Problems, Problems, Problems
Downtown Jacksonville's Transportation Problem
In theory, our approach to downtown Jacksonville’s transportation problem makes sense. It’s the practice that’s problematic.
A Little Pragmatism
Our late 19th Century American philosopher William James thought that pragmatism defined the American character, that by our very nature Americans favor what works over holding fast to theories and ideologies. Pragmatism, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, is “the quality of dealing with a problem in a sensible way that suits the conditions that really exist, rather than following fixed theories, ideas, or rules.”
Before designing a solution to any problem, we must first understand the conditions that exist—the problem—that we wish to change. Those understandings help us invent more likely to succeed practical solutions that address problems as they exist, not some theoretical problems.
For pragmatists, experience matters, and learning from past experience matters maybe more. Maybe we could call it common sense.
A Conundrum for Sure
Which puts us in mind of our Jacksonville Skyway, that once upon a time futuristic solution to some people moving problem that has morphed into a monstrous conundrum, an intricate and difficult problem to solve. A migraine.
Designed some 40 years ago to move people along a 2.5 mile stretch that connects our North and Southbank, this people mover—the one that moves almost no people—is, according to Visit Jacksonville, currently free, operates Monday-Friday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Saturday-Sunday, but only for special events.
Not only are our Skyway vehicles obsolete and go almost nowhere any people wish to go, that weekend schedule should tell us everything. There are no people to move on the people mover.
Our Urban Transportation Future
Jacksonville’s Transportation Authority (JTA) is attempting to address this conundrum as it modernizes our downtown transportation system. Calling its current design the “Ultimate Urban Circulator,” or U2C for short, our updated system depends upon NAVI (neighborhood autonomous vehicle innovation), or driver-less vehicles. The plan is to move people around downtown and from Brooklyn, San Marco, and Riverside into downtown, no different from what the Skyway promised to do, with one notable exception.
While both systems depend upon technology and not humans as drivers, NAVI can go anywhere a street goes, while Skyway vehicles are fixed on a monorail. NAVI is flexible and adaptable in ways Skyway is not. Consequently, our late 20th Century Skyway presents an expensive conundrum for our 21st Century.
Our current problem: what to do with our 20th Century overhead monster that does not fit into our 21st Century U2C world?
JTA knows we must deal with this elevated problem, and is contemplating several proposals: remove the elevated tracks; convert the tracks into a walking trail, similar to New York City’s High Line; or continue to use the existing tracks but modernize its vehicles and tracks to accommodate newer technologies.
Bummer. Each and every one of these proposals comes with a cost. No doubt JTA will not be able to please all the people, whether or not we ride the people mover.
Existing Conditions, Then and Now
Imagined in the mid-1980’s, the Skyway’s first leg opened in 1989 with its current iteration completed in 1998. At the time, roughly 65,000 people worked downtown. Today, according to Downtown Vision’s 2025 State of Downtown Report, 47,000 people do. Thirty-seven percent of these workers, or 17,000 people, work part of the work week from some other location, but not downtown, leaving a full-time downtown workforce of 30,000.
That’s more or less half the number of people for whom we envisioned and built our elevated Skyway.
The Problem Behind the Problem: Parking
We designed the Skyway to remove individual cars from downtown Jacksonville. The design suggests that downtown commuters and visitors would park their cars in peripheral garages and catch the Skyway into downtown. And once there, these folks might step aboard the driverless autonomous vehicles to traverse downtown, east-west from what will be the Stadium of the Future to the Prime Osborn, and north-south from State Street to the St. Johns River.
Makes sense. Until it doesn’t make sense.
This system might work in cities that have automobile congestion problems, but we do not have such problems. We’ve created a solution to what might be some future condition, but it’s not a solution to any existing condition. In fact, Google AI estimates downtown Jacksonville is awash in parking availability, with roughly 45,000 spaces.
Do the math people: 30,000 downtown workers working downtown full time + 45,000 individual car parking spaces = a failed downtown people mover system.
Our system is designed for failure, unless we can create a congestion problem by removing parking. While we hold our breath, we must recognize that people have zero incentive—whether they work downtown or just come for a visit—to ditch their cars in favor of public transportation. Nada.
Existing Conditions
All of which suggests we must better understand conditions as they exist.
Do we know why historic downtown’s largest employers—those whose employees number in the hundreds—abandon downtown?
Do we understand what a problem our parking overabundance has become? If so, do we have a plan to reduce our parking space supply, and fill in these ugly, uninviting blank spaces with something more productive and conducive to human well-being?
Loss of people and parking abundance are existing conditions we might wish to know more about.
JTA’s Solution
Wherever they come out on our Skyway conundrum—tear it down, repurpose it, modernize it—JTA’s board will vote in June on which option it thinks most realistically addresses our downtown transportation problem.
Me? I would say that there’s something to be said for tearing it down, removing this elevated reminder that we pursued a solution to a problem we simply did not have. Maybe we should stop trying to fit this past mistake into our future.
Besides, when it comes to tearing down, we have expertise and a track record. Over the past few years, we have torn down or blown up The Landing, our former City Hall and county courthouse, River City Brewing, the Florida Times-Union building, and the downtown bus station. We look forward to tearing down the Haskell Building, the Museum of Science and History, and eventually our county jail.
Whatever the JTA board decides, we hope they understand that we do not want NAVI, which promises to move people from the surrounding neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Riverside, and San Marco into and out of downtown, to morph into a future Skyway problem.
I confess -- I was on the original citizens' committee back in the 1980s that made recommendations for the new "people mover." JTA did not heed my recommendations on where or how to build it. The resulting "Skyway Express" in Jacksonville has never worked and is horrendously ugly. It ate Downtown. Tear it down, and then let's redesign our urban streetscape for beauty and shade. I would love to return to street cars, with tracks connecting Downtown with Springfield, East Jax, the Sports Complex, Riverside, and San Marco. But as long as we have more parking spaces Downtown than we do people, street cars would not work either.
In the past when the excellent idea of tearing down the skyway was brought up, it was said (probably by JTA) that we’d have to repay the federal government a massive amount of money for essentially wasting government funds. Like over $100 million in government fund, in 1990 dollars. If that is still true, then it would cost substantially more to tear this albatross down than knocking down concrete and hauling it away.
Question: who wants to tear down the Haskell building? That’s a new idea to me.