Damen Avenue subway stop in Chicago

Damen Avenue subway stop in Chicago. Oh the mass-transity, bike chocked goodness.

Michael Lewyn is working on a project called Car Free in Jacksonville. Car Free in Jacksonville aims to help you get around Jacksonville without a car. When Michael arrived in Jacksonville he didn’t have a way to get around so he started this project. The first half describes the mechanics of JTA. Next he goes on to write about neighborhoods and their transit profile.

Over the coming weeks we will post segments from Michael’s project. Car Free in Jacksonville is still in its formative stages so any feedback is welcome. Michael hopes that the comments from the blog will improve and enhance his work.

Why am I posting this? Michael emailed me to let me know about his project and I was interested immediately. I think transportation is a huge issue in our sprawling and ever-expanding metropolis. I hope to provide information that can help people or shine a light on this issue. On with the show. If you want to get in touch with Michael, leave a comment and he will contact you.

I. INTRODUCTION (Or, Why would anyone read this?)

Tell natives that you found a website about getting around Jacksonville without a car and you might hear a surprised, “That’s ridiculous—you can’t get around Jacksonville without a car!”

Of course, Jacksonville is more auto-oriented than many American cities: there is no subway or light rail system, bus routes run only every half an hour at most, most buses stop running at around 8 or 9 PM, and many destinations are just too far from each other for public transit to make sense.

So why would I waste time creating this website? And who would be interested in reading it?

To start with, not everyone can be part of the car culture. 9.3% of Jacksonville households own no car, according to the 2000 Census. Many people are physically incapable of driving due to age or disability, or can’t afford a reliable car. Others (including me as of the time I am writing this) are new to town and haven’t gotten a car yet.

Even if you do own a car, you might want to learn how use your car a bit less- for example, to see if you can at least avoid driving to work so you don’t have to waste time stuck in traffic or throw your money down the rat hole of unstable gas prices. Moreover, you can see a city differently on foot or on a bus; you can focus on scenery instead of on protecting yourself from other drivers.

The purpose of this website is to help you do this – that is, to help you get around Jacksonville without a car to the extent possible. The website focuses on public transit because I am not familiar enough with bicycling to add bike-related content (though if any reader wants to do so I shall be glad to accept his or her assistance).

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 8:29 am and is filed under Transit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.