Get ready to catch the Billion Dollar Bus

[Metro Jacksonville]

Get ready to catch the Billion Dollar Bus



Are you ready to take a potential billion dollar bus ride, 30 years from now, that will be able to whisk you from downtown to Gateway Mall, via I-95 or blow down Bay Street at 40 miles an hour?  Today Metro Jacksonville shares a few diagrams of what our potential RTS will resemble when our grandkids are old enough to drive.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/331

[J]

May as well expand on the skyway if we're going to spend that kind of money.  For a billion dollars, couldn't we at least get something that goes to the airport?

[Jason]

We could likely get a 29 mile skyway system that runs the same path of the proposed BRT system.  If we have a billion dollars to blow, why not take that route intstead?

[J]

This BRT system just doesn't seem like much bang for the buck.

[Joe]

A new monorail was built in Indiana for $14 million per mile. This BRT nonsense will cost $34 million per mile!!

[southernboi]

Can we have something like what happened with Cecil Feild going to the Navy? Put all the facts out to the public and let us decide by popular vote what we would like, BRT or commuter rail, the answer of course would be commuter rail. Something has to be done to stop this, there has to be something at our disposal, it is our money after all!

[gradco2004]

Yeah. Great idea. Is it possible for the city to vote on how they want thier tax dollars spent? Mr.Mayor, I hope you're reading this: YOUR PLAN SUCKS! IT STINKS! IT REEKS! I HATE IT! IT IS EVERYTHING I LOATHE! and I don't want my hard earned tax dollars spent on this crap. If I want to blow $1Billion dollars, I'll do it at a tittie bar (excuse my French)

[gradco2004]

Who did the initiative for the Cecil Field issue?

[den]

Luckily I have the freedom to live in the city of my choosing because my home in Springfield will be up for sale the second this project happens.  

[Jp]

I am writing the Mayor this is CRAZY!! They can't do this to our city.

[HB]

Don't worry, they won't do it. When the first seed money is gone, the project will be forgotten.

[+]

The busses will be elevated 22' up? What happens if a bus driver has a heart attack? They flip off the bridge, killing everyone on the bus and the cars they land on? That's a great concept. Heck by 2025, we'll probably have a new transportation system and Jacksonville will still be building an outdated bus system. Our leaders suck!

[urbanjacksonville]

There is a case for success when it comes to a transit mall. Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis successfully combines BRT, retail, pedestrians and car traffic. One thing Nicollet Mall has going for it is massive amounts of retail and restaurants in the 11 block stretch. Two department stores, 5 restaurants, three urban malls (City Center and Gavide), big box retail like Target and Gap, plus major businesses like the corporate headquarters of Target and US Bank.

This would be quite a stretch for Jacksonville to pull off. It is also quite possible that the process of a converting Adams Street to a transit mall could effectively kill one of the most lively streets in downtown.  

An alternative option being tossed around shifts BRT over to Adams Street, which would then be closed off to regular traffic to serve as a BRT transit mall, an idea the effectively killed off most american city's downtown retail base back in the 1970s and 1980s.

[thelakelander]

Plain and simple.  Across the US there are hundreds of downtown transit malls that have failed compared to the few that succeeded.  The one thing all the successful ones had was urban density, in terms of nearby population base and building stock.  Downtown Jacksonville has neither.  It's critical that those in charge of planning in this city, see and visualize the whole picture before jumping on an idea that on the surface looks great, but has actually been proven to be a sinking ship.