Skyway expansion in Jacksonville at stake in proposed gas tax increase

[thelakelander]

It would behoove Jax to not lock itself in to the draft list of projects that have been provided.

[Charles Hunter]

Which raises the question - what is the process for changing the project list once it is adopted?

[marcuscnelson]

Looking at the 2014 Ordinance, revisions and amendments to the project list must be approved by City Council. The scope of projects already on the adopted list can only be changed without Council if the budget changes by less than 20% in either direction from the original allocation.

[Charles Hunter]

Can a simple majority amend The List, or does it take a super-majority, like a mid-year CIP change?

[marcuscnelson]

I haven't found anything indicating it would require a super-majority, but I could be wrong.

[jaxlongtimer]

Marcus, great letter in today's Times Union pushing for reallocating Skyway dollars.

Below are real knives through JTA's AV-Skyway heart in connection with the CEO of Google's AV division, Waymo, resigning this past week.  If every City Council member would read these quotes they would have a very difficult time supporting JTA's AV-Skyway plans.  JTA is being less than candid about their chances for success.  This gaming is reminiscent of JEA's recent debacle.

I think it is super clear that JTA is in way over its head and this current project will make the original Skyway failure look like child's play. They need to put their egos away and do the right thing by killing it.

Krafcik has overseen the company's biggest milestones, its rebranding to Waymo, partnerships and raised outside funding all while leading enthusiasm through the ranks. But Krafcik's departure signals a long and arduous reality check to early hype and hope of scaling self-driving vehicles.

"If you look at the past year and a half — there's been a growing realization within almost all the companies in autonomous vehicle development that this is a much harder problem than we thought," Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights told CNBC Friday. "It wasn't that long ago people were projecting we'd have robotaxis everywhere by 2020. That hasn't panned out quite, clearly."...

...Krafcik's departure comes ahead of expected federal regulations in the U.S. around self driving cars.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently called on its sister agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to impose stricter standards on automated vehicle tech. NHTSA solicited comments from the public in advance of proposed rule-making, and closed the comments period on April 1....

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/03/waymo-ceo-tenure-filled-with-milestones-hurdles-and-hype.html[

....While Waymo has established itself as a leading developer of autonomous-vehicle technology with more than 20 million miles driven on public roads and more than 20 billion miles driven in simulation, the company's conservative approach to expanding operations has frustrated those hoping to see self-driven vehicles all around the country. That deliberate approach was a central part of Krafcik's tenure as CEO....

....The Waymo One autonomous ride-hailing service has been providing rides in the Phoenix area since 2017. As it has grown from a pilot program with a limited number of pre-selected customers into a ride-hailing service open to the public, utilizing a fleet of vehicles that operate without a driver. While Waymo has discussed expanding the Waymo One autonomous ride-hailing program to other cities for public use, the company has not given a definitive plan for doing so....

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/02/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-steps-aside-as-co-ceos-take-over.html

[Charles Hunter]

Good letter, Marcus.

Jaxlongtimer - put your post into a letter and send it to the JTA Board and City Council members.

I fear the U2C albatross will kill the - in my opinion - the necessary gas tax increase.

[marcuscnelson]

Thank you! I had no idea when they were going to get around to publishing that, honestly wasn't sure if they'd publish it at all. I think making it clear ASAP that there are alternatives, and that we can do a lot more, a lot better with this much money is important if preventing this disaster is the goal.

Side note, Jobs for Jax has a swanky new logo now:

[marcuscnelson]

New Nate Monroe column, featuring Lake:

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/nate-monroe/2021/04/07/nate-monroe-skyway-looms-over-mayor-lenny-currys-gas-tax-plan/7122768002/

The Skyway, downtown's screeching monorail imposter, is Jacksonville's troubled soul taken physical form, as if some higher power, to teach us a lesson, imbued all this city's neuroses into a single, tangible, unsolvable thing: The Skyway is too expensive to maintain; it's too expensive to tear down; it's too expensive to modernize. The mercurial citizenry hates all the options. The path of least resistance is and has always been to simply look the other way. And this, not by coincidence, is the Jacksonville Way.

[Charles Hunter]

Nate Monroe hits another home run.
I share his concern that the huge ask for the U2C will sink the entire gas tax proposal.

And, can we stop calling it "Skyway Expansion"? The U2C is not the Skyway - most of it will be at grade in mixed traffic.  The complete opposite of what the Skyway was developed as.

[marcuscnelson]

^ For whatever reason, JTA called it Skyway Expansion on the formal project list, so that seems to be what everyone's going along with.

[thelakelander]

And, can we stop calling it "Skyway Expansion"? The U2C is not the Skyway - most of it will be at grade in mixed traffic.  The complete opposite of what the Skyway was developed as.

I agree. They aren't mutually exclusive. It muddles the discussion and hurts the overall idea of investing in the transit system altogether.

[WAJAS]

I have been pretty 100% on the Skyway funding, but I think a good point was brought up in that column on funding sources. These types of projects tend to only have a 25-50% contribution from localities with the remainder coming from the Federal and State governments. This isn't always true of course. Some local governments pay for it exclusively, but I think JTA should definetely look for alternative sources of funding to decrease the amount necessary from the gas tax proposal.

Let's use the difference on fully funding the Emerald Trail network, expanding the Riverwalk, road diets, etc.

[thelakelander]

I'm worried that the cost per mile is on par with transit technologies that move a lot more people, so some fat should be trimmed. I also agree that the gas tax paying the local share, while using state and federal dollars to fund the rest would be good. Spread the wealth to create transformative projects for a larger cross section of the local community.

[jaxlongtimer]

New Nate Monroe column, featuring Lake:

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/nate-monroe/2021/04/07/nate-monroe-skyway-looms-over-mayor-lenny-currys-gas-tax-plan/7122768002/

The Skyway, downtown's screeching monorail imposter, is Jacksonville's troubled soul taken physical form, as if some higher power, to teach us a lesson, imbued all this city's neuroses into a single, tangible, unsolvable thing: The Skyway is too expensive to maintain; it's too expensive to tear down; it's too expensive to modernize. The mercurial citizenry hates all the options. The path of least resistance is and has always been to simply look the other way. And this, not by coincidence, is the Jacksonville Way.

Usual great column from Nate but I wished he had put a good bit more focus on the absurdity of the autonomous vehicle solution as the Achilles heal of both the Skyway "modernization" project and, as he discusses, the overall prospects for the gas tax.

Aside from the shortcomings (expensive, low capacity, slow, questionable routing, etc.) of the solution as noted regularly on the Jaxson, he needs to look into quotes about the high risk of AV tech, generally, as I previously posted here:

Krafcik has overseen the company's biggest milestones, its rebranding to Waymo, partnerships and raised outside funding all while leading enthusiasm through the ranks. But Krafcik's departure signals a long and arduous reality check to early hype and hope of scaling self-driving vehicles.

"If you look at the past year and a half — there's been a growing realization within almost all the companies in autonomous vehicle development that this is a much harder problem than we thought," Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights told CNBC Friday. "It wasn't that long ago people were projecting we'd have robotaxis everywhere by 2020. That hasn't panned out quite, clearly."...

...Krafcik's departure comes ahead of expected federal regulations in the U.S. around self driving cars.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently called on its sister agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to impose stricter standards on automated vehicle tech. NHTSA solicited comments from the public in advance of proposed rule-making, and closed the comments period on April 1....

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/03/waymo-ceo-tenure-filled-with-milestones-hurdles-and-hype.html[

....While Waymo has established itself as a leading developer of autonomous-vehicle technology with more than 20 million miles driven on public roads and more than 20 billion miles driven in simulation, the company's conservative approach to expanding operations has frustrated those hoping to see self-driven vehicles all around the country. That deliberate approach was a central part of Krafcik's tenure as CEO....

....The Waymo One autonomous ride-hailing service has been providing rides in the Phoenix area since 2017. As it has grown from a pilot program with a limited number of pre-selected customers into a ride-hailing service open to the public, utilizing a fleet of vehicles that operate without a driver. While Waymo has discussed expanding the Waymo One autonomous ride-hailing program to other cities for public use, the company has not given a definitive plan for doing so....

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/02/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-steps-aside-as-co-ceos-take-over.html

When taxpayers understand that $379 million (plus millions in likely overruns and millions more in operating losses for a likely under-utilized service) will be spent on a still-unproven technology that Google and other AV leaders still haven't figured out after over a decade, billions of test miles and billions of dollars, we are going to have another Jax controversy on par with JEA and Lot J.

Curry and Ford should pull this project back while they still can before it blows up on them with collateral damage to both of their reputations and the prospects for their dream project list.