A.G. Gancarski
The long-awaited JTA presentation to the Jacksonville Transportation, Energy, and Utilities Committee on the way forward for the much-maligned Skyway finally occurred on Monday afternoon.
Scheduled originally for a committee meeting in September, scheduling confusion pushed back the original presentation.
The options on the table range from overhauling vehicles, creating new vehicles, decommissioning the Skyway once obsolete, or decommissioning the structure and repurposing it into a pedestrian walkway or similar structure.
Brad Thoburn, representing the JTA as VP of Planning and Development, described the subcommittee of JTA board members as well as a larger advisory group, as a vehicle for presenting a report on December 10 with recommendations with an eye toward “stakeholder input.”
From there, the business case for a path forward will be constructed.
The Skyway, as Thoburn related, was formulated in the 1970s as a way of alleviating downtown congestion, parking, and air quality, and would help mitigate impacts of growth.
Of course, Thoburn added, “conditions had changed” downtown by the time the Skyway was built.
Downtown went from boom to tomb in slightly over a decade, and is still recovering.
Yet the skyway was built anyway, as just one of three “downtown people mover” projects in the United States.
Viewed as the “vehicle of the future,” Thoburn noted that the Skyway didn’t quite reach that lofty threshold.
Thoburn observed that ridership had increased in recent years, with bus routes no longer competing with the Skyway, and with a fare-free policy providing extra incentive.
“People don’t see folks boarding… sometimes you don’t see folks boarding,” Thoburn said, before showing a time lapse video demonstrating what he represented as robust ridership in one car of the Skyway on July 4.
With that ridership in mind, “this is an asset to the community” that “warrants careful assessment and consideration.”
The positives: the infrastructure, beyond drainage issues, is in good shape according to Thoburn.
To maintain that, $24 million will be needed over the next 15 years.
Another $15 to $19 million will be needed, said Thoburn, to ward off technological obsolescence.
And vehicle overhaul, which may not be doable, would cost $18 million; new vehicles, meanwhile, would run $35 million.
A new system, such as a streetcar system or an Orlando-style personal rapid transit system, would have to be integrated with the extant system.
Overhaul seems to be a non-starter for “the industry,” but Thoburn believes that has high risk attached.
Payback obligations are also a factor into the decision. If the system is decommissioned sooner than later, payback costs, especially to the Federal Transit Administration, would be prohibitive.
Another cost: removing the infrastructure, which would be $20 to $25 million, and would be, said Thoburn, “highly disruptive to the downtown environment.”
Costs for a path forward range from roughly $65 million to repurpose to $85 million for the new vehicle solution.
Meanwhile, the direct operating cost for the Skyway will run $5.4 million this year.
There would be no linear decommissioning; essentially, that would involve cars falling beyond repair until the system as a whole was rendered obsolete.
These solutions may not satisfy the whims of those who want the Skyway expanded throughout the Urban Core; the system would not be expanded, but simply maintained.
Defaulting on a grant agreement, which decommissioning would involve, simply can’t happen, as it would erode JTA’s institutional credibility going forward.
For those concerned about the future of what Councilman Tommy Hazouri called “the little train that couldn’t,” the next few months are pivotal.
Pivotal for downtown development. Pivotal for the integration of downtown and the urban core. Pivotal for the future of mass transit in Jacksonville.
However, those big picture questions about the future of the Skyway have one necessary prerequisite: addressing the dated system of the past.
