A Website To Cause The Anti-Rail Crowd Bed Wetting And Nightmares

Hello General Motors, remember us? You last saw us on that rainy December day back in 1936, then you warmed your hands as our streetcars burned. Well guess what America? We're Back!

see the site at: http://www.freewebs.com/lightrailjacksonville/

We have created a WEBSITE as a bi-product of the JACKSONVILLE TRANSIT BLOG that ought to keep the BRT "Just Like Rail Only Cheaper", crowd up with some high voltage bad dreams. In fact we think the articles we have created, borrowed, stolen, begged and otherwise obtained for publication will make the Anti-Rail crowd sit down and cry.

Good. This was designed to get the attention of a brain dead City leadership and shake the grates on the hard core fossil fuel hogs. It might even be a one stop shop for many of the facts and figures you can use in your own local battles.

The site contains: Streetcar Facts, Light Rail Facts, BRT Facts, Jacksonville Streetcar History, Monorail Facts (positive), Video, Charts, and tons of photos, many created with the help of cyber-savvy photoshop boys at the Metro-Jacksonville site. So come on over and warm up by the fire. The warm glow of burning highway tires can be felt around the world. Comments and contributions are welcome, just drop me a note.
Bob at : lightrailjax@gmail.com

Commuter Rail
Bus Rapid Transit
Light Rail
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MONORAIL SUBWAY COMING SOON

Las Vegas is pointing the way for Jacksonville. The downtown monorail is going to the airport, which in the case of Vegas, is "where the people are". Jacksonville is much larger and many miles more scattered, but could they be onto a novel idea? In Jacksonville, "the people" are in San Marco, 5-Points/Riverside Ave, Shands, (the "new" courthouse) or the Stadium district. Who in Jacksonville would have thought of taking our Skyway, "where the people are?" Note that this Vegas job might end up being the most expensive monorail ever built. Not because the technology is THAT expensive, but because they are going to build a monorail SUBWAY! Now please don't jump to the conclusion that I would EVER support such an idea in Jacksonville, we simply don't need it. But we do need to make the Skyway viable, so we look on jealously and "wish" we had leaders that were not idea challenged invertebrates. So my beloved City, read it and weep:

Edward Lawrence, Reporter

Monorail Looks to Expand to McCarran Airport

Imagine getting off a plane and onto a train to get to your hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The Las Vegas Monorail announced plans to do just that by expanding to the airport.
The monorail runs behind the casinos on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard in a four mile stretch.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority board members say this will be the only way to save the project. The monorail opened four years ago to fewer than expected passengers. To increase the riders, they want to go where the people are.
The monorail impressed visitor Jim Norbury, "I think the monorail is brilliant, absolutely brilliant."
Take a look at the Las Vegas Monorail's proposal
He and his wife Lee are visiting from England. They say the monorail looks new and clean.
To survive, monorail executives told the LVCVA it needs to go to the airport. Monorail President and CEO Curtis Myles says it's a necessary next step to generate the needed riders and revenue.
"Certainly that is where the people are in this town. 70-percent of the people who visit Las Vegas through the airport are going to the resort corridor where our system is," he said.
Myles put together a team to identify creative financing for the project, "There is a lot of money out there today that is chasing infrastructure projects and this is an infrastructure project. Oddly enough, the best time to do a project is in a down economy. It puts a lot of people to work. It invests in the community."
He refused to say how much it will cost. Myles made his presentation for a blessing from the elected leaders on the convention board, which he got, with strings.
"They have given us reassurance that our taxpayers will not be on the hook. We are going to take them up on that," said Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid.
Commissioner Tom Collins put it best, "County will not be on the bite for this thing."
Once the money is settled and expansion is finished, the Norbury's look forward to using it for a cool trip to their hotel, "We had a 10 hour flight, we were pretty tired. Then to stand in the heat. We arrived at 1 o'clock. It was maybe five minutes, but it seemed a long time when you have done a 10 hour flight."
Curtis Myles says he doesn't expect any resistance from cab drivers for the monorail expansion.
If all goes according to schedule the first train will run to the airport in 2012. It will go from MGM Grand, east on Tropicana, then turn south on Swenson into the airport.
There will be two more stations, one at terminal one and another that will be inside the airport expansion for a terminal three.
Part of the trip for the monorail will also be underground to give the monorail space and avoid moving roads. The final design work is being finished now.

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A SKYWAY CALLED REPULSIVE

What did $184 Million buy? All of the red lines. But it goes much deeper then that, it bought access to all of the yellow lines too. It also bought and paid for a maintenance facility for a large railroad, Positive Train Control, a complete signaling system, full automation, full surveillance, instant communications and automatic dispatching. It paid for a monorail railroad yard, the rights to the center cars of this design which we own outright. It paid for an impressive soaring bridge with double track over the St. Johns River - no small feat in the swift flowing extreme depths of the twisting narrows downtown. The same spot where a US Navy frigate was tied up last weekend, and before that the research vessel Atlantis. This map just demonstrates some of the lines that are being actively watched, if not planned by JTA.


Love this photo, it was evening and a rather ferice storm had just past. Everything was fresh and washed the the fall weather in Jacksonville unlike the rest of Florida is seasonal. So while Orlando, Tampa and Miami sweltered in 90 degree heat, we enjoyed one of those evenings of eternal 72 degrees.


Are there any plans to move forward? Oh yes, just blow off the dust and belly up to the bar. This is the inter modal center planned for Brooklyn Park. Brooklyn is a historic neighborhood on a bluff, south of Jacksonville Union Terminal and Mc Coy's Creek. This station would be located between the Skyway rail yard and Riverside Avenue, across the street from the Florida Times-Union Publishing Company.



At the Rainbows end, I caught the 2 car shuttle heading for Riverplace Station just after a thunder storm. Had to climb a wall for this shot which probably caused no small consternation back in the control-monitoring center, but with the help of a very kind homeless man, we cleaned the window inside and out and I got my shot. In celebratory thanks my new friend got his Skyway fares.

Some of that investment went inside the operations center, a center that once inside is jaw dropping impressive, even for a hardened railroader. Here is a cross between NASA's "VAB" or Vehicle Assembly Building and railroad shops of the FEC's Bowden Yard. Great pride shows throughout as the employees all seem on first name basis, jokes flew around the room and yet one could eat off of the polished floor. This shop is so well equipped that the Skyway Train in this picture is under it's own overhead Monorail - one that can move it around the shop. The bright work, painted surfaces, lettering and layout would make a fireman blush.

What is Positive Train Control? The best way to describe it to the layman would be to say it's running a railroad as if it were a computerized toy train. Here the operator on the left and the monitor - station manager and voice of the Skyway is on the right. There is room for two more positions here as the system grows, and it would be easy to add four new people. A system map in the the upper center, it shows the movement-size-speed-direction-track and signal indication of every train. Around that map are 72 computer camera screens, including aboard every train car. We would never have to buy this building and all of it's treasures again, they are ours to use.

We mentioned growth, did you know the system could handle 30,000 passengers per hour per direction according to Steve Arrington of JTA. Of course we need the center cars and we could order them in sets of 1, 2 or 4 so our trains could range from 2 - 6 cars long. The gates are also already in place at the stations, we simply need to punch them out, but everything is in readiness.

A SKYWAY CALLED REPULSIVE...

THE JTA Skyway is a monorail in Jacksonville, Florida, in the United States. It is operated by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority. The course of its 2.5-mile dual track includes the Acosta Bridge, spanning the St. Johns River, which divides downtown Jacksonville. Each train is automated by SCADA, can have two to six cars, and travels at up to 35 miles per hour. Fare between any of its eight stations is 50 cents.The idea of a Jacksonville people mover dates back at least to a 1971 report for the Jacksonville Area Planning Board. Work began in 1984, and the first leg opened in 1989. The second phase and third phases, including the river crossing, and conversion to monorail, were completed by November 1, 2000. The total cost of the system $184,000,000, much of it paid through Federal Grants.Old Skyway original route map here:The Skyway has been one of the biggest points of contention in Jacksonville. Many critics say it goes "from nowhere to nowhere", yet it was never finished. Some community activists have suggested that extensions into neighboring communities like Riverside, San Marco, and Springfield would improve the line's usefulness. Further, it has been noted that the Skyway would attract ridership from the proposed (but unbuilt) East Line, which would resolve the issue of Jacksonville's future rail transit system being one of the few in the country that does not serve its local sports district.According to figures from APTA, average weekday ridership in first quarter 2008 was 1,700, about 30% below the previous year's figure.

It's certainly easy to sit back and make light of the Skyway, everyone seems to be guilty at some point. Robert Mann a Transportation Supervisor with Trailways Bus System joined with Jacksonville Journal Editor, the late George Harmon, in launching an all out attack on the Skyway plans as soon as they became public knowledge. The two were promoting a combination Light Rail and Heritage Streetcar system that would have been the first of it's kind in the country. Based on the San Diego experience of the same time period, and our ultimate investment in the Skyway, we could have built 32 miles of rail for the cost of 2.5 Skyway miles.

Even former Mayor Jake Godbold, who pushed the project over the top says we should have never have built it. Perhaps the only thing worse then building any unproved fixed transit system, is half-way building it. In the case of the Skyway it seems the City and the original critics have swapped positions. As the wildly optimistic ridership projections of JTA began to crumble from 50,000 to 30,000, 17,000, 10,000 and finally 7,000 daily riders, to a reality of about 3,000. Then the jokes started and the splashes made by the politicians bailing off this sinking ship could be heard in Washington DC. Indeed the City went into damage control when international press attention was focused on the half built transit system. "A hotel wasn't built", "downturn in the economy," "downtown failed to develop", everyone inside had an excuse. Everyone outside couldn't resist one more swipe at Jacksonville. JTA no longer had a voice and the vultures were already circling. Even the FTA in Washington when speaking about the Skyway claimed they didn't know where Jacksonville was. Today fear paralyses all party's at a time when the worst thing we can do is sit on the Skyway as-is and hope for the best. This is done by a well meaning political machine that doesn't want to appear irresponsible for the stewardship of the City's limited budget. They feel they would appear irresponsible as the media has continued the attack started on the Skyway in 1980. No one has taken pause to consider the fallacy of attacking our only green, fixed, clean, electric, traffic free source of transportation in a world of soaring gasoline prices.

The following is a typical excerpt from the press, though I didn't reprint the entire article, the writer actually ended it with the word on monorail systems, "None of them make a profit." Incredible.

Skyway ridership remains sparse
Passenger count on the downtown rail system has dropped by almost 20 percent in the past two years.
By LARRY HANNAN, The Times-Union
Jake Godbold lobbied for the Skyway when he was Jacksonville mayor. He looks at the elevated rail system today and said his support was misplaced.

"I keep thinking it will catch on, but so far, it hasn't," said Godbold, who was mayor from 1979 to 1987. "We just don't want to give our cars up."
Former Mayor John Delaney, who was critical of the Skyway when he first ran for office, jokes that he has now mellowed to the point he thinks the Skyway can work for Jacksonville.
"For some special events, like the Super Bowl, it's been very nice," said Delaney, who was mayor from 1995 to 2003. "It's also been an asset to downtown development, even if there aren't many people who ride it."
Almost 20 years after the first portion of the Skyway opened in 1989, the 2 1/2-mile downtown rail system remains an underachiever. Ridership has dropped by almost 20 percent in the past two years.
In the first quarter of 2008, the system averaged 1,700 riders a day. That increased to 2,000 a day in the second quarter, which Jacksonville Transportation Authority attributes to more people accepting a fare increase from 35 to 50 cents that occurred in 2007. But for a system that was once expected to attract 38,000 riders a day, an increase to 2,000 riders is still underwhelming.
In fiscal year 2007-08, expenses were $4.5 million for the Skyway and revenue was $407,000. About $1.7 million of those expenses were paid for by a recurring grant awarded by the federal government, and JTA paid the rest at a loss of more than $2 million.
Robert Mann, a retired transportation consultant and a longtime Skyway critic, said the fundamental problem with the Skyway is it doesn't go anywhere. Expanding it so it can go closer to Five Points, Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and San Marco is the way to make the system viable, Mann said.
The Jacksonville Transportation Authority still sees it differently.
The key to increasing ridership isn't in expanding the Skyway, it's in complementing the existing Skyway with other transportation options, said Scot Clem, JTA's strategic planning director. Those options include a new bus rapid transit system and efforts to bring commuter rail from the suburbs to the city. Major expansions to the Skyway, Clem said, are just too expensive.
Minor expansions
JTA is considering minor expansions to Riverside and Leila streets and might also try to extend the Skyway from its current endpoint at Kings Avenue to Atlantic Boulevard.
JTA is also studying the feasibility of commuter rail. Executive Director Michael Blaylock has previously expressed optimism that people living in the suburbs would be willing to take a light rail system into the downtown area.
Light rail usually means streetcars or trams. Some light rail cars run on streets, while others require tracks to be built. Although the JTA has studied similar systems in Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C., it is unclear how much a commuter rail system would cost here. It is also unclear if local officials possess the funds or the political will to build a new transportation network.
The city is also working toward a new rapid transit system that will put more buses on the road, Clem said.
Steve Arrington, director of engineering for JTA, said there were a lot of plans for downtown development in the late '80s and early '90s, when the city built what was then called the Automated Skyway Express. Most of that development didn't happen.
The development that has happened in the last few years was not constructed with the Skyway in mind. For example, new parking garages went up near or within some of the new developments, which discouraged people from using the Skyway, Arrington said.

Feds paid more than half
The $184 million project opened in different phases between 1989 and 2000. More than half the money came from the federal government, without whose help Godbold and Delaney agreed the system would not have been built.
Godbold said the Chamber of Commerce was convinced the Skyway was one of the keys to redeveloping the downtown, and when the gas crisis hit in the late '70s, the Skyway sounded like a solution.
At the same time, the federal government also contributed money to Miami's 4.4-mile Metromover and Detroit's 2.9-mile People Mover. All three projects were an attempt to determine whether fully automated downtown rail systems would stimulate economic development and cost less than running downtown bus services.
Clem said there are differences between the systems. Miami's Metromover is free; you have to pay 50 cents to ride the Skyway. The Metromover also connects to the 21-mile Metrorail system that goes throughout the Miami area.
The People Mover in Detroit, which costs 50 cents, connects directly to government buildings in the downtown area, Clem said.
All three projects have one thing in common, though: Ridership has been disappointing, and none of them turns a profit.



TOO EXPENSIVE TO TAKE SERIOUSLY?

Was the Skyway too expensive? Certainly, for the actual route miles that we have running, the cost per mile was one of the most expensive in history. But that isn't the Skyways fault, most of that was system support, maintenance base, bridge and computer-signal systems. Wouldn't expansion, even modest expansion, just continue the hemorrhage of red ink? No! In fact every inch of expansion would bring down the cost per mile of the entire system.

Please understand the real expense in the original building and the conversion to monorail accomplished two major goals. The facilities and signals, computers and shops, are State-of-the-Art, expansion would take place with little to no more investment, they could handle the needs of a system 20 - 40 or 60 miles long. The money quite simply was spent up front to give us the ability to expand quickly and cheaply in any direction. The conversion to monorail from the original system gave us untold flexibility and off-the-shelf purchasing power. The final big piece was the St. Johns River crossing on the new Acosta Bridge, certainly not a cheap undertaking even if we would have built a bridge for pogo sticks. Perhaps the blue neon chaser lights were an added option, but hey, this is Jacksonville, can you think of a bridge that isn't distinct?

Working with City Council Woman Glorious Johnson, has been a joy, she is one of the few, proud visionaries that see past the gloom and doomsayers. Speaking with many suppliers of monorail systems they can't understand why we couldn't expand for under $15 Million per mile. So we have this fantastic Skyway, a wonderful super system that frankly the city hasn't caught up with. Every mile we add for $10 or even $20 Million will bring down the overall cost-per-mile of the finished system, and raise the passenger count. In fact, doing the math, demonstrates that the Skyway at 10 miles in length, would come down in price - allowing for the $184 Million already spent + the $300 Million in new expansion to about $28 Million per mile. The Quick-Way BUS RAPID TRANSIT that JTA has in it's current sights will cost about $26 Million a mile. In short we could build true Monorail for the cost of Quick-Way BRT. Using the same numbers, if the Skyway ever reached the proposed 26 mile length of the planned BRT system, by then it's cost per mile would drop to 1/2 that of the "super bus system".

Monorail for half the price of bus.

But City Hall, DOT and perhaps even JTA have cold feet. Like an angler that went over the top for the most expensive rod and reel in the world. He now has the tools to bring home the really big fish, but he spent so much on the basics, that now his wife won't let him buy any line... "You've already broke the bank, I'll be darned if I'm going to let you add one inch of new line, or invest one more dollar, just go out there and figure out how to make it work just like it is!"

We already have everything we need for a first class Skyway system, many miles worth if we so desire. Our Skyway with it's tight curves and grades was never intended as a long distance carrier, but it could be the master of "up town" in Jacksonville. A matrix of central Skyway trunk lines, Streetcar-LRT suburban lines, Commuter Rail from the surrounding metroplex, bus - BRT Lite - electric trolley bus feeders and shuttles, and our water bus, all layered for choice and connectivity, would be unbeatable. Bay Street at Hogans Creek could even become the only station the world where Monorail meets bus, water bus, heritage streetcars, and a proposed Sky Cable. Certainly the Skyway itself isn't going to catch many "fish" without some line. All the PCT-Trolleys in the world feeding it are not going to amount to a drop in the sea. So expand it now, Riverside, The Stadium, San Marco, St. Vincents, Shands via Davis and the new Court House, Memorial Hospital, Ed Waters, JU, Jones, JUST DO IT. Add in a few miles of streetcar, commuter rail to the outlaying areas, and BRT-LITE (known as: "BRT-Light-rail-lite") or electric BRT-L, Trolley buses to Mandarin, Beaches, and Northwest side, and we would join the worlds big league cities with a transit system second to none.

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Terms Defined:

BRT Quick-Way: is a bus system using grade separateded, sometimes elevated buswaysand exclusive bus lanes - it has been shown to cost as much or more then Light Rail.

BRT Lite: is generally called "Light rail - lite" is a bus system using some of the Quick-Way features at congestion points, otherwise it uses HOV lanes and signal priority - it's cost is about equal with commuter rail.

PCT-Trolleys: A local term introduced by this blog and it's author to describe the faux trolleys that are built on chassies used to build Potato-Chip-Trucks, Thus the name "Potato-Chip-Truck-Thinks-It's-A-Trolley" or JTA own accronym for this phenomonon which is simply the "PCT Trolley Fleet".

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Special Thanks to my friend and fellow activist Mr. Ennis Davis, Urban Planner, and the MetroJacksonville.com team, see: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/ for more storys, photos and information.

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Completed Skyway for $150 Million? What's Missing Here?

The Evil Incomplete Skyway To Nowhere

As I've said more then once, I was the worst enemy of the Skyway before it's construction. Long hard hours were spent with the Jacksonville Journal Editors, Television, Times-Union and City Hall. Then as now, I was encouraging the development of Light Rail in Jacksonville. We could have built 30 miles of Light Rail for what the Skyway cost back in the 1980's. But keep in mind the Skyway was a "Free Gift," from Uncle Sam's UMTA. I was never intended to be more then a downtown distributor, a horizontal elevator if you will. Somewhere either Uncle or JTA got way off track and talk started flying about it becoming a regional mass transit. It wasn't even a monorail, but more like an airport shuttle car. By the year 2,000, Detroit and Miami, had completed their "Gift" systems. Our own was mired in 30 feet of muck. The preservation districts raised holy hell about it coming their way. No agency was going to blow this giant elevated "thing" through Confederate Park, on the way to Shand's Hospital. When the new Acosta Bridge came about the City received grants to lay the Skyway over the center of it. Once again the pulse quickened, "if it just reaches Southbank, it WILL work..." we even took a step toward making it more regional by conversion of the whole thing to true Monorail. At this point the Federal Government pulled the plug, and the new FTA or Federal Transit Administration issued a statement on ABC news that "We have NEVER supported it..." Uh Huh? UMTA supported it and funded it, simply change the agency name in Washington DC and disclaim Jacksonville? As you can see it's failures were not all JTA's fault.

Somewhere along the road, JTA and my own train must have passed going in different directions.

Today, the from the Transportation Authority to the Mayors Office, mention the "Skyway" and red faces and shushing gestures with single fingers sprout all over the room. One aide recently told me, "It's DEAD, forget it, it will NEVER happen..." This from a failed system that was touted by our experts to carry 56,000 persons a day? This from the same experts that pulled the plug on the beast when it hadn't reached any of it's stated terminals? This from the State Agency that dumped a truck load of historic Traction Company files, photos and artifacts in the Northside landfill? Why the sudden cold feet? Does the 1,500 daily riders from no-where to no-where make us think it would stay that way if it actually went someplace? I would hope professional logic would say we can do better.

I took the liberty of "shopping" for our Skyway. Talking with the Monorail Society and looking at some equipment to make the trains bigger, and the track and buildings less costly. I figured the following system extensions into my plan:

• 
  
• A. 14,063 feet from Hogan and Bay, to Bay and Randolph, to Randolph and Arlington Expy.
• B. 5,252 feet from Kings Avenue to Atlantic Blvd at the West Side of the FEC tracks.
• C. 9,057 feet from Brooklyn Maintenance South to Roselle, West to come in behind Francis Lytle
• D. 3,258 feet from the Prime Osbourne, looping behind the facility and coming back up alongside the railroad platforms South of the Station and West of Park St.

Total system additions (5.9 Mi) was right at 6 miles. Based on a high bid of $25 Million a mile
the total cost for new track and stations would be about $150 Million. If the costs were closer to $10 Million a mile, then only $60 Million would be needed to complete the system. Considering that the project would qualify for 50% federal funds plus other grants, we would have a small investment in it's expansion. What is very curious indeed is the cost numbers of hundreds of millions of dollars to do the least of these extensions... I want to know why? It's not just logic, but the numbers on the graph speak volumes. Time to re-think the Skyway and get-R-done.

The Jacksonville Skyway Story, Without the Tears

" A Skyway,

From
Nowhere to Somewhere
in the
Future "

The JTA's Loudest SkywayCritic considers the history, and the future of this unwanted lemon, and offers a few thoughts on how to make lemonaide.

"What if you built a Transit System, and NOBODY CAME TO RIDE!" Was the recent headline of Charles Herman's, ABC News story. This horror story was carried around the world, something Herman himself may not have been fully aware of. I watched it, squirming on my sofa, on the 19Th floor of a Medellin, Colombia, high-rise. I caught hell the next day when fellow railroad engineers and planners suggested that the story was about something "Bob thought up".

So let's roll the clock back to the 1970's. You might recall that the private railroads had lost the battle for the passenger train, when the Federal Government took railroad tax dollars and built a parallel Interstate Highway system. That the whole exercise was orchestrated by railroad legal departments and cronies in the Nixon administration is obvious from the Penn Central Executive that went dancing through the office tower shouting to the top of his lungs, "We've done it! We've shot the passenger Train!" Railroads would all soon be dead and with them would go every manner of railroad technology. The Age of Aquarius had no room for steel wheels on steel rails. The moniker of the day was "Monorails are the future of all of mankind. Funny since Monorails had been around almost as long as railroads and had never gotten beyond the novelty stage, suddenly Baxter Ward, Los Angeles County Supervisor was proposing a huge Mega system all over the LA basin. Streetcar systems were being talked about in, San Diego and Hollywood, but it was mostly talk. Railroad savvy Interurban fans realized the national conspiracy that had killed the great Pacific Electric Railroad in Southern California, and they set to work placing that tale into a cartoon of epic box office success, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Meanwhile in Jacksonville, a 1971 report by the Area Planning Board, climbed on board with a Buck Rogers, plan of their own. What if "The Bold New City Of The South," could build a monorail metro system? The fortune 500's, the NFL and perhaps some of Mickey's friends would beat a trail to our Northeast Florida Metropolis. I was indeed in on the plan. However far from it's "father" as my Colombian counterparts claimed, I was it's Nemesis. I wrote a plan based on a wild idea San Diego had to take a seldom used freight railroad line, and rebuild it, string overhead wire and purchase modern European style streetcars. San Diego said they would build 15 miles from downtown to the Mexican border with $86,000,000 Million Dollars. In Jacksonville, taking the best of San Diego's plan, linking it to our own former "S" line of the old Seaboard, from Union Station to Springfield, then returning on the old Fernandina and Jacksonville Railroad line, otherwise known as the Maxwell House Branch. To complete the loop, I considered a line from Union Station, over to Water to Independence to Bay, where it would intersect with the loop. At the time Jacksonville Shipyards was still downtown and there was still track in place from and along Bay across the front of Metropolitan Park and up into the Talleyrand District. To prevent it from having to compete with the political machine of JTA and City Hall, I proposed we build it was federal grants as a "Heritage Trolley". We could then always convert it to Light Rail at a later date.



By 1984, the decision was firmly made, there would be NO trolleys in Jacksonville, Heritage or otherwise. We would cast our lot with the star ships and monorails, and never look back. In fact during this time JTA dumped the entire records, photos and ledgers of the old Traction System, and the City or contractors destroyed 4 perfectly good Jacksonville streetcars that suddenly had become eye-sores. Though the same cars had stood their ground since 1936, they were reduced to sawdust. The streetcar barns were torn down to make way for a new highway interchange and a freeway that was to run through the old Jacksonville Terminal yards. By 1987 the City was hard at work on the first .07 miles of the Monorail.

According to Representative Bob Carr, the "Monorail thing" was not for transportation reasons, but for political reasons. Washington, DC had decided to award 3 major Cities with downtown "People-Movers", a Federal gift project, to see if these new machines, also called enthusiastically labeled "Personal Rapid Transit Vehicles", would create a building surge and turn around years of downtown decay. Miami, Detroit and Jacksonville, won the awards, and the race was on for each City to raise the bar. Jacksonville announced the new system would carry 56,000 persons a day, Skyway critic Marvin Edwards, blames JTA for the wild numbers, as we counted down toward opening day, the projections were adjusted down to 30,000 daily, then to 18,000 daily, then again to 10,000 a day.

JTA had sold the system to the City fathers on the basis of it's huge ridership potential. The public hearings said it would replace most surface buses downtown, making downtown a walkable and more livable place. Quiet, swift electric trains would whisk commuters to and from a network of outlaying parking garages and bus transfer facilities. The politic was told, it's completely modern break from old fashioned streetcars. JCCI and JTA even falsified reports and insisted streetcars were slow, old, had to run down streets, and compete with automobiles. The hype was dangled in front of then Mayor Jake Godbold, who hung onto every word JTA uttered on the subject. They convinced Congress to dump half of $182,000,000 dollars into our system. But sticker shock hit when the daily ridership slowly peaked at a pitiful 1,200 a day. By 1993, ABC news among others was beating down the door at JTA and City Hall. In 1993, JTA member Miles Francis, shot back, "Until this thing is finished there is no way to measure it's performance or it's potential." The Federal Transit Administration issued a false statement of their own, that "We have NEVER supported it" in 1994. Two years later, the Skyway, was again floating in cash as the river crossing over the new Acosta Bridge was completed and the line into the Southbank opened. Reaching only 2.5 of it's originally planned 4+ miles, the "People Mover" was converted to a true Monorail. By 2002, the ridership had climbed to 2,871 persons a day, not even close to the projections of just the original segment. Banners spanned Bay Street, as a cartoon Monorail proclaimed "I'm Going To The Stadium". Suddenly the bubble burst, and the banners came down. The Skyway was now a hot political potato. Just a core 2 1/2 miles of what should have been a 5 or 6 mile railroad.

Steve Arrington, Director of Engineering for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, and Skyway apologist, said it's no secret that the numbers are not where we would like them to be. You have to understand, we didn't meet the projections not through any fault of our own or of the Skyway, it's because of a general downturn in the economy of downtown Jacksonville in the 1990's that led to a decrease in development. Other factors have come into play that we couldn't anticipate, such as higher parking fees and gas prices. But Arrington still believes in his monorail, "You just don't build a system like this for the here and now, you build it for 20 or 30 years into the future."

As the Skyway's number one critic, I'd have to still say in my opinion it should have NEVER been built. But what is done is done. We have dusted off the Light Rail Jacksonville plans and now look at ways to blend it all together. Frankly, using a less costly type of track system, we should revisit the Skyway, let's finish it to the Riverside office area, get it over the (always) blocked FEC railroad tracks to a San Marco Station, and let's finally take it to the stadium, coliseum, fairgrounds and Metropolitan Park. Tied to BRT, Mega-Parking, Trolley-Bus, Streetcars and commuter rail, we just might raise that bar beyond Miami and Detroit. As the third largest City on the East Coast of the United States, it's been a long, long wait for our train to arrive.

Missing the Sign's

Welcome to Jacksonville, our Skyway is here to serve you. We hope you enjoy your journey and are able to find your station, since we don't know where it is. None of our signs are in "Plainview".

For as long as their have been railroads, (Okay, Skyways, monorails, interurbans etc...) there have been large signs that decorate the ENDS of the platforms or station buildings. Everyone rolling into a station, need only glance out the window and knows where they are at. I am amazed that somehow the guys who did the Skyway station designs, didn't know this little fact?

So where are the signs? Why don't we have nice signs on the ends of all of the stations loudly but tastefully announcing the place of arrival? You see, "Plainview" should be more then just a City in Texas, with great station signs, those signs should be ours as well.