Council Passes Mobility Plan Unanimously.

[Ocklawaha]

Landon would probably (depending on exact location) be elevated, at least somewhat, but Atlantic would be at grade. For you non-transit types the huge advantage of this besides a huge cost reduction is ridership...

Passengers can cross a single platform on one side of the Skyway and step aboard a commuter train on the FEC, on the other side, a Skyway passenger could step off and right aboard a bus or BRT coach. The station itself could (according to their VP) easily attract Amtrak as a second Jacksonville stop. Again, this is nothing new, it's done everyday in the Northeast and between Deland and Kissimmee.

OCKLAWAHA

[Dashing Dan]

Actually at least two monorails run at grade in Florida right now.

1. The Skyway Maintenance Facility (where the tracks don't need protection)

2. Disney's 20,000 Leagues under the sea. That ride is simply a monorail that runs with the track covered in water to give the illusion of the sea... better still, boarding is at grade.


OCKLAWAHA

All of the tracks in the skyway maintenance facility are fenced in, and none of them are at grade.  

[thelakelander]

Fence it in and everything will be fine.

[Dashing Dan]

This is probably as close to grade as you will able to get.

[Gators312]

The greatest concern with being on grade is electrocution of unauthorized people walking on it.  It would have to be fenced and monitored just like they do at the stations with the alarm.  Still cheaper than elevating it, though.

Pyracantha which is bright green with red berries, used everywhere for security or beauty.


Spanish Bayonet, another stunning plant you WON'T CRAWL THROUGH.

Not too close to Landon or anything else, it simply can be done. As Doug said, you fence it with something like barb wire topped chain-link, then the fence itself is hidden by landscape plantings of Spanish Bayonet and Pyracantha. Just add camera and alarms.


OCKLAWAHA

Nice choices Ock,

I can say from experience with Apartment Complexes, those both deter people from getting where they don't need to be.  Pyracantha has been very successful in preventing the destruction of fencing at one of the properties I manage that repeatedly had to have fence repairs from people wanting to cut through our property rather than use the proper egresses in the neighborhood. 

[Ocklawaha]

Actually at least two monorails run at grade in Florida right now.

1. The Skyway Maintenance Facility (where the tracks don't need protection)

2. Disney's 20,000 Leagues under the sea. That ride is simply a monorail that runs with the track covered in water to give the illusion of the sea... better still, boarding is at grade.


OCKLAWAHA

All of the tracks in the skyway maintenance facility are fenced in, and none of them are at grade.  

Actually they are on grade and the fence is some distance from where employees walk around the trains. Bottom line is the track is NOT elevated and thus is cheap to build. If you built the same track in a well drained ditch, the car floors could be at platform height that matched train and bus. I think your making this harder then it has to be.

20,000 leagues Under the Sea last time I checked had thousands of people within 4 feet of the vehicle. In any case the discussion is silly at this point, we've shown that it can be done, is done, and with some will we'll do it.

OCKLAWAHA

[Dashing Dan]

All along, my only point has been that you can't build the skyway so that it can be crossed at grade. 

As the pictures from lakelander show, if you build it so that the bottom of the beam rests on the ground, then the skyway itself is not at grade level. 

In any case I don't believe that the elevation of the guideway is a significant factor affecting the cost unless you have to build it really high, like at the existing "San Marco" station on the Southbank. 

If you build it so that people can get underneath it, then you save the cost of building an overpass or an underpass.

[acme54321]

A skyway track on the ground would be a whole lot cheaper than elevated.

[Dashing Dan]

You can't just stick it on the ground and hope that it stays in the same place for 50+ years. 

On the ground or up in the air, there has to be a substructure.

[dougskiles]

A station at Lasalle or Landon would need a pedestrian cross walk over the skyway and FEC tracks.  A station at Atlantic would not.

I'm not sure that you need a crosswalk.  If the track becomes one-way at that point, then passengers going in either direction can enter from the west side.  It would be so close to the end of the line that there really is no point for two tracks.

And there would be very few passengers needing to access the Skyway from the east side of the tracks in that area.  Most of the density would be near Kings Avenue and could access the Skyway from the new station built on the south side of the garage (the one serving the new TOD - the existing station is too far north).

[thelakelander]

You only need a crosswalk if a TOD were constructed east of the FEC. However, if that happened, the TOD's developer would pay for it. Oh, and placing the skyway on the ground along the FEC would be significantly cheaper than going elevated with elevated stations.

[Dashing Dan]

Oh, and placing the skyway on the ground along the FEC would be significantly cheaper than going elevated with elevated stations.

If there is only one track, a ground level station would be cheaper.  

If you had two tracks then an elevated station would make more sense, because it it was elevated then you could get away with only one center platform instead of one on each side, with an overpass or underpass to connect them.

Even at the end of a line there are issues if you have two tracks.  You have to design a crossover to change trains from one track to the other, and for reasons I'm not fully conversant with, that works better if the crossover is located beyond the platform.

[thelakelander]

To help frame this, we're only talking about single track four or five block end of the line stretch in San Marco (parallel to the FEC.

[iMarvin]

Why not just put the skyway station at Hendricks and Atlantic?

[Ocklawaha]

All along, my only point has been that you can't build the skyway so that it can be crossed at grade. 

As the pictures from lakelander show, if you build it so that the bottom of the beam rests on the ground, then the skyway itself is not at grade level. 

In any case I don't believe that the elevation of the guideway is a significant factor affecting the cost unless you have to build it really high, like at the existing "San Marco" station on the Southbank. 

If you build it so that people can get underneath it, then you save the cost of building an overpass or an underpass.

...And our only point is nobody plans to build it with a "railroad crossing" on it... can you imagine? Hey maybe we could set up a concession selling pogo sticks and let em jump. You yourself are are a known "Ferroequinologist" and for the most part every person you've been discussing this with are either engineers, planners and/or transportation specialists. We actually came up with the idea to lower the track into a bit of a trench BEFORE we knew that Disney had done the same thing in Tokyo. If you check out the video of the Disney Monorail a few posts back you can watch it dip into a trench and run at grade level.

As for the Skyway at Hendricks and Atlantic that corner would require the Skyway to go over blocks of private property, next to homes, apartments and schools, you wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting it passed. The second problem with that proposal is the entire line would have to be elevated, meaning $30+/- million a mile might be a realistic figure, (streetcars run between $2-10 million a mile for comparison but of course they would be useless in San Marco because of the railroad blocking the crossing). The last problem with that idea is Commuters coming north or going south to and from downtown would have to ride all the way into Jacksonville Terminal to get to work on the south side hospital and office towers and catch a bus backtracking several miles. With the Atlantic at FEC RY you visualize a attractive station with rental/lease retail/office units in it. Two platforms stretch from the crossing north towards town. East of Platform 1 is the FEC-Jacksonville Commuter Rail track, you catch the train there. To the West of Platform 1 is the Skyway Track, you can walk between a train and the monorail and board the one you want. West of the Skyway Tracks is Platform 2 and on the west edge of Platform 2 you can step aboard a bus, again you walk between them, bus on one side, monorail on the other. People moving to and from the south side could use this as it would be a much quicker ride then going all the way into town.

Hope that helps...



OCKLAWAHA