We recently took the Brightline from Orlando to Ft Lauderdale and man Jax just keeps slipping further and further down the list of "top" cities in the state. It's been said countless times on this site, but the leadership in Jacksonville hasn't been fit for office for decades. It's truly astounding how bad and stagnant things have been up there.
Anyyyways, back on topic... Ft Lauderdale, West Palm, Boca, Miami, etc, etc have teamed up with "Circuit". The easiest way to describe it is a driver-based EV version of what U2C was proposed to be. Immediately after you step out of the train station they have customer service agents there who explain that it's a free-to-use service funded by the city and there are no strings attached. They will take you anywhere within a 5 mile radius. Once you enter one of the vehicles (they're kind of like mini bus golf carts), the driver will explain how it works, where you can go, and give you info about the city, things to do, and events happening. The best part about it is you can use their app to schedule pick-up in advance OR you can just wave one of them down like a NYC cab. The app is stupid simple to use and the only limiting factor we faced was weekday hours (we're night owls).
Someone needs to throw all of JTA's leadership into one of their outdated buses and force them to take notes on the entire trip via bus to Orlando. Hold their hands to get them through the "super-advanced" train station and settle them into their seat on the train with some prune juice and Ritz crackers. Once they get to South Florida and are helped to the exit, Circuit can drive them around the cities to their hearts content. HOPEFULLY they write competent legible notes for the interns who change their diapers and actually make the decisions back home.
It's not that hard. The city doesn't need to swing for the fences. There are working solutions out there that require 0 multimillion dollar "studies", extremely limited changes to infrastructure, are easy for even the technological uninclined to use, gives visitors some usable info, and makes it safe for them to get from point a-b without having to walk through 10 homeless encampments and past 6 blocks of empty and closed store fronts.
If that fails at least it's not $100's of millions flushed down the drain from conception to implementation. In the 8 years that they've accomplished literally nothing, they could have implemented something like that for the same amount that's been wasted on countless studies, travel, meetings, etc and at least they'd have something to say, "see we did something semi useful during our term".
It's not rocket science that if you do something like that and it's successful, THEN, maybe then, you can justify spending a little more on the next thing. Once you get some real-world data on hot routes, expected vs provided radius, peak hour usage, etc you'll have some real-world evidence of where to put that extra money. That is the logical thing to do over lighting millions on fire for an money grubbing firm to give you a new paper weight book full of useless, outdated info that probably recommends you use their partners expensive services.
If anyone responsible for managing anything at JTA has made read this far please, for the love of God, just use some common sense and look at what other cities around Jax are doing. Just stop whatever you're doing and take a few weeks to vacation in other Florida cities. Force yourself to use their public transit. If you like something, note it. If you don't like something, note it. Take those notes and attempt to put some time on the other cities Transit Authority's calendars. Revisit them, even the ones you don't like. Talk to the people who pay for the system, maintain the system and people who actually use the system. I'm sure they all can tell you what they did right, what they would've done different, and what's on the table for the next discussion about improvements.
No city is perfect and shooting for the stars sounds great, but it means nothing if you can't even afford to pull the trigger.
Yours Truly,
Born and Raised, Long Time Jax (former) Resident Who Cares Way Too Much About Their Old Home Town
