Urban Jacksonville

photo courtesy of the Times Union

After seeing so much coverage and discussion of Jacksonville’s bus rapid transit system on Metro Jacksonville I was curious to see what the other media outlets around town had to say about the topic. Pretty much nothing is what I found. Here’s the scorecard:

(50+) Metro Jacksonville
(0) First Coast News
(1) News4Jax
(0) Fox30
(0) CBS47
(0) WJCT
(122) Times Union
(?) Folio Weekly

From these numbers you would think the Times Union cares about BRT more than anyone. A close examination of the numbers tell a different story. The most relevant article of the 122 bus rapid transit was written in Spetember by Liz Flaisig: JTA eyes land for transit station. But it’s more about acquiring right-of-way property than an examination of the proposed system. Here’s an excerpt from another beauty, see if you can guess when this was written:

This year, the Jacksonville Transportation Authority plans to start spending $100 million earmarked by the Better Jacksonville Plan to buy property for a 30-mile rapid transit system in which buses would travel in their own lanes, avoiding rush-hour traffic jams.

That would be January 13, 2005 in the article Park-and-ride lots show mass transit hurdles. So the last time any major media in Jacksonville questioned our plan for bus rapid transit was 2005? Almost three years ago? Most of the articles in the 122 Times Union articles are either duplicates, irrelevant or just plain old. Some that date back as far as 2002.

If it seems like I’m picking on the Times Union, I am. They should be asking the same questions and turning over the same rocks as Metro Jacksonville has and continues to do. When a small organization can produce so many good arguments against something that’s costing, or will cost the taxpayers of the city countless millions of dollars, local news hounds should perk up and take notice. And they shouldn’t need to be told to do so by someone like me.

A rapid transit system for our city is one of the most significant decisions being made in the city right now. It will impact us all over the next 20 to 30 years as Jacksonville begins bursting at the seams with people, roads and cars. You would think this is news. Not to Jacksonville. Bus Rapid Transit is not news.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 8:35 am and is filed under Activism, Transit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Joey Marchy

Someone from WJCT sent me links to two stories they ran on the BRT issue. They actually do take a more news oriented approach to the issue as opposed to a PR statement:

http://www.wjct.org/streams/podcast/MAY%2007/may24az.mp3

http://www.wjct.org/streams/podcast/JUNE%2006/jun12km.mp3
jerrycornwell(porgie)

hear! hear! lakelander. its just not rocket science (no offense to lakelanders career path) to figure the best way for jax rapid mass transit. i mean it really makes one wonder whats going on on the side and what it is is criminal.
thelakelander

For the record, the Metro Jacksonville group is not against BRT. We're just against spending $750 million to $1 billion for it when we can have rail for cheaper.

For example, while we agree that BRT would be an asset to Arlington and Regency Mall, we don't like that it is planned to be constructed as an elevated structure in the middle of the Arlington Expressway. We could save a lot more money and still have express buses by using an existing lane on the service roads for bus rapid transit.
9a is my backyard

You're my hero Joey!!! (along with Metro Jacksonville, of course) I understand Met Jax is biased against BRT, but if BRT is such a great system, it should be able to stand up to the questions they raise and since public transit is so expensive and impacts the lives of a lot of people (and could potentially impact more, with the right system) it should at least be seriously debated and other options should be seriously looked at. Jacksonville, please consider other options. And Joey, please consider taking over TU :)
vicupstate

Excellent post/editorial Joey. I wholeheartedly agree. It is unbelieveable that spending $1billion gets virtually no coverage whatsoever. The TV doesn't surprise me much, they concentrate on fluff nonsense/sensationalism anyway, but the TU should devote far more atttention to this.

You would think that a city so averse to the skyway, would at least be interested in something costing 5 times as much.
tony (not once not never)

This bizarreness is par for the course. The links to the media outlets with no coverage should go to Anna Nicole custody shite. You know, things we really care about. That is a hell of a photo though. I have never seen anyone that happy on a bus, ever. Unless it was a bus salesman.
thelakelander

Talk about taking steps back to move forward.

Its a shame that the media is virtually ignoring what's going on behind closed doors at the JTA's offices with this BRT plan. Just wait to you see the exact locations of the properties targeted for bus stations. We should have a list and aerials up tomorrow on the MetroJacksonville site.

Just a hint: One site includes Springfield's long awaited Walgreen's, which is currently now under construction.

Jacksonville’s Bus Rapid Transit is not news

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