Is U2C serious? Help me make it make sense....

[jaxoNOLE]

Can we crowd-fund a brewery here at the Jaxson to open in said shoebox when this thing collapses?

Call it "Brewndoggles". We don't have Happy Hours. We have "Taxpayer Specials". Most importantly, we must stay true to our inspiration and completely reinvent brewing. Under no circumstances should we leverage the experience of countless other breweries.

I'm open to public input on this idea that I will gratuitously misconstrue into a mandate in support of my own preconceived business plan.

Who's in?!

[Ken_FSU]

CRYING at "Brewndoggles" 

[Charles Hunter]

Quick! Trademark that name!

[thelakelander]

Ken_FSU, I wish I shared your optimism. If no one takes it out back and shoots it out of its misery, I'd bet the house the finally tally will be closer to $850 million than $500 million. Only in Jax can something so dumb and silly, end up costing us more than flat out LRT.

[marcuscnelson]

Meanwhile, up at our Atlanta office (and in cities like San Fran), autonomous Waymo's are circling the city, on the private sector's dime, better and more efficiently than JTA's "bleeding edge" manned U-Hauls that will be studied for centuries to come by those researching bold and heroic innovation. And these cities are actually using their public transit funds for projects that will serve a greater, wider, more equitable good than a 2-mile, $500 million, resume-padding vanity project for a guy who almost bailed for a better gig in Saudi Arabia.

Have said it for years and will say it again - this thing is a generational mistake. Best case scenario, it runs for a year and then the private sector comes in and does it better and cheaper than the public sector ever could. Leaving us with a redundant Uber service funded by the next 30 years of gas tax and no meaningful progress toward actual public transportation solutions.

God forbid we simply look at what our peer cities are doing and invest in something like a street car line, or commuter rail. Something that moves a significant number of people between different population centers without the need for cars, while spurring transit oriented development along a fixed route and improving quality of life for our citizens. Instead, we're arrogantly insisting that we know best, and that the true future of transit is a fleet of low-speed, low-capacity, short range robotic fucking vans aimed at fixing a problem that simply does not exist - moving hundreds of locals a day between the Shipyards and the Landing.

Definition of insanity, unfolding before our eyes.

Emperor wearing no clothes while everyone slaps him on the back and claps as the LaVilla shoebox is topped off.

One of many glaring questions for years that JTA executives always get mad about being asked was why the public sector needed to take this kind of role (and the associated risk) in an experimental field, and why a public transit agency needs to stop being a public transit agency. Even more frustrating is why they insisted on going about self driving R&D in specifically this way with low-capacity shuttles built by startups. New Flyer, one of the largest bus manufacturers in North America, offers a bus with many of the autonomous sensors (I don't think anyone has actually bought it yet because who in their right mind would?).

If Dayton, Ohio can work with Gillig to develop a trolleybus using the standard Gillig platform, there's not really any reason JTA couldn't take even one of the smaller 30-foot platforms (since Nat Ford insists that 40-foot buses wouldn't fit the community) and work with Oxa or Perrone to add the sensors, or even adapting the First Coast Flyer buses with the technology, since larger arterial roads seem more adept at self-driving given the performance of things like GM SuperCruise. But they've just doggedly insisted to the tune of tens of millions of dollars that these startup pods are totally ready and they have to go all-in right now no matter what and they're going to be famous. I can't help but wonder why specifically local officials constantly fall for things like this in a way nowhere else does.

[Jax_Developer]

What you are highlighting Marcus is actually way worse. The technology flat out exists for semi-closed circuits at 30mph... JTA is acting like what they are doing is groundbreaking & it isn't. Fully autonomous driving above 50mph in open traffic would be groundbreaking... in fact, Tesla just announced they need an entire new generation of FSD, called Hardware 4, for them to obtain FSD.

So even Tesla needs more time & resources to complete. The fact ever local power broker has been silent implies nobody locally actually understands the technology. There isn't a single employee in JTA with a tech background for a very tech project.

[Ken_FSU]

Has anyone at JTA even addressed the very obvious question:

What is the advantage of using UAVs for the U2C?

When fully built out, this thing is intended to leverage around 30 robovans, circling the core and urban neighborhoods.

To Lake's point, $500 million might be conservative, and this thing could conceivably top $750 million.

What exactly - other than "because innovation" - do autonomous vehicles do better than just using:

- 30 manned electric vans ($85,000 each on the high end) running on a fixed loop
- 40 full-time drivers ($55,000 a year + plus benefits, per current JTA payroll)

This is essentially the EXACT same service (with the bonus ability to operate in rain and not drive into the river or over pedestrians), at an annual cost of:

$2.55 million in vans ($85k per van, assuming a one-year life)
$3 million a year in salary (40 full-time drivers, assuming $75k/driver with benefits)

Am I crazy that you could provide the exact same service for well under $10 million a year, without having to employ $500 million in robots, bespoke apps, LIDAR sensors, and control center employees? The amount of control center employees alone would probably outnumber the manned drivers you'd put on the road.

$500 million+

For a van loop around downtown.

Unhinged.

[marcuscnelson]

What you are highlighting Marcus is actually way worse. The technology flat out exists for semi-closed circuits at 30mph... JTA is acting like what they are doing is groundbreaking & it isn't. Fully autonomous driving above 50mph in open traffic would be groundbreaking... in fact, Tesla just announced they need an entire new generation of FSD, called Hardware 4, for them to obtain FSD.

So even Tesla needs more time & resources to complete. The fact ever local power broker has been silent implies nobody locally actually understands the technology. There isn't a single employee in JTA with a tech background for a very tech project.

What I mean is that something like putting the autonomous kit on JTA's existing buses or their smaller brethren would actually leverage the unique niche of "being a public transit agency" and would be a reasonable long-term R&D/Test & Learn program instead of trying to copy the least effective parts of the private sector (these low-speed pods that have been doing crappy pilots for years already) at higher cost with tons of new unique infrastructure while attempting to make the existing fixed infrastructure of the Skyway substantially less effective.

I say that to say, it's not that JTA should not be allowed to consider the implications of self driving in any way. It's that they have seemingly made it a point to insist on the most insane possible way of trying to do self driving while getting very mad when anyone points that out.

To get back on topic, are they seriously still going to call the "operational" version of this program the Ultimate Urban Circulator? Like that's the actual name? People are supposed to book U2C rides? They think they're going to be famous for that?

[Jax_Developer]

What you are highlighting Marcus is actually way worse. The technology flat out exists for semi-closed circuits at 30mph... JTA is acting like what they are doing is groundbreaking & it isn't. Fully autonomous driving above 50mph in open traffic would be groundbreaking... in fact, Tesla just announced they need an entire new generation of FSD, called Hardware 4, for them to obtain FSD.

So even Tesla needs more time & resources to complete. The fact ever local power broker has been silent implies nobody locally actually understands the technology. There isn't a single employee in JTA with a tech background for a very tech project.

What I mean is that something like putting the autonomous kit on JTA's existing buses or their smaller brethren would actually leverage the unique niche of "being a public transit agency" and would be a reasonable long-term R&D/Test & Learn program instead of trying to copy the least effective parts of the private sector (these low-speed pods that have been doing crappy pilots for years already) at higher cost with tons of new unique infrastructure while attempting to make the existing fixed infrastructure of the Skyway substantially less effective.

I say that to say, it's not that JTA should not be allowed to consider the implications of self driving in any way. It's that they have seemingly made it a point to insist on the most insane possible way of trying to do self driving while getting very mad when anyone points that out.

To get back on topic, are they seriously still going to call the "operational" version of this program the Ultimate Urban Circulator? Like that's the actual name? People are supposed to book U2C rides? They think they're going to be famous for that?

Totally agree with you. What I'm saying is they have maintained that they are creating a groundbreaking solution with the U2C.. when you ask JTA about the existing technology or gaps, they simply choose not to answer that. To me, that's the biggest crime in all of this.. blind leading the blind at it's core.

We don't ask transit experts to understand how a car or ICE works, rather it's been proven through use. To me this is exactly the same except they have almost zero background or knowledge to act on.

[marcuscnelson]

Has anyone at JTA even addressed the very obvious question:

What is the advantage of using UAVs for the U2C?

When fully built out, this thing is intended to leverage around 30 robovans, circling the core and urban neighborhoods.

To Lake's point, $500 million might be conservative, and this thing could conceivably top $750 million.

What exactly - other than "because innovation" - do autonomous vehicles do better than just using:

- 30 manned electric vans ($85,000 each on the high end) running on a fixed loop
- 40 full-time drivers ($55,000 a year + plus benefits, per current JTA payroll)

This is essentially the EXACT same service (with the bonus ability to operate in rain and not drive into the river or over pedestrians), at an annual cost of:

$2.55 million in vans ($85k per van, assuming a one-year life)
$3 million a year in salary (40 full-time drivers, assuming $75k/driver with benefits)

Am I crazy that you could provide the exact same service for well under $10 million a year, without having to employ $500 million in robots, bespoke apps, LIDAR sensors, and control center employees? The amount of control center employees alone would probably outnumber the manned drivers you'd put on the road.

$500 million+

For a van loop around downtown.

Unhinged.

Doing my very best to be as charitable as possible towards JTA here, the premise appears to be:

In theory, we are currently building the infrastructure that future, more advanced vehicles (from Holon, who is now building that factory here) that accomplish all the promises we have made (like platooning) will utilize, and this one-time investment will more than pay itself off with the ease of future vehicle integration.

The $40 million AIC will not just oversee the vehicles using the core infrastructure downtown, but all of the Agile Projects we eventually intend to deploy throughout the city, and the dozens or even hundreds of vehicles operating on them, in partnership with other facilities at Beep in Lake Nona and Guident in Boca Raton. We are confident that the technology will catch up, and we know we've been saying it will for more than 8 years now but it will, eventually, to the point of allowing us to move some bus operators into the AIC to oversee projects and replace their routes with more flexible autonomous networks.

This will all work out, you'll see, just trust us. We've had a few setbacks but in the grand scheme of things it's all coming together, just you wait. Be patient with us and let us do this because we believe it will work. Standard buses are too big for our vision and regular vans don't work because they aren't bidirectional like our (eventually hoped for) vehicles and we really believe we will eventually not need the driver. This is going to scale one day, just you wait!

[Jrz Jax]

The entire sales pitch on allowing AI to deploy vehicles rather than rely on the fixed-route/fixed-schedule model did its job to get the buy-in. Same thing happened in Las Vegas, where the city trusted the pitch by the father of X Æ A-12, who shows a demonstrable lack of understanding of mass transit concepts.

Oddly, had the the deployments of U2C and the Skyway followed the other's, they might have both worked quite well.

I did mention this at the mayor's town hall in which I said this was a lot of money "to start making a cake when we're not even sure we have all the ingredients" and that should it fail, we have the triple failure of no U2C, the Skyway disassembled, and a lot of money wasted. The response seemed to imply they have moved on from the Skyway conversion plans. I did follow up with a question if there is fiscal oversight by continuously reevaluating and if there is flexibility to rescale and redeploy funds. I got the politician's response, which is what I fully expected.

I do believe the last RFP did have some space for alternate proposals. I think that IF there is a way out of this, there has to be a soft landing politically; I don't see it being pulled out by the roots. I think the U2C could operate on the Riverside Avenue corridor and maybe the redeveloped Bay Street corridor. Still would be some money, but at least it would be scaled down from the current house of cards that it is. If it can't be viable there, at least there's an easier, less costly escape.

But they are forcing this "either/or" paradigm instead of "both" which is -- and I know I'm preaching to the choir -- very frustrating.

[jaxlongtimer]

I think that IF there is a way out of this, there has to be a soft landing politically; I don't see it being pulled out by the roots.

I predict the political way out will be a hard landing when this rises to the level of the JEA scandal and everyone involved in JTA leadership and its board (less any new members who push back) are relieved of their duties.  With a new regime brought in to "clean house" this project could then be quickly cancelled, never to be spoken of again.  One can hope...

[marcuscnelson]

I've asked here before why JTA has spent years and millions on an obsession with jumping directly to dedicated smaller shuttles in mixed urban traffic instead of, say, more of a building block program that could fit self-driving kits to buses that could then be trained or practice on less risky arterial roads. Now the company which bought electric bus maker Proterra has proposed doing just that:

https://www.masstransitmag.com/bus/vehicles/hybrid-hydrogen-electric-vehicles/press-release/55280875/phoenix-cars-llc-phoenix-motor-adastec-to-develop-and-deploy-40-foot-bebs-with-level-4-automated-driving-capabilities

[thelakelander]

^With the U2C, you have to throw all logic out of the window. After that, here's the answer to your question: We're a town full of suckers and traveling used car salesmen know this. So we get abused and taken advantage of with our tax money.

[marcuscnelson]

Councilman Peluso asking some big questions about the U2C at yesterday's TPO meeting.

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2025/apr/10/council-member-jimmy-peluso-presses-for-details-on-jtas-autonomous-vehicle-system/

The most shocking detail (to me): an annual operating cost of $8 million for the Bay Street Innovation Corridor. So after all these years of Test & Learn, all these claims about the superior cost effectiveness of autonomous vehicles compared to fixed guideway, the operating cost is set to be... basically the same as the Skyway, but with none of the benefits of the Skyway like speed and passenger throughput and not having to interact with pedestrians and car traffic.

Also, the two-month pilot program in Brooklyn apparently only drew 200 riders? Given that Brooklyn is far more populated than the area between City Center and the Sports District, that's... alarming. So is JTA going to have spent $66 million to spend $8 million on a few dozen riders per month?

But on the bright side, the Autonomous Innovation Center at LaVilla opens next Thursday, April 17th.