Downtown Bus Rapid Transit Project Moving Forward

[dcandeto]

Like you said, that's because of the loop system.  The 34th Street proposal is designed to relieve the congestion that makes taking the bus along a straight line slower than walking.  (This is a problem with basically every NYC crosstown bus.)

[Ocklawaha]

The photos with different characterizations of BRT make a good point.  The example that was captioned "This is real BRT" is from Bogota's Trans-Milenio.  I was there last year and found it to be great once it got out of downtown and on it's own right of way.  Downtown, where the beautiful articulated buses intermingled with pedestrians and cars, it was a total disaster.  Walking was faster.

I'd be delighted if something like this came to Jacksonville, but recent evidence suggests they are either being incredibly stupid about it or are setting it up to fail.  It needs to be presented as a stand-alone and superior transit alternative, not just a minor enhancement of JTA's present mediocre product.  Instead of rolling it out piecemeal, JTA needs to start out with one complete route.  (One from the Airport to downtown to UNF, with a station at St. Johns Town Center, would be intelligent.

Wow Johnny you must be the first person I have ever heard from that likes BRT! Having lived in Colombia for several years, I'll take Medellin's METRO or METRO CABLE over the damn buses in Bogota any day... Hey and I won't have to sweep a pile of carbon off my tile floor every afternoon either.

Because Bogota is shaped like an enclosed rectangle, and Mexico City like a giant ball, these systems have performed better then most other bus projects. The trouble with TM is that the mayor of Bogota claims it created a TOD boom, which just isn't true. The new housing at the far ends of the BRT are "social housing" projects (read that getting them out of town and relocated) for the poor, imagine trying THAT in Jacksonville.
Jacksonville is shaped more like a "Union Jack" or series of "X's" with the narrows being downtown.

Because of Jacksonville's shape just about everything MUST cross through downtown. Building a stand alone BRT would be a waste of money when our commuter rail lines, and proposed Streetcar's would duplicate the service, to say nothing of the Skyway.  If we took those same BRT dollars and worked on a high quality system on Atlantic/Arlington Expressway (where their is no rail), JTB, Kings, Timuquana/103Rd, etc. then the BRT could feed our rail system with cross platform transfers. Imagine a BRT on Blanding from Kingsley to Wells to the Railroad... WOW... Even I'd campaign for that provided it was done for less then rail.

The current plan duplicating the Skyway and still missing Baptist, Aetna, Nemours, Wolfson, Medical Arts and Ronald McDonald House is downright ¡Estúpido! in the Latin American meaning of the word!




OCKLAWAHA

[Ocklawaha]

http://www.youtube.com/v/F7mI9GFeKC8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?color1=0x402061&amp;color2=0x9461ca"></param><param%20name=
Australia's O-Bahn


http://www.youtube.com/v/tPEK5Og6wW8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?color1=0x402061&amp;color2=0x9461ca"></param><param%20name=
Bogota's TransMilenio


http://www.youtube.com/v/IitmHhgOb5k&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?color1=0x402061&amp;color2=0x9461ca"></param><param%20name=
Medellin's Metro

OCKLAWAHA

[tufsu1]

^Except in downtown.  You can walk between Springfield and several downtown destinations faster than taking most of the buses because of the insane loop system they are forced to run.

And eliminating that loop and adding amenities along the streamlined route is the primary purpose of the downtown "BRT"

[thelakelander]

That's what I thought.  However, I've since heard that this loop will still remain in place, despite the presence of the BRT lanes on Broad & Jefferson.  I do hope that I have heard wrong.

[Ocklawaha]

Still does not explain the insane duplication of the Southbank Skyway at the cost of service to the largest cluster of employees and patrons in the city.

Missing Baptist and the sundry buildings in that area is ¡Estúpido! ¡absolutamente!

OCKLAWAHA

[tufsu1]

That's what I thought.  However, I've since heard that this loop will still remain in place, despite the presence of the BRT lanes on Broad & Jefferson.  I do hope that I have heard wrong.

I think some routes will remain as is....but others will use the new route...streamlining is starting to show up on some routes....JTA is calling it "system redesign"...but it is never as easy as it looks to restructure bus routes

[CS Foltz]

Ock..........you forgot that Baptist has their own shuttle service! Why would they use JTA's?

[Ocklawaha]

Ock..........you forgot that Baptist has their own shuttle service! Why would they use JTA's?

No CS, I'm not talking about a glorified parking shuttle, but full fledged mass transit that takes one from the hospital into any corner of the city. It's what Mass Transit is suspposed to be, like the old Red Car's said, "Speed, Comfort, Safety."


PE LOGO AND LOS ANGLES RAILWAY FUNERAL CAR DESCANSO


That streamlining you speak of TU, is another word for CUTTING SERVICE in Jacksonville. Route Consolidation, elimination, rationalzation, abandonment...  I was young but I rode my RED CARS into oblivion and I'm damned sure not going to stand for that again!


The line I lived on lasted until 1963, the last PE route to shut down in favor of FREEways!


OCKLAWAHA

[CS Foltz]

Well at least Baptist is thinking about their workers shuttle service or not! I do agree with your translation regarding streamlining! Fancy word for reducing service in an effort to artificially inflate ridership numbers for the BRT! I do not buy it! JTA has a propensity for cooking their numbers anyway to reflect what they want to happen or to reflect what their consultants reports says!

[AaroniusLives]

many cities are adding BRT....even NYC is proposing it right through manhattan

"Even NYC" is unsurprising. New York City vastly needs to expand their mass transit network. Basically any transit addition in New York City is going to be a success, because their population uses mass transit on a regular basis. They could add a monorail powered by rats in a cage and people would use it. What they would rather have, in lieu of BRT, is, of course, more of the subway. BRT in NYC is a supplement to their backbone, which is the subway itself.

As I've said before here, I'm not anti-BRT. Any mass transit system that is implemented correctly can have a positive effect. But the mega-BRT plan proposed by JTA doesn't have a vision in mind. It looks like a lot of parking lots off a highway, which doesn't promote mass transit usage. And this little tiny line in downtown is anything but BRT. Too many stops, not enough dedicated lane.

[Lunican]

Bus-only lanes coming to downtown Jacksonville in 2012
Project will cut parking spaces.

Bus-only lanes will be coming to downtown Jacksonville by the end of 2012.

The lanes will then expand to the north, southeast, southwest and east corridors of the city by the end of 2016 if the city gets funding for future phases of the project.

Officials with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority said the $12 million necessary to create the downtown lanes is set, with 80 percent of the funds coming from the federal government. Those lanes are expected to allow buses to move quicker through the downtown area, where about 80 percent of bus passengers travel, said Suraya Teeple, JTA transportation planning manager.

Buses will come by each stop every 10 minutes during peak times and every 15 minutes during other times, she said.

The lanes will be along portions of Bay, Jefferson, Broad and Forsyth streets north of the Acosta Bridge and on parts of Riverplace Boulevard, Kings Avenue and Prudential Drive on the Southside.

Full Article:
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-08-08/story/bus-only-lanes-coming-downtown-jacksonville-2012

[urbanlibertarian]

"This isnt really possible in todays regulated rail environment."

Stephen, are you saying the problem would be the regulations or the business model or both?

[CS Foltz]

stephen........lets not forget that Federal Funds will be paying for 80% (our tax dollars one more time)JTA is coming up with 10% and the City is coming up with the other 10%............this flat out amazes me! I thought that the City was broke? Yet John Boy and Company keep coming up with money for his pet projects! That last 20% is our money also! So basically we, the tax paying public, get to pay for all! I did not ask for this abortion of bus service by any stretch of the imagination! I asked for Rail........period plan and simple! For the $12 Million Dollars this is going to cost us, we could have had something that could have been expanded beyond the core! Now I see more bus end product on the horizen and it will just cost us even more over the long run! I can see them making the ten minute headways, since no one will be riding the stupid thing!  BRT won't have to stop to pick up what little riders there will be!

[tufsu1]

yawn