Posted 29 November 2004 - 12:11 AM
City set to start buying land for rapid transit bus system
29-mile network for express buses would pick up passengers at 27 stations
By DAVID BAUERLEIN
The Times-Union
With $100 million in the bank and a stack of studies on the shelf, Jacksonville will start buying land in 2005 for a 29-mile rapid transit system where express buses zip along in their own lanes while picking up passengers at 27 stations in downtown and the suburbs.
The total bill for building the system over a 20-year period will be $611 million, according to estimates by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority. To make good on the blueprint, the JTA must make headway in winning several hundred million dollars in state and federal support.
That will be a daunting challenge because other cities are competing for the same pot of transit cash, but JTA officials said they're optimistic they can build the system in stages.
"It's been through a lot of variations and a lot of study by a lot of people, including citizens," said Ed Castellani, rapid transit director for the JTA. "How fast it gets used and how fast we can get funding is how fast we are going to get it built."
The $100 million already on hand is from the Better Jacksonville Plan, approved by voters in 2000 with a half-cent sales tax increase.
Most of the plan's $1.5 billion in transportation funding is for roadwork, reflecting the fact that cars are the dominant way for people to get around. As Mayor John Peyton said at a recent town hall meeting in East Arlington, "Everybody on the road wants the person in front of them and the person behind them to ride the buses."
The premise behind rapid transit is that building lanes exclusively for buses will make riding the bus more appealing because buses will travel free and clear of the rush-hour congestion that makes driving a hassle.
"We don't have enough money and enough space to build enough roads," Castellani said, referring to long-range transportation studies that show worsening traffic jams citywide in the next 25 years. "As congestion builds, and it will, people will see the difference between sitting in traffic and the speed of transit."
The journey toward rapid transit began in 1997 when the JTA commissioned a report that envisioned a light rail line running from downtown to Gateway mall in north Jacksonville, a second light rail from downtown to Orange Park in Clay County, a third light rail from downtown to Mandarin, and a "busway" with lanes dedicated for buses from downtown to the Regency Square mall area in Arlington.
JTA dropped the idea of light rail because of the high cost. Instead, all the rapid transit routes would use express buses with an eye toward converting the routes to light rail lines in the future if ridership is high enough.
The 2O-year plan also scaled back the size of the system to bring down the cost. The north leg reaches Gateway mall and the east leg still goes to Regency Square mall. But the southwest legs goes only to Wilson Boulevard in Jacksonville, well short of the Clay County line. The southeast leg stops at Baymeadows Road, rather than continuing to Mandarin.
The JTA has estimated the cost of building the system in two ways. In today's dollars, it would cost $476 million. That cost is comparable to estimates for what it would cost to build the proposed "outer beltway" through Clay County and St. Johns County with a new bridge over the St. Johns River.
Because rapid transit won't be built all at once, the JTA also has taken into account inflation and penciled in the figure of $611 million over the 20-year period.
A city typically pays 25 percent of the cost for building rapid transit, along with a 25 percent contribution by the state and 50 percent from the federal government. Based on that formula, Jacksonville's share of the cost would be $153 million.
The JTA's financial forecasts show the agency can achieve the local match by using the $100 million earmarked in the Better Jacksonville Plan and tapping the JTA's current revenue sources for bus service to get the remaining $53 million.
Castellani said the order in which the different phases are built is tentative. However, the agency will definitely start acquiring right of way in 2005 and expects to spend the $100 million from the Better Jacksonville Plan by 2010.
The JTA is banking on being able to share state Department of Transportation right of way at no cost for the bus lanes. Most of the Better Jacksonville Plan funding will purchase the property for the transit stations, Castellani said.
The JTA's study has identified general areas for stations but not specific pieces of property. One station might be in the northeast corner of Interstate 95 and Baymeadows Road, where a home-building company proposes to build condominiums on what's now the Baymeadows Golf Club course. At a town hall meeting on that proposed development, residents who live along the golf course laughed derisively at the notion that rapid transit would help traffic congestion on Baymeadows Road.
The JTA also faced neighborhood-based opposition when it considered buying land at Atlantic Boulevard and San Pablo Road for a transit site with a park-and-ride lot. The authority pulled the plug on that earlier this year after deciding the future route for rapid transit to the Beaches communities would run down Beach Boulevard.
In cities that already have rapid transit, a growing trend in real estate development is "transit-oriented development" around stations, according to a September report by the Federal Transit Administration. Those living near transit stations own fewer cars than the region as a whole, are more likely to rent an apartment than own a home and prefer living in a denser development where they're close not only to the transit station, but also to stores and restaurants.
"I don't think it's ever too soon to start planning for that," said Jeannie Fewell, director of the city's Department of Planning and Development. "Whether it's too soon for it to reach a point where it's faster for people to get out of their cars and take a dedicated bus [lane], that's really an individual choice."
david.bauerleinjacksonville.com, (904) 359-4581
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