Happy Saturday! It's your friendly neighborhood Zoomer here with another either terrible or actually decent idea.
Every once in a while, I happen across some of the old threads on here about commuter rail or light rail or streetcars (speaking of which, it's a real shame we haven't seen much progress on that kind of stuff). One thing that stood out to me was mention that commuter rail as proposed would present challenges for Clay County, in that people who live in Clay but work on the Southside won't want to travel all the way into DT Jax and then back south for work. This problem happens to also be shared by First Coast Flyer. The primary barrier to solving this problem is, of course, the St. Johns River.
And that's where my idea came. Luckily for us, FDOT has already done much of the work involved in solving this problem. Millions of taxpayer dollars have been poured into past improvements to the Buckman Bridge and more recently, into the I-295 corridor between the bridge and I-95. Which brings me to propose…
RiverLink. An express Rapid Transit service between the Orange Park Mall (southern terminus for the Flyer's Orange Line) and Avenues Walk (southern terminus for the Blue Line).
What I expect would be the most challenging element of this proposal is, of course, the Buckman Bridge. For that, I suggest the existing breakdown lanes be used to carry the service. Add a concrete strip with yellow paint
just high enough to discourage drivers from using it as a traffic lane, but low enough that people who are experiencing breakdowns or first responders could move into it if necessary. That would unfortunately mean either the bus has to figure out a way around the broken-down car, or that service would simply be interrupted.
Once the bridge is crossed, travel becomes much easier. It just so happens that taxpayers spent a pretty penny to add managed lanes (that every time I've used have been close to empty). So, RiverLink would share those lanes. Following the end of the managed section, there are two options. Unfortunately, this is probably the wrench in the works. The first option is to move from the managed lane to the on-ramp for I-95 North, after which one would take the Philips Highway exit and proceed to Avenues Walk. The other is to continue past I-95 and take the Philips Highway exit there, then head north to Avenues Walk. Both options involve taking cloverleaf off-ramps, and I can't say I'm sure how well buses perform in that condition (I suppose adding separate ramps for the buses is an option, but at that point it probably becomes fiscally impractical).
Assuming that can be managed, there would finally exist a transit option for crossing the St. Johns without heading downtown, while connecting Orange Park and Southside in a cost-effective manner (compared to building a new bridge for tracks or new lanes for BRT now). I imagine the headways would probably be somewhat longer than the other routes, but with the advantage of being a point-to-point express route vs having intermediate stops. So that's RiverLink. Go ahead and poke some holes, it's just an idea.
