IDIOTS! There is simply no other word in the English language that describes the fool who is at the root of this, the latest JTA Catastrophe in the making.
READ MY LIPS!
THE DAY THAT THE FIRST SHOVEL OF DIRT IS TURNED AT THIS GREYHOUND SITE - IS THE DAY THAT ANY HOPE OF JACKSONVILLE HAVING A REAL TRANSPORTATON CENTER DIES. The reason being:
JTA, an organization that builds highways and barely understands mass transit, cannot define a 'regional transportation center.'
JTA'S lead planner apparently has never bothered to notice that no other 'Regional Transportation Center' operates out of 4 independent stations in neighborhood of 5 massive, distinct, and uninspired buildings, scattered over more real estate then the Vatican City, a sovereign nation.
The City Council, and the local mullet wrapper, have been duped in a game of dumb and dumber. Like a bunch of parrots chewing coca leaves, the JTA proclaims it, the council rubber stamps it, and the media outlets soil themselves in a frenzy of volcanic, urgent conceit.
Back in the 1970's, I recall a family that lived in the area that I would meet and greet occasionally. The tragic reality of their situation was obvious when one would spot them guiding their '30 something' son through a local grocery store. Their adult child would be decked out in his 'cowboy' costume, complete with toy guns, alternately smiling and shooting at anyone who made eye contact. In the mind of this severely handicapped man, he was a 'real' cowboy and he was saving us from unseen bloodletters and badmen. Such has JTA become, a tragic, rogue agency, leading us into another real world gunfight, dressed up as a mass transit agency. JTA is as clueless about what works, or even identifying what a solution should look like, then that poor cowboy. All the while they are giving 'expert' advice and guidance to a equally uninformed city council.
Deliberate? One will have to consider the ill advised Skyway, that '5 mile system' (which never got to 5 miles) the one JTA claimed would eventually extend high speed monorail train service from the Atlantic to Baldwin, and from Thomas's Creek to Orange Park. Remember the promises? That little train would be the end of streetcars in America, and Jacksonville's own JTA would blaze the trail and show the way.
How about the merits of building a 26 mile elevated freeway for buses, right over the top of existing roads and railroads, a vision for ELEVATED BRT. They imagined their BRT scheme as the transportation of the future, and that it would prove the superiority of buses over rail, once and for all. JTA told us we really needed this system
at the bargin price of a billion dollars! Even then, it wouldn't reach the Avenues, Town Center, Orange Park, The Beaches or anywhere north of the Trout River.
We should perhaps consider the inaccessible, multimillion dollar, Southside parking garage. The garage has become symbolic of the failure of JTA to grasp even the most basic concepts.
Anyone remember the Dames Point bridge, the one that every maritime interest on the high seas has condemned as too low? How is that working out for our port? JTA anyone? Recall if you will the genius at JTA arguing that the bridge could actually be even lower then it is and that marine interests should be grateful for what they've been offered.
Then there was the agency that publically proclaimed that in Charlotte, "The people hate rail, they're demanding more buses."
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IN CONTROL OF YOUR TRANSPORTATION FUTURE.
With the first shovel of dirt, all hope of having a true and functioning Transportation Center, which is by definition, a ONE-STOP-SHOP, is gone. Fear not, city council member, the good folks over on Myrtle Avenue are wearing their 'transportation expert' costumes.
"Bang! Bang! Your dead, Jacksonville!"
OCKLAWAHA
