30 Days of Plight. Stephen Dare goes JTA every day.

[stephendare]

Apparently the word on the buses is that Mr. Blaylock is taking it dead seriously.

Two of the bus drivers at the station were talking about major changes, and the phantom rider that keeps posting shit on the internets.

Heaven help me when they finally divine the website and start reading it with our pictures.

Your humble servant may find himself on a sunday 'special' for real.

[BridgeTroll]

Good!  Perhaps they need "Phantom riders" more often...

[gatorback]

swallow a LoJack

[stephendare]

swallow a LoJack

Whats a LoJack?

[stephendare]

Good!  Perhaps they need "Phantom riders" more often...

Absofreakinglutely.

[gatorback]

It's a tracking device.  People usually attach them to their late model Porsche, BMW, Ferrari's.  When the car is stolen the police can track it down.

[BridgeTroll]

The sad part of all this is that it took an outsider... a community activist if you will, to bring this to the attention of the policy makers.  Otherwise it would be business as usual.  Dont hold your breath that the changes promised will become a reality or that they will stick.  We have seen things like this before... Placate the complainers with promises to fix and do better... wait awhile for things to simmer down... your attention diverted elsewhere then... Voila... back to the past.  For this to actually work JTA needs an autonomous Quality Assurance division willing to put JTA on notice of poor performance... willing to tell management what improvements need to be made, reporting complaints on drivers and being an ombudsman for the ridership...

Im better now... please excuse...

[gatorback]

No city department would ever work that way IMHO.  They are out to protect themselves and the department.  They want the department to get the A+++ each years so fat chance.

[urbanlibertarian]

External auditing and inspection helps any organization.  The best ones seek it out.
How's my driving?  Call 1-800-EAT-DIRT.

[Ocklawaha]

Okay Stephen, I'll tell the tale... JTA does have phantom riders besides Stephendare. The audits go straight to management. So dumping your body at the far end of the Commonwealth Avenue line, isn't going to help the drivers.

The conversation was very animated at the meeting, including such Stephendareisms as "The Drivers should be publically flogged," "lynch mobs", came up a couple of times bringing laughter.

I countered with "If I were appointed KING of JTA tomorrow, I wouldn't fire anyone in this room!" Which drew quizical stares, and nervous laughs. Of course friend Stephen was rolling on the floor by then. BTW, I used it to temper the mood and set a stage for we can't flog our way to perfection. We need a rewards program, fare forgiveness, safe place policys, fare free zones, and JTA happy hours (.25 cent fares). We need to grow into BRT.

A point offered was if the President walked into this room and laid a BILLION dollars on the table and told us to
"Build BRT and they will come..." it wouldn't do a damn thing. REASON? No one in this city has ever been trained to ride the bus, Skyway or a streetcar. NO ONE. If tomorrow a bus left Downtown and Regency every 5 minutes for the opposite terminal, ridership wouldn't change. What do you do when you get downtown? Wait another 40 minutes for your connection...if it runs...if it works...if the driver favors your money. We MUST close the Headway gap, tighten connections, and work toward a professional rolling magic carpet that will serve as the door to Jacksonville for citizens and visitors alike. A rolling embassy-Chamber of Commerce with a purpose, rather then the transit doormat of today.

Ocklawaha

[Midway]

Apparently the word on the buses is that Mr. Blaylock is taking it dead seriously.

Two of the bus drivers at the station were talking about major changes, and the phantom rider that keeps posting shit on the internets.

Heaven help me when they finally divine the website and start reading it with our pictures.

Your humble servant may find himself on a sunday 'special' for real.

LOL! How old is that pic? Just don't wear a pumpkin shirt.

[jacksonvilleconfidential]

Okay, so JC is going to the Suns game tomorrow night and we are planning to take JTA TO THE EVENT, and a cab back to the island (Riverside). So be on the lookout for a report on JC. Im scared

[stephendare]

Michael Blaylock and 'Little Vietnam'.

Here is the moment in the meeting, when it became clear to me the Blaylock is a pretty perceptive guy who gets it.

The Central Station, now known as the Rosa Parks Station, has for many years been run by the 'operations' part of the JTA.   Meaning that the part of JTA which handles the actual running and scheduling and mechanical maintenance of the buses.

Michael was in a meeting with one of the engineers, apparently getting a lap load of the usual malarkey, you know:  Best of all possible worlds, doing out best, everythings fine, if only we had the budget etc....

But the meaningful thing, at least in our context,  wasnt spoken until the very moment the engineer left.

"well, back to Little Viet Nam"  he said.

Blaylock waited until after the man had left the room.

He turned to Vanessa Brooks.  The lovely Ms. Brookes at the time was TFNG over Customer Service.

"I really don't like the sound of that' says Mr. Blaylock.  "Little Viet Nam?!?  What kind of message is that sending to everyone about the JTA?"

A real dilbert would have simply banned the use of the term instead of doing something useful, like actually intervening in the Tet Offensive.

Instead, Blaylock transferred management of the notorious thrill ride from operations onto the shoulders of Ms. Brooks.

Suddenly appeared lots of cops, supervisors and the occaisional cleaning person.

The bathrooms stopped rhyming with 'gauntlet', and even ceased being spelled 'deathtrap'.

In less than six month all of the guesswork has been taken out of crossing the property with life and wallet intact on the other side.

And now no one calls it "Little Viet Nam" anymore.

[civil42806]

Heres the fundamental problem, no one really wants to go downtown.  I"ve had friends whose wive don't drive, they tried to use the bus system, quite frankly its a joke.  It basically makes everyone go downtown even if your trying to go  from san jose to regency.  You must transfer buses down town.  Then they had to deal with some of the how shall I say "colorful characters" at the transfer stations. Jacksonville has the fundamental problem of being too large, consolidation was a good idea at the time, not so sure any more.  Look at the bridges, everyone has to pass downtown, I emphasis pass downtown.  I've wondered if anyone has calculated how many people actually work in downtown vice the butler /i-95 soutside exit.  I've often thought that if you factor out the captive fed workers, the number of people that work off bulter will greatly out number the downtown employees.

[BridgeTroll]

I hope you arent finished riding Stephen.  I was enjoying your daily reports... You still have 15 days...