Riverplace Skyway station is on fire...

[Steve]

Totally agree - one of the major failure in the route in my opinion is the failure to hit any residents, or destinations (other than the convention center).  The original line would have hit the springfield residents and the stadium.  So if this line was extended down riverside avenue and over the railroad tracks east of San Marco Square, imagine what you would get.

[Jason]

Ditto what Steve and Schwaz said.  We can't expect and incomplete system to meet advertised ridership numbers.  IMO, get a commuter system up and running (Amtrak or other) and then finish the skyway (line to Stadium, San Marco, Shands, and Sports Complex) then watch the thing flourish as it was intended.  It won't be a money pit if we finish the system and tie in the regional bloodline.  PCT trollys can then fill the gaps in the short term and then REAL trollys and even light rail can be built afterwards.


BTW, the Riverplace Station reconstruction is well underway.  The damaged roof has been removed and it looked like most of the other damaged portions are being demo'd now (as of Sunday).

[stjr]

"They lied about ridership projections," explained Edwards. "They said 56,000 a day at first, then dropped that to 30,000, then last it was 18,000 to 19,000."

Currently, the Skyway sees 3,000 riders per day who pay 35 cents a trip. In fiscal 2001, the Skyway brought in $513,694 in revenue but its expenses were $3.5 million....

...In 1993 Transit Authority member Miles Francis defended the system to ABCNEWS. "Until this thing is finished, there's no way to measure its performance or its potential."

Now it's finished and the Jacksonville Transit Authority is still waiting for the riders to come.

Guys, I think those rose tinted glasses you are wearing are obscuring your view of reality.  Or, maybe you are subscribing to the practice that if you mistate the facts long enough, you will convince people to believe in the misstatements.

FACT:  The $ky-high-way gets only a fraction of the projected riders for what is a COMPLETED (as admitted by JTA) system, decades after it was supposed to have achieved the original projections WHICH ONLY APPLIED TO WHAT EXISTS NOW AND WERE NOT DEPENDENT ON MORE ADDITIONS.  Please stop attempting to rewrite history at the peril of the taxpayers with all these "new" ways to meet revised projections and acting like an expansion was always planned with the intention to make the existing legs meet their original projections.  It is not so and to state otherwise is to misrepresent the facts.

As to all those diagrams, these projects are always visualized in conception with multiple academic possibilities but only the plan deemed most feasible is supposedly recommended by those high powered consultants.  It doesn't mean much to show all those charts drawn in fantasy land as they were just concepts.  In the end, what was built is what the process recommended and projected to be a fully adequate and supportable system based on "expert" advice.  It is disingenuous to now say that the $ky-high-way isn't functional because it is "incomplete".  The $ky-high-way is a failure at any level because it is a defective method for achieving its goal.

Be careful what you ask for. We need to move on and focus on the much better suggestions for rail mass transit described elsewhere on MJ.  Folks, take off those blinders and look at this project from the 30,000 foot level.  To do otherwise, is to risk of your own stated priorities for rail mass transit.

[BridgeTroll]

All who champion mass transit acknowledge that other projects are more worthy of scarce dollars at this time.  All they are saying is that if tied properly to other forms of mass transit the skyway will become what it was intended and therefore worthy of expansion at some time in the future.

[Coolyfett]

Yep it's a great station for southbankers too. It drops you off right in Hemming Plaza which gives you more options for your lunch hour... that is if you can get a tram running straight there without making you transfer at Central.

The convention center station should've been the one to burn! Riverplace was so young....

Riverplace Station is the only station on the line that people actually live near.

I disagree Rosa Parks Station is the one that should have been torched!!!

[reednavy]

Riverplace Station is the only station on the line that people actually live near.

I disagree Rosa Parks Station is the one that should have been torched!!!

You just had to go all racial didn't you, wink.

[Coolyfett]

I dunno, it sounds like what Ock mentioned may actually be coming to fruition. I would honestly hope so, this has too much potential to leave as is.

I agree Red Navy. I really agree with this thought.

[reednavy]

Do you, or are you trying to troll me?

[stjr]

All who champion mass transit acknowledge that other projects are more worthy of scarce dollars at this time.  All they are saying is that if tied properly to other forms of mass transit the skyway will become what it was intended and therefore worthy of expansion at some time in the future.

"what it was intended" =  "It was mainly for political reasons, not transportation reasons," explained former Rep. Bob Carr, who chaired the committee that approved funding for transportation projects in the early 1990s. "Like so many projects, they get a camel's nose under the tent and then it gets very very difficult to stop them."

Pork barrel, plain and simple.  Intentions and more fulfilled galore! 

[tufsu1]

everyone listen to stjr...he clearly is the only one who is non-biased here

[stjr]

everyone listen to stjr...he clearly is the only one who is non-biased here

"You are either with us or against us.  Let's not let the facts get in the way!"

Is George W. Bush, Jr., lurking here?

[Charles Hunter]

Those ridership projections made back in the mid 1970s assumed a much more robust downtown.  Southpoint was just so much cow pasture at the time.  Should the folks making the projections have foreseen the growth of the JTB corridor - when JTB hadn't even been built? 

If the downtown of 2009 were what was projected in 1975, this Board would have a completely different focus.

[ChriswUfGator]

Those ridership projections made back in the mid 1970s assumed a much more robust downtown.  Southpoint was just so much cow pasture at the time.  Should the folks making the projections have foreseen the growth of the JTB corridor - when JTB hadn't even been built? 

If the downtown of 2009 were what was projected in 1975, this Board would have a completely different focus.

So if the projections were made in the early 70's and construction wasn't even started until the mid 1980's, then was it really too much to ask that someone get their calculator out and make up some new projections before deciding to waste all that money? 

[mtraininjax]

So if this line was extended down riverside avenue and over the railroad tracks east of San Marco Square, imagine what you would get.

You would get more of the same. Wasted dollars on a system that does not go to the people. How many live downtown again on a FULL TIME BASIS?

[Shwaz]

So if this line was extended down riverside avenue and over the railroad tracks east of San Marco Square, imagine what you would get.

You would get more of the same. Wasted dollars on a system that does not go to the people. How many live downtown again on a FULL TIME BASIS?

That's the point. Extending into Riverside and deeper into San Marco would bring the skyway to the people WHERE THEY LIVE and take them into downtown to work & play. Also downtown IS growing in residency... people are moving there and living DT full time.

I honestly don't care if the skyway was originally built for political reasons. What I do care about is that it that it's not far off of being actually useful.

The 2.5-mile Jacksonville Automated Skyway Express is a model of efficiency. Completely automated and controlled from a central operation center

The train / system IS great! Get it to go somewhere and it would be looked up to by other cities. It was said we can have less costly and "we don't need flashy"... with that logic we might as well build a bunch of HUD houses and see if that brings people in from the burbs. A flashy effecient way to get to all the places I want to go... who needs that right?