Urban Jacksonville

Shopping cart with a bike lock. Ocean and Union Street, Jacksonville

Part three of Car Free in Jacksonville offers ideas for shopping without a car. Check out part one and part two of Car Free in Jacksonville if you missed them last week. In this installment Michael talks about the basics of shopping without a car. Everything from a two-wheeled, folding shopping cart, to taxis and rental cars.

Someone emailed me last week with a little more information on the author of the Car Free in Jacksonville study, Michael Lewyn. Here is what he had to say:

Michael Lewyn is (in my opinion) a relatively noteworthy legal commentator on the subject of urbanism and sprawl. He has written several very compelling articles on why government overmanagement – not the free market – is the clear cause of sprawl.

I would highly encourage everyone to download his articles on sprawl at SSRN.com (just search with his name “Lewyn”). They are really quite good.

I think it’s very exciting that he’s apparently now teaching at Florida Coastal Law. I think he had been up at Georgetown? I hope he sticks around in Jax for awhile.

III. SHOPPING WITHOUT A CAR – AND USING SOMEONE ELSEÃ¢â‚¬â„¢S (TAXIS, RENTAL CARS ETC.)

A. The Basics
One common question my friends ask is: Can you shop without a car? Short answer: yes. Even if you are buying too many things to carry in a shoulder bag or with your hands, you can bring them home by:

a) using a two-wheeled, folding shopping cart, often available at hardware stores and maybe even grocery stores. Using one of these carts you can roll home moderately heavy items without putting a strain on your back or arms. Using a cart avoids the problems of having to juggle dozens of bags or deciding whether or not to buy heavy things – with a cart, unless it’s really, really big, you can carry it yourself.

b) Taking a taxicab home. When I took a taxicab home from the nearest Office Depot (about a mile and a half according to Mapquest) it cost me about $5 plus a tip. (And I strongly recommend tipping generously; Jacksonville is small enough that unless you use a different cab company on every trip, your odds of seeing the same cabbie twice are high).

For buying furniture, remember that many stores will deliver heavy items to your door, though usually at a charge. (Or you can rent a truck!)

B. Speaking of Taxis….
You probably will not be able to hail a cab in Jacksonville; population here is simply not dense enough to support that many cabs. Instead, you will have to call a cab. Here are the phone numbers of a few cab companies:
Abc Cab Co. 765-9999
Checker Cab 355-9911
Citi-Cab 357-4646
Eagle Cab 779-8983
Gator City 355-8294
Hurri Cab 355-1010
Unimet Taxicab 786-4252
Yellow Cab 260-1111
All of these phone numbers are in area code 904.

C. Renting A Car
Most nationwide rental car companies have offices in Jacksonville. These facilities are not limited to airports; for example, Enterprise Rent-A-Car (www.enterprise.com) has about 20 Jacksonville locations. Some other companies include Avis (www.alamo.com) , Hertz (www.hertz.com) , Budget (www.budget.com), Dollar (www.dollar.com) and National (www.nationalcar.com) . In addition, U-Haul (www.uhaul.com) rents trucks from numerous Jacksonville locations.

Be aware that quoted rates do not always include insurance. However, some major credit cards (especially American Express) have rental car insurance coverage for all cardholders. So before buying insurance from the rental car company, check with your credit card company first.

tags: jacksonville, jta, car free, public transportation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 8:25 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.

Travis

Using a cab everyday in Jacksonville is pretty costly. Back when I was doing debug work I took one twice a day and it ran me about $500/month. Also, almost every cab company in town is owned by Gator City now, Yellow and Checker were their two biggest competitors and they bought them out. The ones that aren’t owned by Gator tend to be super-ghetto.
John

The picture of the shopping cart locked to the sign is on Ocean St. It’s been there for ages and I see it everyday on the way home from work. I am sick of seeing it.
John

The cart was gone when I drove by it last night. Did this story cause it to be removed??? Good job, if so!
http://lewyn.tripod.com/blog Michael Lewyn

Thanks to Travis for reminding me to clarify what I meant: I meant not to suggest daily cab use, but to point out that a cab is a fine car substitute once in a while (e.g. for a weekly shopping trip). Of course, using a cab daily is as expensive as driving. When I turn this into a website I will have to add some clarifying language.
http://www.urbanjacksonville.info joeymarchy

No actually the cart was moved south a block to the parking lot on Ocean just before Union Street
John

Oh, go figure… You know, theres another one locked to a sign closer to the bus station near FCCJ as well. Atleast there was a week or so ago, I made a trip after seeing it to see if the other was on Ocean that day and it was, so apparently its not just one person doing this. They both appeared to have the same lock and wire chain holding it to the sign. I may invest in a bolt cutter and start chopping them off and taking the carts back to Winn Dixie in the back of my truck… :)

Car Free in Jacksonville part three

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