Where Jacksonville Ranks: Freeway Lane Miles Per Capita

[Metro Jacksonville]

Where Jacksonville Ranks: Freeway Lane Miles Per Capita



This is a category that Jacksonville ranks in the top ten.  However, since excessive highway construction rarely pays for itself, it could be a factor in why the city's budget is routinely underwater.


Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2012-may-where-jacksonville-ranks-freeway-lane-miles-per-capita

[tufsu1]

never mind the northern outer beltway.....why do we need any kind of outer beltway?

[fsujax]

If Atlanta can kill their outer beltway, then there is no excuse for us.

[urbaknight]

If that outer beltway gets built, (God forbid) it should be a toll road. Those who choose not to use it, shouldn't have to pay for it.

[jcjohnpaint]

Yeah who the hell cooks this outer beltway crap up?  Now Northern? 

[AaroniusLives]

To be fair, this is an unfair comparison, based on Jacksonville-the-city being Jacksonville-the-county. Of course Miami has less freeway miles per capita than Jax! How about Miami-Dade County, or "Miami" as the world sees it? And Washington DC barely has any actual freeways in its boundaries...but there's a whole bunch of 'em framing the area around the District that everyone thinks of as "Washington" if you don't live here, and which many people who live in those very 'burbs claim as "living in Washington." 

If one was to do a fair, modern comparison, do either the county that the city is located in, or the MSA. I'm pretty sure Fort Lauderdale doesn't have all that many freeway lanes running through the city itself, but "Fort Lauderdale", otherwise known by its proper name as Broward County is highwayed up to the gills. The same is true of both Tampa and "Tampa" (Hillsborough County.)

This doesn't mean that the suburban, car-centric and dominant form that Metro Jax has taken is any less of a dead end for the metropolitan area. It just means that a bunch of cities didn't make the cut because the results used an arbitrary boundary (the city line) that pretty outmoded and outdated with regards to how people actually live and move through the "city" and the city. Especially in the South, at the very least, a county-to-county comparison would be more illuminating, as well as a MSA comparo. Or, to put this another way, my parents live and work in "Fort Lauderdale," and by that, I mean that they live and work in Broward County, which is just as screwed when the gas runs out as Jax. It just looks better on useless lists because of the city line drawn well before the county line.   

[JFman00]

The FHWA urbanized areas are even more forgiving/more appropriate than MSA. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/nhs/maps/fl/fl_floridaeast.pdf

Here's Chicago's http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/nhs/maps/il/chicago_il.pdf

DC: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/nhs/maps/md/washingtondc_md.pdf

[DemocraticNole]

I don't know that I necessarily agree with you AaroniusLives. Look at a map of Jacksonville prior to the 1967 consolidation and how many freeway miles are inside those boundaries. If you did that, I think you would see Jacksonville would still be very high on the list.

Freeways in of themselves do not necessarily contribute to sprawl. In areas where there is significant sprawl, there should be sufficient freeway structure in place to service those communities. In the Tampa area, we have kind of the opposite problem of Jacksonville: endless sprawl, with limited freeway infrastructure to support it. Take Pinellas County (St. Pete) for instance. There were several proposed freeways for the county that were killed off because of freeway revolts. The freeways were killed, yet endless sprawl was still allowed. Now, the county has a population of 916,542 and has only two freeways: I-275 and US-19 (intermittently). Because of uncontrolled sprawl with poor infrastructure, the state and county are spending hundreds of millions to upgrade much of US-19 to a freeway throughout the county. It takes about an hour to drive from south St. Pete (South County) to Tarpon Springs (North County) and most of the route is littered with traffic signals and slow going. Had better planning been in place, that time could be greatly reduced. Tampa has the same issue. North of town on Dale Mabry and east of town in the Brandon area, endless sprawl was allowed without proper road infrastructure, and citizens are now paying the price.

[copperfiend]

Yeah who the hell cooks this outer beltway crap up?  Now Northern? 

Land developers.

[cityimrov]

From the pieces I picked from previous topics I've read on MJ, it sounds like the reason why freeways are always built is because FDOT can fully control them as state roads.  Thus it keeps building freeways in the middle of nowhere vs alternative transportation methods in more dense areas where there is no state control but high population.

It sounds like Florida completely designed it's Department of Transportation to be freeways only vs NYSDOT which probably does everything including major work inside NYC. 

[Anti redneck]

I find it hard to believe that we have more highways than Orlando, Tampa, or Miami. But why do we need an outer beltway? It connects nowhere to nowhere. Only traveling traffic would benefit because they would just be bypassing Jacksonville.

[cline]

From the pieces I picked from previous topics I've read on MJ, it sounds like the reason why freeways are always built is because FDOT can fully control them as state roads.  Thus it keeps building freeways in the middle of nowhere vs alternative transportation methods in more dense areas where there is no state control but high population.

They also build freeways in the middle of nowhere because they are pressured by wealthy landowners so that they can open up their land for development.  Outer Beltway is the classic example.

[copperfiend]

From the pieces I picked from previous topics I've read on MJ, it sounds like the reason why freeways are always built is because FDOT can fully control them as state roads.  Thus it keeps building freeways in the middle of nowhere vs alternative transportation methods in more dense areas where there is no state control but high population.

They also build freeways in the middle of nowhere because they are pressured by wealthy landowners so that they can open up their land for development.  Outer Beltway is the classic example.

Exactly. Land owners, developers, those in the construction industry.

[cityimrov]

From the pieces I picked from previous topics I've read on MJ, it sounds like the reason why freeways are always built is because FDOT can fully control them as state roads.  Thus it keeps building freeways in the middle of nowhere vs alternative transportation methods in more dense areas where there is no state control but high population.

They also build freeways in the middle of nowhere because they are pressured by wealthy landowners so that they can open up their land for development.  Outer Beltway is the classic example.

So why doesn't the more influential and larger amounts of people who live in these highly dense area do the same and pressure them to build something there?

[JFman00]

From the pieces I picked from previous topics I've read on MJ, it sounds like the reason why freeways are always built is because FDOT can fully control them as state roads.  Thus it keeps building freeways in the middle of nowhere vs alternative transportation methods in more dense areas where there is no state control but high population.

They also build freeways in the middle of nowhere because they are pressured by wealthy landowners so that they can open up their land for development.  Outer Beltway is the classic example.

So why doesn't the more influential and larger amounts of people who live in these highly dense area do the same and pressure them to build something there?

Because highly dense areas are already highly dense. The land is already worth a lot ($750,000 for a vacant quarter acre downtown), so there's not nearly as much property value added from infrastructure improvements as land in formerly inaccessible areas (diminishing returns).