Taxis - Better for Jax Than Trains

[Dashing Dan]

simms3:  In the past I have been walloped on this site for expressing opinions that are similar to yours, so I'm looking forward to seeing someone else, namely you, standing in the line of fire this time.

[cline]

Prove to me that there is a way of paying for this, whether it be streetcars, light rail or commuter rail.

There is.  It's called the Mobility Plan.  Evidently you don't know what the search function is because if you did, you would see that the Plan is posted on this site.  It is also on the COJ website.  I would suggest reading up on it.

On top of that, where does the starter train line go?

What "starter train line" are you referring to?  Streetcar or commuter rail?  It makes a difference.  If you're referring to commuter rail, again, this has been discussed.  The appropriate "starter line" would be the SW or SE line.  IMO, SW.

Prove to me that in Jacksonville, if you build mass transit all of a sudden everyone will want to live intown and infill will occur and companies will all of a sudden pack up and move.

Who has claimed that this will happen?  It's not about putting in mass transit and then all of the sudden people start having a religious experience and decide to move downtown.  I hope you're not that dense.  It's about giving people options.   

Goodness gracious Seattle didn't even NEED light rail for a really freakin long time and it's probably one of the top 7 urban/dense cities in America and is considered a gateway city/24-7 market.

You're right they didn't.  But look at what has happened since the built it.  Billions of dollars in development near the stops.  Are you saying that's a bad thing? 

But hey, you took a class right?  You must know everything then.

[cline]

By the way, if streetcar is so pointless, why is Atlanta spending like 70MM on a 2.7 mile long streetcar line?

[Adam W]

No people will ever use mass transit until they get over their love affairs with their cars. And they won't do that without it being worth their while; some sort of incentive.

As it is now, it won't happen in Jacksonville. Jacksonville isn't so much a city as a collection of small towns surrounding an empty center. Jax is just too spread out, too diffuse. And it lacks any real structure.

This 'build it and they will come' mentality has crippled Jax for decades. It's part of why we have the Skyway. It's why we have half-empty apartment blocks.

Nothing good will happen overnight. Downtown has to first have residents and businesses. Once that happens, once people start commuting en masse to the city center, then mass transit will start to make sense. Then people will realise the incentive to give up driving (save time, save $$$ for parking).

If you lay a lot of rails or whatever right now, you're going to have empty trains, streetcars, etc. There's no reason to think people will use them when they don't use the buses.

[simms3]

Stephen, what's April Fool's about it?  You lived in Seattle, didn't you?  Is it not a top 7 urban city in America?  I'll name them:

NYC, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, DC, Seattle and Philadelphia.  Seattle does even better now that it has extensive streetcars, automated buses, and a functioning light rail line (which has spurred massive development on the south side of downtown near the stadiums), BUT it got to top 7/Gateway City/24-7 hour market before it had much public transit.

Minneapolis is seeing a crazy amount of infill and a real burgeoning rental market, downtown and surrounding neighborhoods in ALL directions.  Some of this infill is along their light rail line, but most is not.  It's occurring for different reasons than convenience to trains.

In my own city, the two hottest areas for infill outside of Midtown/Buckhead right now are on the Westside and on the Eastside in Old Fourth Ward/Poncey Highlands.  Neither is served by MARTA and the Beltline is years out, especially when looking at light rail.  The infill is occurring for a whole host of reasons besides transit, and I could go into some of it, but that's for a different discussion.

Here's Jacksonville's biggest obstacle to urbanizing:

There ARE NOT ENOUGH hyper-educated young professionals, secular Jews (usually a big component of your intown population, they go to prestigious universities and then take high paying jobs), wealthy blacks, corporate executives, tourists, business travelers, etc etc.  These are the folks who prefer to live intown or in walkable areas.  The tourists obviously have the potential to bring a major economic impact to CBDs and intown areas.  The corporate executives spearhead projects and ensure that the city they have invested in grows and thrives.  All of this is missing from the big picture, so the question is not public transit, but rather how do you get these people into your city?  Just having trains is not enough.  Developers follow these people.  Infill follows these people.  Jobs precede these people.  Certain jobs.  Job creation precedes even that, and that is where the big question lies.  That is where the discussion needs to be.  If the darn city can't even attract these people, the demographic that is the basis of any successful urbanized city, then transit is practically last on the list.

You know what follows corporations?  Big-time law firms.  Law firms are a growing industry, occupy class A CBD office space, and employ overpaid and over-egoed young professionals who love to live in expensive intown condos and apartments, eat in pricey restaurants du jour, they have museum memberships and shop in high end stores.  They alone would make a dent in your urbanity.

Outside of my window is the headquarters of King & Spalding, which is one of the most prestigious law firms in the country and occupies the majority of the most expensive office building in the south - 1180 Peachtree, which was sold for $400psf to GE Capital by Hines post-development, probably due to K&S's absurd rent for close to $40 for a nearly 600,000 SF chunk.  I can promise you that Midtown Alliance, the City of Atlanta, Fulton County, and even the state of Georgia very much like that situation from a tax basis perspective (and they also love the similarly priced 50 story tower 2 doors down that serves as Alston & Bird's HQ, consistently traded hands for well over $300psf since 1987 from IBM to Sumitomo to Hines), and I can also promise you that the hundreds of K&S employees under the age of 45 making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year are littering Midtown and all the surrounding neighborhoods.  This is one of several big 50 law firms HQd here, and one of dozens of big 50 law firms with major presence here due to all the corporations.

Jacksonville has only one: Foley & Lardner, a reflection on the lack of a major corporate presence in the city.

Shahid Khan is potentially the first real big player to come through Jacksonville since the days of Alfred duPont, William Astor, etc etc.  He is a mover and a shaker, and that's what the city needs more than transit.  Peter Rummell is arguably influential, especially this year as head of ULI, but I'm not sure what all he has done for the city.  God there's not a soul in Atlanta who can't rattle off ten names of people/billionaires/politicians who have done BIG things for the city and made things happen.

The right leadership will get those jobs that will mean a brighter future for the city and its core, and may eventually lead to the demand or a strong reason for fixed-rail transit.

[Dashing Dan]

With or without trains our taxis here are very much in need of improvement.

[simms3]

Cline, Atlanta is building that for tourists, which are in abundance in downtown Atlanta.  That streetcar line was not the first choice; the city lost out on one for Midtown, which it will fund itself if the tax passes this year.

The line you are referring to does hit an area that is relatively dense (Edgewood), especially when compared to anywhere in Jax, and it connects a 35,000 student university with a downtown 5x the size of downtown Jacksonville with the 3rd or 4th largest CC in America, 12,000 hotel rooms, and connects to MAJOR tourist attractions.  The end goal is to benefit the tourists and visitors by connecting the Aquarium, World of Coke, CC, Centennial Park, CNN Center, hotels, and the MLK Memorial on the other side of downtown.  Commuters won't use it.  Downtown workers probably won't use it, but perhaps some students and certainly visitors will.

Also, the push for the transit tax and for the Beltline has been among the largest pushes in the country's history.  The transit tax will mean $7.22B in new projects without Washington's help, and a lot more if Washington decides to pitch in.  The Beltline has been one of the most talked about projects in the country, and it is not meant to alleviate traffic so much, but rather provide options, as you say, for an already dense area that is seeing and has seen an explosion of infill (and is currently not served by mass transit).  When I say explosion of infill, I mean tens of thousands of people have moved to within a half mile or so of the Beltline in the last decade.  That is not because of the Beltline in and of itself; that is because of a shift occurring within Atlanta which is urbanizing the city and not quickly but by no means slowly turning the city into a Gateway Market/24-7 city.  This shift has to do with the jobs market, complications from sprawl (traffic and sprawl make Jacksonville's sprawl problems seem not like problems at all...imagine 5 denser Duval Counties next to each other with a 5 mile stretch of office buildings in the middle).

Atlanta remains a magnet for young professionals, which is how you build up a core.  Aside from uber wealthy families in the Back Bay, the inner areas of Boston are dense and walkable and urban and thriving not because of families, but because of a huge amount of very upwardly mobile young professionals, born out of the local universities and the corporate culture and global connections.  Certainly tourists help, too, especially in the Downtown Crossing neighborhood.  Tourists and business travelers can really do wonders to perk up a CBD and give the appearance of vibrancy.  Something else Jacksonville should look into before trains.

Transit works in Boston because it has a ton of fundamentals which are the opposite of Jacksonville -  that is to say centralized commuting (traffic there is HORRENDOUS), uber density, corridors, and it serves an entire region - New England.

I do know about the Mobility Plan and have actually commented on it, as well as the articles about starter commuter and streetcar lines.  I'm not anti-rail, but I think rail is kind of a step you take once you get the basics down.  Jacksonville does not have the basics down.

[simms3]

Yes, I lived in Seattle before the rail and it sucked (although it was better than JTA) in terms of mass transit .after living in San Francisco, it was actually a pain in the ass to get around.  But the neighborhoods of Seattle are imminently walk able so people just tended to stay in their neighborhood.

People bitched about the transit and had been belly aching about it for the previous ten years.

Most people felt that Seattle had taken too long, so I am not sure why you would make up stories about Seattle not needing retail.

The truth is that they kept having a creative class drain to both the south (Cali) and the east (Tokyo )

All good points, but my point is that Seattle survived and still thrived as a 24-7 city and with 3-4 million people before it finally got the transit it needed.  Jacksonville does not actually need the transit, does not have close to 3-4 million people, is a 9-5 city, does not have the density, and I would not call the city thriving.  Look at the fundamentals of Seattle, which allowed it to prosper despite.  They are entirely different from Jacksonville, and I am not even referring to planning or zoning, I am referring to the fundamentals that make a city tick.  Sure Seattle does even better now, but it has always done much better than Jacksonville has due to these fundamentals, which is why it is where it is today despite not having public transit for the majority of its history.

[thelakelander]

I wanted to start a controversial topic, and that is to say that Jacksonville does not need fixed rail transit right now.  Here is a shortlist of why it will not work right now and why the city should not spend the money (and why I doubt Washington would spend the money either):

Right off the bat, I’d say you’re already off on the wrong path by grouping all “fixed rail transit” options in the same “non-feasible” type of category.  This position is like saying a community doesn’t need any paved roads because an expressway may not be feasible in a particular environment.  In short, any transportation option (mass transit, roads, maritime, etc.) should be evaluated on an individual basis regarding the context of the corridor it is meant to serve as opposed to overall urban area statistical averages.

1) Not enough of a central commuting pattern whereby there is one concentrated area with 100,000 workers or more and whereby rush hour to this one area creates true gridlock that would spur a demand for alternative transit.  If you can't fill a train up in rush hour, you won't have a successful system.

This is where grouping “fixed transit” in a single category gets you in trouble.  You’re position here would be more applicable to a heavy, light, or commuter rail system moreso than a streetcar, intercity, or corridor rail service.  So I’ll address it in this light.  Yes, a heavy rail system, similar to MARTA would not make sense in Jacksonville.  However, a streetcar or a corridor service connecting Jax with its suburbs and other metropolitan areas would.

2) Density is not high enough.  I can't remember the facts and figures, but in a class taught by an RS&H executive on urban transit we were posed all sorts of charts and graphs that come into play on all sorts of systems, and Jacksonville wasn't even dense enough for 15-minute bus lines.  Its highest density supported 30-minute lines and hourly lines at most.  Now Charlotte is not dense enough either, but it has a hell of a central commuting pattern and a dense Uptown that makes parking and riding in worth it (and still its trains aren't "full").

It’s a bad idea to dictate fixed rail by density.  You’re better off designing mass transit by corridor and connecting points.  That’s why you see sprawlers like Phoenix, Norfolk, and Salt Lake City successfully implement various rail systems in the last decade that flies in the face of your position.  On the flip end, you could have all the density in the world but if the service sucks and fails to go where transit riders want to be directly connected into, it won’t be as successful.

3) Besides the need, nowadays with Washington requiring major fund matching by the local municipalities involved, there has to be a will.  Jacksonville does not even have an energy or will as a whole that supports downtown, the city or the core.  More people in the city would probably green light a train from the beach to Southpoint before doing anything for the rest of the city.  This is the hardest part because even in NYC there are people opposed to higher fees, higher taxes, contruction interrupting their commuting patterns and waking them up, etc etc, so in Jacksonville it's going to be real tough - a decade long political movement at least.

I believe this position is faulty based on two things that we specifically resolved in the structuring of the Mobility Plan & Fee.
1.   It’s foolish to focus soley on or treat downtown as the focal point of any transit system.  It should one stop of several for a transit spine connecting several neighborhoods together.  In this sense, a stop at Shands Jacksonville, Gateway, or Five Points is just as important as one in Downtown Jacksonville because they all combine to facilitate a corridor that gives transit users direct access to a mix of neighborhoods, employment, and entertainment centers.

2.   The mobility fee, which has been set up to generate the funds for 10 transportation projects over the next decade (2 fixed transit, 8 are road widenings), splits the city up into zones.  Money generated in the urban core would go to transportation improvements within those zones.  Money generated in the suburbs would go to transportation improvement projects within those zones.  Thus, there’s really no reason to have someone in a place like Mandarin or Cecil fund a mass transit project connecting downtown to the surrounding communities at this point.  This sets up perfectly for a community like Jax to start small and expand over time.

4) Aside from commuting patterns things are just too spread out.  How is a starter line going to go?  What neighborhoods will it serve?  Those who live close in have a bad commute to the Southside, but no traffic into downtown, so how do you arrange which business district to serve and who to serve?  It's really hard to serve a place like Southpoint/Gate Parkway because you can't walk anywhere when you stop there, but that is where the bulk of the people live, work and play.

First, define what type of “starter” system?  If it’s corridor service on the FEC, you’re looking at a statewide corridor and fighting to get an extra stop or two between downtown Jacksonville and St. Augustine.  With trains potentially running on an hourly basis, it provides you the opportunity for TOD to grow at three or four sites.  Later down the line, it makes it feasible for commuter rail to serve the same corridor.
If we’re talking about a streetcar, I’d suggest the Riverside/Downtown line that is to be funded 100% by the mobility plan.  Such a service should then be fed by restructuring all Westside bus routes into this line.  In essence, you’re starter becomes a transit spine and it provides the city with a chance to also benefit from TOD in areas like Brooklyn and LaVilla.  Imo, it’s a great way to add connectivity between downtown and some adjacent neighborhoods for less than $50 million (which would be paid by the mobility fee).  I can tell you right now, we’ll burn twice as much cash building a convention center.

Furthermore, how do you connect downtown, the convention center (which may be the train station eventually) and the sports complexes and Shands?  How do you connect the city's #1 destination - SJTC?  Riverside?  San Marco?  Springfield?  All of these places are in different directions and pretty spread out and involve expensive river crossings?  I never even mentioned the beach, which creates real traffic on JTB.  And Arlington is also an area that has a lot of people that require public transportation, but it's so spread out and in a different direction.

All this has already been worked out.  Check out the 2030 Mobility Plan or North Florida TPO’s site for exact routes.  Unlike an individual giving their personal opinions at some college class, this is real stuff that has been approved by various levels of state and local government.  Also, every single place in town does not have to be connected (or should it be) by fixed rail.  Any decently operated mass transit system should include multiple modes seamlessly integrated together. 

Jacksonville is a real tough city to figure out.  The need will be to serve the poor, but the taxpayers won't go for a straight line up to the Northside or over to Arlington.  The rich are then spread thin over the rest of the areas of town (which is one of the reasons it's so hard to convince retailers to come to Jacksonville because they need to see the demographics within a certain radius).  The real commuting patterns are on the Southside, where transit won't work effectively, and there is no will among wealthy business leaders to see a side of town like Charlotte's South End become the new infill area.

Jacksonville is actually pretty simple, just like Charlotte or any other city.  Start small and grow it over time.  Also, stop isolating fixed rail.  Any rail service is only going to be as successful as the bus system set up to feed riders into it.

5) Where's the money?  The city has no money coming in for this and it has bigger fish to fry (public education for one).  I got my annual vehicular registration tax whereby I pay 45 mil rate on my 2011 vehicle, which ends up being a significant amount of money to swallow, and I called my mom up yesterday to ask if this was also the case in Duval, which it is not.  My parents are waterfront and I think she said they pay only 18 mil on their property, and a small $20 fee or what not on their vehicles.  It seems anything tangible up here is "worthy" of a 45 mil tax or some expensive fee, and I already pay 8% and rising sales tax, not to mention state income tax (6%), much more expensive housing (which means a higher tax base), taxes on my district, higher gas prices (maybe that's from a higher gas tax or maybe that's a function of being in a larger city), and I pay the most expensive water/sewer bills in the country, fees and all attached.  Even with these higher taxes and much higher base, each neighborhood has a community improvement self-taxing authority to pay for paving roads, beautification, and astonishingly police presence because the city doesn't have enough to pay for all of this.

One can tell Jacksonville does not have high taxes or a wealthy/large tax base/taxable value.  When I comment that the city looks like it is in the poorhouse, this is what I mean.  There is little landscaping.  In FL where the roads should hardly need maintenance the roads are in bad condition.  Everything looks cheap and if it's not new it looks like it's slowly falling apart.  I think aesthetics in Jacksonville's case come first before transit, but there aren't even high enough taxes to pay for simple aesthetics.

On top of that, people in Jacksonville can't really afford higher taxes.  There aren't enough high paying jobs whose recipients live in Duval.  Downtown trophy office buildings can't even break $100 psf in a sale (and these big buildings should be the tax base, but when the majority of your office buildings are cheap suburban campus style buildings, you're going to have to rely more on the residents).  Houses top out at $2M in the most wealthy areas now, and the average home price in Duval County is real lowwww.  18 mil tax and that's about it on that tax base is not going to get you anything you want or need.

This type of financial thinking is so last decade.  Several communities across the country are now finding innovative methods to fund various civic projects (rail included) without the help of Washington.  Houston’s LRT starter is an example of this and FEC’s All Aboard Florida could potentially become another as far as fixed rail is concerned.  Also, the 2030 Mobility Plan was structured in a manner to generate money for mass transit (including rail) without the help of DC or raising taxes.  Unfortunately, as you state, the political will needs to be there to collect the transportation concurrency fee.  With the mobility fee moratorium scheduled to sunset this year and the national economy clearly improving, it will be interesting to see if council lets the moratorium expire.

Atlanta has a real strong taxable base - houses in the nicer areas can still top $5-10M, office buildings in Midtown and Buckhead trade for $200-$400psf and rising once again, etc etc  YET still the city can't afford its failing schools or more transit and will have to raise taxes for each (on top of what it has now).  Is Jacksonville prepared for a drastic tax hike?  Would it ever come to be?  With the exodus over the past few years of some of the most influential people out to the beach, who's going to lead that crusade?

Apples and oranges.  Instead of comparing Atlanta and Jacksonville, valid comparisons with Jacksonville should be urban areas of similar scale.  Places like Salt Lake City, Charlotte, and Memphis.

[thelakelander]

Finally, I just want to point out a few obvious things.
1) On this very board I really have never heard anyone talk about streetcars or light rail or commuter rail in terms of actual commuting.  I have only heard comments like "would be convenient to take a streetcar in from Riverside to avoid drinking and driving."  Perhaps a lunch hour deal sort of thing (but really nobody takes a train anywhere during lunch hour as realistically you just don't have the time).

This is indicative of a lack of demand for the real services of fixed rail transit.  As some have stated, the buses get you where you need to go.  I took the bus home from Episcopal High School to Ortega probably 10 times when I went there years ago for curiosity's sake (and I actually saw someone I knew on the bus at the transfer downtown).

Making my living in the transportation planning and engineering industry for a living, I’d say you’ll need a lot more model and statistical data before coming to such a conclusion .  This happens to be an urban oriented discussion board.  The majority of people here are going to be focusing on transit from an economic sustainability and quality-of-life stand point.  A good transit system balances economic development with several other factors include commuting patterns, and an ability to provide efficient service to transit dependent neighborhoods.

The current bus stops are not sufficient.  The buses themselves are about the best I have ever seen, however.  I think the routing can be improved and the bus stops need to be built.  Fix what you have before you scream for what you don't really need.

Yes.  Immediate improvement of the existing bus and skyway operations has always been advocated here.  However, while you’re improving existing services you should also be planning for the future, which is also heavily advocated here.

Also, TAXIS.  You want to avoid drinking and driving?  Taxis do the trick.  The problem is the nightlife is not concentrated enough for there to be taxis in Jacksonville, so how the hell do you think you're going to get streetcars or light rail??  Nashville is one of the few small towns with a decent taxi population and it is possible to hail a cab there.  The only other three cities in the south where it is possible to hail a cab are Miami, Atlanta and New Orleans.  Note that these cities also can support transit.  Nashville has just concentrated everything downtown and along a corridor.  There are more bars in a 5 block area of downtown Nashville than there are bars in metro Jax.  The new MCCC is right there, as is the arena, hotels, the tourist district, and offices and condos.  The West End is fairly compact, too.

Nashville functions more like a real city, yet only has 1.6 million people.  It has that commuter rail, which is ok, but it really can't yet support full on transit.  I think Jacksonville should get its cues from Nashville because it is on the right track for everything.

Taxis have nothing to do with real transit serving a community.  They are not even worth the discussion.  Anyway, checking out Nashville makes sense considering it’s a true peer community.  Transit wise, I’d put more weight on a few other peers such as Salt Lake City.

[thelakelander]

2) Seattle and Minneapolis are among the densest of cities in America, and yet each just got their first light rail line.  How have they survived without for so long and served 3-4 million people?
I feel like Seattle is right up there with San Francisco in terms of urbanity and density, and yet it has individualized neighborhoods, tough traffic, pedestrian traffic and bike traffic that can compete with NYC and Chicago, and it has one of the most successful downtown areas in the world.  It is considered a true gateway market, ahead of LA in many cases, and occasionally is more desirable as a place for investment than San Francisco.
It survived decades without trains (in fact Atlanta is the city that beat out Seattle to win the MARTA grants in the first place, and Atlanta is country compared to Seattle).

Actually both very bad examples for proving your point.  I encourage you to look into the history of these cities and transit planning efforts there.

Seattle

Not including the Amtrak corridor service, Seattle had a waterfront streetcar line open in 1982, a commuter rail service start in 2000, the South Lake Union Streetcar open in 2007, and the Link LRT open in 2009.  Coming into the 1980s, Seattle lost 63,241 residents over a 20 year period.  It survived but revitalization on a grand scale aligns with the implementation of various transportation improvements as well.

Minneapolis

Minneapolis lost 153,335 residents during decades of continuous population loss between 1950 and 1990.  Strange enough, their original streetcar operations ceased in 1954.  Serious discussions about bringing back rail started during the 1990s, LRT broke ground in 2001 and opened in 2004.  By the 2010 census, Minneapolis actually increased in population by 14,195 residents.

Jacksonville simply doesn't need trains yet, or streetcars.  Kansas City and Indianapolis are much denser and more concentrated, have the heavy centralized commuting patters and more people, and yet they're doing just great without trains.

Both have decent downtowns (compared to Jax’s) but it’s a stretch to say they are doing great without more reliable transit.  Kansas City is a spread out community where citizens have been pushing for better transit for years now.  Indy has a compact downtown but connectivity from the downtown to the rest of the city sucks.
Realistically speaking, we’ve also gotten by without viable mass transit.  After all, our urban core has only lost 100,000 residents since 1950.  Detroit has lost more than 1 million.  However, I believe we want and need to do more than just get by.

If better transit has economically benefitted smaller communities like Memphis, Little Rock, Kenosha, and Salt Lake City, I’d say we’d do ourselves a huge disjustice to assume that it can’t do the same for Jax.

It's that simple.  Fix what you have first.  Get a political will.  Get people to want to be downtown first, grow downtown second, and then maybe examine streetcars/trains.

Transit planning and downtown development are two different animals and should not be 100% mixed together.  In regards to transit, fix what you have and plan what you want to be at the same time.  Then find ways to incrementally implement improvements that lead to political will for grand scale change. 

[thelakelander]

All good points, but my point is that Seattle survived and still thrived as a 24-7 city and with 3-4 million people before it finally got the transit it needed.  Jacksonville does not actually need the transit, does not have close to 3-4 million people, is a 9-5 city, does not have the density, and I would not call the city thriving.  Look at the fundamentals of Seattle, which allowed it to prosper despite.  They are entirely different from Jacksonville, and I am not even referring to planning or zoning, I am referring to the fundamentals that make a city tick.  Sure Seattle does even better now, but it has always done much better than Jacksonville has due to these fundamentals, which is why it is where it is today despite not having public transit for the majority of its history.

Another inaccurate statement.  There has been some form of fixed rail transit operating in Seattle since 1982.  Looking back, Seattle was incorporated in 1869. The city's first streetcar system went into operation in 1884 and shut down in 1941.  So over the course of the city's development, it has had rail for 87 years and no rail for 53.  Furthermore, it's period of decline aligns during its 39 year stretch without rail.  Sorry, that's not just getting by.  That's growth, decline, and getting back to what built its density in the first place.

[Dashing Dan]

simms3 is saying that we need higher densities in Jacksonville.  I agree, especially downtown and in Springfield and Brooklyn, where there's nothing like a zoning overlay standing in the way of higher densities.

Can fixed rail transit make higher densities happen?  Not all by itself.

So what do we do in the meantime? Rubber tire trolleys?  Bike sharing? Car sharing?

How about making it harder to develop land at the fringes?  The mobility fee takes a stab at this, but there's an indefinite moratorium in effect.  Besides, I'd like to see something that might be more effective than just charging a higher fee for development further away from the core.

[simms3]

Thanks Lake, but one question.  How do you explain the complete lack of infill going on right now in Jacksonville?  What are developers waiting on?  Why aren't people moving into the core en masse as has been the case literally across the board elsewhere, even in smaller cities with hardly a bus service?

Also I have consistently mentioned and agreed with corridor situations as you point out.  I don't think Jacksonville has its corridors in a row, either.  And do you believe that the lack of public transit in Jacksonville is its most pressing issue?  My whole point is that it is not the most pressing issue, but may turn out to be an issue much further down the line.

Also, re: Atlanta, my comparison was just to point out the tax situation.  Mobility Fee or not, Jacksonville does not have the tax basis or the taxes levied to support itself.

Re: Seattle, as plays into my point about timing, in one of the most liberal and transit friendly cities in America it took decades to get what they have now.  Jacksonville is one of the most conservative, anti-transit cities in America.  It will take even more will and effort to get anything done.  And while the city as a whole may have lost population until the 1980s, the streetcar did not serve all of the central area and yet all of the central areas have seen steady construction for a while now, and certainly before any additional lines were added in the 2000s.  Bellevue has seen and is seeing its own surge in infill, and yet is not connected to transit.  When I think of corridors and satellite cities evolving around transit stations, I really think of DC.  Somehow I don't picture the demolition of our urban neighborhoods for the construction of high-rises and mid-rises.  Do you?

Re: Minneapolis, a population loser, as well, but that doesn't explain the whole story - population shifts do.  Similarly, Atlanta is pretty steady in its population, sometimes losing sometimes gaining, but there is just an absurd amount of infill.  Lower income residents have been priced out and higher income white collar workers are moving in.  That is what has occurred in Minneapolis, as well.  How do you explain all the infill that is not near their light rail line?

Is the number one driver of infill and the urbanization of cities the presence of transit, or is it a deeper more fundamental issue?

And finally, if you had $500M to spend for Jacksonville would you choose:

A) Transit, and the options are limitless to the price tag.  You're the planner, you get to choose.  Maybe even set aside money for incentives for TODs, too.

B) The following improvements: a new mid-size convention center on courthouse site, waterfront park on Shipyards site, incentives for corporate relocations to downtown, and perhaps some incentives for downtown rehab/new dev.

Which do you think would go further in today's climate towards economic development?

Also, if today's millage rate is 18, would you be ok to increasing it to 20? 25? 30?  How high would you be willing to go personally?  How high do you think the city could afford before it taxes people out?  Do you think the city has a chance at a penny sales tax on top of the two half-pennies now?  i.e. 8% sales tax

[simms3]

RE: Taxis.

People on this board have been describing situations in which they would use a streetcar from Riverside to Downtown to avoid drinking and driving, but lacking are the situations in which they would use the streetcar for actual commuting.  I posed taxis as an alternative answer half humorously, but not even taxis would work in Jax as nightlife is spread too thin and there are not daytime tourists/conventioneers.