Time to cut bait on JTA's driverless Skyway replacement

[fsu813]

^Those "autonomous" vehicles look like they have driver's seats.

Those are for the robot drivers!

[thelakelander]

Wow!

[Jax_Developer]

Nice, one more step in my plan has been released.. yeah this entire thing is hilarious. Incredible someone hasn't made a damaging piece on this nationally yet... I'm sure it will come.

I didn't think Matthew was being sarcastic, but maybe he is with that statement.. IDK. I'm a big fan of the recent advancements of JSU & UNF, but it's extremely fair to say that these universities won't be breaking the AV barrier. Neither will JTA. We should be looking for ways to better utilize existing technology...

P.S. Jax is not a "tech" hub and that narrative is simply misleading. FinTech is widely regarded as not being "Tech" in the industry sense. Makes 0 sense for us to be an AV hub, nationally or globally.. LOL.

[jaxoNOLE]

From a capacity and speed perspective, vans > clown cars, so this is a...win?

Now we just need someone like Bernie Mac to negotiate pricing for us, Ocean's 11 -style.

[thelakelander]

^Why this shaping up to be a $60 million version of the PCT that used to drive people around downtown? Is the plan to also put vans on the Skyway infrastructure? I'd rather keep the Skyway as a monorail system and find a new operator.

[marcuscnelson]

They uploaded the video again. I'm not sure why.

^Why this shaping up to be a $60 million version of the PCT that used to drive people around downtown? Is the plan to also put vans on the Skyway infrastructure? I'd rather keep the Skyway as a monorail system and find a new operator.

I think the idea is that they just use the vans for the Bay Street portion since they're under the gun of the federal deadline, and then by the time the Skyway conversion happens, ZF/ARAIV and Holon would have US factories to order shuttles from. It's unclear to me when/how they'd go about dealing with the vans at that point, possibly either shuffling them to an "Agile Project" in another part of town or Beep sending them elsewhere, since I see Beep branding on the Ford van rendering. Now, why this would mean that Bay Street will cost about twice as much as any First Coast Flyer corridor, I'm not sure.

[thelakelander]

I think the idea is that they just use the vans for the Bay Street portion since they're under the gun of the federal deadline, and then by the time the Skyway conversion happens, ZF/ARAIV and Holon would have US factories to order shuttles from.

It even gives me more pause. After all these years of talking and planning, we still don't have our stuff together. We can't even figure out something as basic as the rolling stock we'll be going with. We still don't know how those little pods and now vans, will ramp up to the Skyway infrastructure along Bay Street. We still don't know if it is possible to get dedicated ROW, when everyone knows that it will be a disaster running these things in mixed traffic (that will be fine if we have people driving vans.....but that defeats the whole purpose of this project). Playing around and changing videos every other week, points to some major PR scrambling. All of this should be major red flags for anyone paying attention, when there's a desire to spend 1/2 billion in tax money on something.

[Jax_Developer]

They uploaded the video again. I'm not sure why.

^Why this shaping up to be a $60 million version of the PCT that used to drive people around downtown? Is the plan to also put vans on the Skyway infrastructure? I'd rather keep the Skyway as a monorail system and find a new operator.

I think the idea is that they just use the vans for the Bay Street portion since they're under the gun of the federal deadline, and then by the time the Skyway conversion happens, ZF/ARAIV and Holon would have US factories to order shuttles from. It's unclear to me when/how they'd go about dealing with the vans at that point, possibly either shuffling them to an "Agile Project" in another part of town or Beep sending them elsewhere, since I see Beep branding on the Ford van rendering. Now, why this would mean that Bay Street will cost about twice as much as any First Coast Flyer corridor, I'm not sure.

Just adds further incompetency to the list of JTA's mishaps. Seriously, imagine how stupid you'd have to be to wait on a foreign manufacturer setting up shop in the states, before an already funded public transit project?

There's a reason why these solutions don't exist in the US... it doesn't make sense in our market. They are novelty items for campuses.

[marcuscnelson]

It looks like there's finally another transit agency willing to throw money at a similar concept to the U2C.

The Contra Costa Transportation Authority near San Francisco, California has announced their plans to establish a 28-mile system of dedicated guideways to operate 4-passenger autonomous shuttles built and operated by Glydways, the same company discussing plans to develop an airport connector in San Jose. A cost estimate for this system was not provided, with a timeline for implementation of "3 to 5 years".

Relevantly, the Executive Director of the CCTA, Tim Haile, appeared on the first episode of the Autonomous Mobility webinar hosted by JTA a few weeks ago.

[Charles Hunter]

It looks like there's finally another transit agency willing to throw money at a similar concept to the U2C.

The Contra Costa Transportation Authority near San Francisco, California has announced their plans to establish a 28-mile system of dedicated guideways to operate 4-passenger autonomous shuttles built and operated by Glydways, the same company discussing plans to develop an airport connector in San Jose. A cost estimate for this system was not provided, with a timeline for implementation of "3 to 5 years".

Relevantly, the Executive Director of the CCTA, Tim Haile, appeared on the first episode of the Autonomous Mobility webinar hosted by JTA a few weeks ago.

Seems to be a big difference between the CCTA and JTA proposals, in the form of "dedicated guideways" versus mixed traffic or an 'AV Only' lane, well, "AV and Bike Only" lane that will probably have cars using it anyway (see the "Bus Only/Right Turn Only" lanes on Broad and Jefferson).

[thelakelander]

4 person vehicles over a 28 mile path? Seems like a waste of money. I would love to see what their cost estimate is for this, in comparison with JTA's U2C. Having dedicated ROW is great. If JTA could secure dedicated ROW/guideways and larger vehicles, I would be a lot more supportive.

[Jax_Developer]

Yeah the problem here is the cost. How much more expensive is this than the ReadiRide? I'm pretty sure its something like 100x. Effectively the same thing.

https://www.jtafla.com/ride-jta/bus-schedules-and-services/readiride/

[thelakelander]

Yes, when you start approaching the cost range of streetcar, LRT, BRT, etc., it's time to reconsider.

[marcuscnelson]

4 person vehicles over a 28 mile path? Seems like a waste of money. I would love to see what their cost estimate is for this, in comparison with JTA's U2C. Having dedicated ROW is great. If JTA could secure dedicated ROW/guideways and larger vehicles, I would be a lot more supportive.

I don't think they've made a cost estimate publicly available yet. The specific cost estimates for the San Jose Airport project that Glydways is also involved in aren't clear either. Although some documents mention a $500 million budget for the overall project, the company claims that:

The SJCP team is confident that our proposed APT system can be successfully delivered for substantially less than the $500 Million maximum project cost requirement.

To provide some comparison, the 2.4 mile Heathrow Airport system near London, which uses similarly sized vehicles and seems to be what Glydways is essentially proposing, cost about $50 million in today's money. If you take that number and extrapolate it to the proposed CCTA system's length, that comes out to… about $588 million. I suppose it's possible that they've somehow found a way to substantially decrease the cost of a fully dedicated alignment, but of course we'd have to let them prove it and hope they're not wrong.

More of the company's claims here:

The CAPEX requirements for the Glydways system is a fraction of the cost to build rail or bus lanes, and because the system is on-demand, its OPEX is also significantly smaller too.

[marcuscnelson]

California's DMV announced today that they would indefinitely suspend Cruise's license to operate self-driving vehicles. The decision comes after the state learned that the company withheld footage of their vehicle dragging an injured pedestrian twenty feet during an attempt to pull over. In a statement, the DMV declared that "the manufacturer’s vehicles are not safe for the public’s operation."