JTA planning to seek bids to build, run U2C

[BridgeTroll]

Gamechanger!

[marcuscnelson]

According to David Cawton in this Twitter thread, Bay Street is under "active procurement as we speak." Apparently he also doesn't understand the difference between a streetcar and a bus or AV.

Found the Procurement Page.

The JTA is requesting sealed Statements of Qualifications ("SOQs") for the design, build, operation and maintenance of an autonomous vehicle project on approximately three miles of Bay Street in Jacksonville, Florida. The project is known as Phase I of the Ultimate Urban Circulator Program ("U2C") and called the Bay Street Innovation Corridor ("BSIC").

Apparently there's supposed to be some kind of "Evaluation Meeting" on November 12th, but I can't find any details about it.

The question for me right now is whether there's even any company in existence capable of designing, building, operating, and maintaining autonomous vehicles in mixed traffic on Bay Street within three years.

[thelakelander]

The question for me right now is whether there's even any company in existence capable of designing, building, operating, and maintaining autonomous vehicles in mixed traffic on Bay Street within three years.

So this Phase 1 is only for running AVs on Bay Street and not modifying and putting them up on Skyway infrastructure?

One can run these cars down the street now, like they do in Lake Nona already. The issue will be the urban setting where human movement and driver controlled moves can be unknown and getting them through traffic signals. If successful in having something on Bay within three years, the next challenge would be continuing to push for expansion when people will clearly see these things are either empty or clogging up the road in mixed traffic.

[bl8jaxnative]

If you're talking about minibuses running on a street, there's quite a few.  Heck, IIRC, there's quite a few in Vegas.

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/apr/05/how-does-downtowns-autonomous-bus-work/



personally, I haven't seen any that belong on our streets.  They talk up their testing but to date it's practically bupkiss compared to how much actual driving + movement goes on.

In fact, as far as I know there are currently is not a single one of these minibus vendors that is able to certify that their quasi autonmous vehicles can detect black people as well as they detect white people.  Not one.

[marcuscnelson]

^Interesting. Although it's not clear whether that is much more than a cool gimmick versus being an essential transit spine.

For once, I agree with you. There's not really any evidence that this is anywhere near enough testing compared to the sheer challenge that it is to run on a place like Bay Street. According to the article the max speed is 27mph, whereas I think the limit on Bay is 35, and people are probably driving 40-45.

[thelakelander]

The Vegas thing, like the Bay Street proposal is more a gimmick or experiment than raw, reliable transit. By its very nature, it will not be a transit spine. It's basically a Lake Nona type operation within a more urbanized environment.

[marcuscnelson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-j-r8sU8Ec

I've been bludgeoned to death by jargon. Now you can be too!

[thelakelander]

Nice video but it addressed very little in regards of granny with no cell phone, trying to use mass transit to get from the senior housing facilities in the Cathedral District to a bank or restaurant in Brooklyn or the Northbank. AVs are traveling in mixed traffic on an undivided four lane road configuration, which makes the transportation planner in me worry about safety. All parallel parking on Bay Street is removed for bicycle lanes, which suggests when that video was made, there had been very little to no public engagement with downtown property and business owners.

I assume this thing will have transit stations, shelters and seamless transferring between modes but that wasn't really addressed in the video either. The video is pretty high on promotion and marketing, suggesting the project imay place a higher priority on being an experiment built around testing and trying innovative and emerging technologies than something providing the mobility basics for residents.

Now, the video was very conceptual and promotional, so with everything stated above, I also believe the final product will look nothing like what was illustrated in the video.

[marcuscnelson]

[thelakelander]

Good to see this route won't screw with the Skyway infrastructure. Ambitious with some challenges. For example, it will be very interesting to see how they plan to safely get something that runs around 12mph, across an at-grade expressway to make that left turn into Lot J.

[fieldafm]

Good to see this route won't screw with the Skyway infrastructure. Ambitious with some challenges. For example, it will be very interesting to see how they plan to get safely get something that runs around 12mph, across an at-grade expressway to make that left turn into Lot J.

[Charles Hunter]

Isn't the Lot J Entrance where one of the new signals on New Bay Street will be?

With all the money JTA is spending on this, they couldn't spend a few bucks to get an updated aerial and graphics to show the absence of the Landing, and the Lot J [concept] plans?

[thelakelander]

There may be a signal but the AVs will need to quickly cross three eastbound travel lanes, just east of an interchange at APR. I don't see how they can make it work without having their own dedicated lane in this stretch. This is a stretch that drivers will definitely be gunning it to not stop at one or two lights before ramping back up to either elevated expressway section on either end.

[marcuscnelson]

At JTA's evaluation meeting. Two proposals have been made. More info pending.

[marcuscnelson]

Meeting ended early. Correction, at least two proposals, there have been more meetings than this and it's not clear whether more proposals have been made. Balfour Beatty is leading one group and the other is a consortium with (I think) Haskell, they're being very vague.

Questions have been asked about diversity & inclusion of involved companies, operation in inclement weather, and other technical details.

Apparently at least Balfour Beatty is using multiple AV platforms. Balfour Beatty will have an "AV command center" in Orlando. (Perhaps Beep in Lake Nona is part of this one?) One group apparently has too much based on European standards, not in compliance with Buy America.

One proposal involves magnets for some reason? There's a question about if there are issues with the magnets when repaving.

One man says something about the need to "put our foot on the gas." Question about the possibility of a single point of failure for communication with the AVs. Final comment about looking for a "partner for the next 15 years."

Personally, this was not a confidence-inspiring meeting. I guess it's good to know proposals came in at all, but it sounds like JTA still has a looooooot of questions about how exactly this is all going to work, which to me is rather concerning for something that's supposed to be open in three years.