agree that it looks like unlimited failures and few (I am being generous) successes so far.  How do they get away with such an awful performance and wasting so much taxpayer money?  JTA needs a complete makeover with a whole new oversight and/or governing structure to make it truly innovative, responsive, and accountable.  I believe JTA has done much to hold Jax back from its real potential.

The Charter Review Commission should have put JTA under a magnifying glass.  Another missed opportunity to show leadership.

Quote from: stjr on February 26, 2010, 12:33:56 AM
Further, do you really think any citizen or group thereof can stop JTA from proceeding on a project it has already decided to do?  Would you waste your time going to a hearing where you know you are going to be ignored and steamrolled? 

Simple answer....if you don't speak up, you have no right to complain later!

Quote from: stjr on February 26, 2010, 12:33:56 AM
Further, do you really think any citizen or group thereof can stop JTA from proceeding on a project it has already decided to do?  Would you waste your time going to a hearing where you know you are going to be ignored and steamrolled? 

You never know what could happen.  MJ has been opposing the 30 million/mile BRT for years, and now they have changed their stance.  They could go back on it, sure, but if you put enough pressure on them, you never know.

MJ also got them to move forward with a commuter rail feasibility study after they fought the entire idea early on in the BRT fight.  In addition, they ended up taking MJ's idea of using the S-Line ROW as a part of the north commuter rail corridor which have now been adopted into the TPO's 2035 LRTP and COJ's mobility plan.  So a citizen band of misfits can get it done when they try hard enough.  Call me crazy or over confident, but we're going to end up getting rail back in this town sooner rather than later.  Either JTA can go along for the ride or get ran over in the process.

infiltrate the agencies, boards and city council, then things will really get done!

Good call Stephen!

Quote from: stephendare on February 26, 2010, 09:19:47 AM
For our new readers:

TPO = Transportation Planning Organization
LRTP = Long Range Transportation Plan.
ROW = Right of Way
BRT = Bus Rapid Transit.

I agree, good call as the PM'S are showing a bunch of confused citizens. Please allow me to add this split of the hairs...

Trolley, Electric vehicle drawing power from overhead wires via a trolley pole. (not always a passenger vehicle and not always a rail vehicle, though these would be more common. )
Streetcar, The smaller end of the electric railroad transit vehicles, still generally larger then a bus. Actually a form of Commuter Rail, but NEVER refereed to it that way to prevent modal confusion.
Rapid Streetcar,  A new concept drawing on 1920's technology, that largely separates and speeds up streetcar operations, from mixed traffic lanes. M/L same vehicle as above. Not refereed to as commuter rail.
Light Rail Transit,LRT,  A modern form of the old interurban electric railways, larger, faster and more expensive then regular diesel hauled passenger trains. Also  a form of Commuter Rail, but again, NEVER refereed to in that way. LRT uses Light Rail Vehicles or LRV's. though to some degree it is possible for it to be interchangeable with streetcar.
Commuter Rail, a short distance commuter train using regular railroad equipment similar to Amtraks. As it typically uses track that is already in place, it is the overall lowest cost to implement.


OCKLAWAHA0

JTA=Jacksonville Transportation Authority

haha. well, maybe some day!

Thank you for the jargon decoding language.
 

QuoteLast week I reported that a dispute between JTA and the City Council auditor was causing the City to withhold $35.6 million in Better Jacksonville funds until City Council decided if the money had been spent properly.

Earlier today $13.1 million of that money was released to JTA, said City spokeswoman Misty Skipper.

More: http://jacksonville.com/interact/blog/larry_hannan/2010-03-05/on_the_road_jta_gets_reimbursed_with_131_million_in_better_jac

Quote from: Lunican on March 05, 2010, 03:04:10 PM

QuoteLast week I reported that a dispute between JTA and the City Council auditor was causing the City to withhold $35.6 million in Better Jacksonville funds until City Council decided if the money had been spent properly.

Earlier today $13.1 million of that money was released to JTA, said City spokeswoman Misty Skipper.

Lunican, quoting the full article would give better context to the fact that this is really not progress.  Here is the rest of the article:

QuoteThe money released today doesn't end the dispute. This was funding the City Auditor hadn't questioned. JTA had complained that this money wasn't in dispute, and asked it to be released.

The rest of the money, which according to my math is about $22.5 million, remains in limbo until City Council decides if JTA spent it properly.

Auditors allege JTA spent the money on projects not related to Better Jacksonville, and also did some projects out of order.