Trolley now rolls through Riverside, but at weird times
03/19/08 • Posted in: Downtown Jacksonville, Riverside, Transit by Joey Marchy 11 Comments »
The Riverside Avondale Preservation blog reported yesterday the new Riverside Trolley service is set to begin running Monday, May 5, 2008. When I read that I was like “Oh hell yeah! Public transportation for Riverside to Downtown commuters. Nice move COJ and JTA. Way to support public transportation.”
Then I read a little further and got to the operating hours:
Monday - Friday from 10:45 am to 2:30 pm
Huh? My first thought was “What about the people who live in Riverside and work Downtown and what about the weekends!” I was pretty angry thinking JTA is missing a great opportunity to encourage public transportation for people who live in Riverside and work downtown. Not to mention no weekend hours. Sheesh.
Then I realized JTA would seriously cannibalize their bus fares during those peak hours. With trolley rates at $0.50 per rider and bus fares at $1.00 they’d be losing $0.50 cent per rider.
Loading …
The only reasoning I can think of for those hours is getting people from Downtown to Riverside on their lunch break.
FAIL. Nights and weekends would rule.
It would be awesome if the trolley ran nights and weekends. If I lived in Riverside, I’d ride it in a heartbeat to go out downtown on the weekends or for dinner during the week. Who wants to drive? And it would definitely beat riding a bike between the two areas when it’s dark out.
at the JTA meeting I went to they explained that the trolleys were entirely to service the megacorps on Riverside Avenue during lunch. so they can go to five points or downtown on their breaks. I forgot this. It would be wonderful to have rapid, consistent transit through the urban core, ALL through it. Like, it’s more of a pain in the ass to bike to the South Bank than anything. If we had “trolley” service over there, back downtown, up to Springfield…oh well. I think someone should set up a commuter van service like they have along Flatbush, in Brooklyn. You pay a dollar to these gypsy cab van drivers and go anywhere along Flatbush Avenue that you want. It’s great! We might not have the density for it though.
oh man. i’ll probably be working downtown this summer. if they would run a trolley during commuting hours, that would be great. i don’t want to pay to park downtown, and it would be a bit much to ride my bike in a suit.
They should just charge a dollar like the other buses and connect downtown, springfield, riiverside and san marco.
Well, maybe if the lunch time trolley is a success and people actually use it, they will expand the service. Now is the time to support this service and show there is a demand for this service.
Unfortunately, unless you work on Riverside Avenue between Downtown and Five Points, there’s little much one can do to support such a service with limited hours.
Its failure or success rests on its attractability to BCBS, St. Joe, Haskell, Fidelity, Everbank and the TU….not the community.
typical JTA
I would say that the mega corps that are a part of the
communtiy, seeing as they employ thousands of people
for example, myself. I would LOVE the service to run
from at least 7 am to 6 pm weekdays and hopefully one
day include nights and weekends. Even if during peak
hours if they raised the price, with gas prices still on
the rise I think people will be happy to pay it.
I’d agree, if they were running them during rush hour. However, it looks like its set up to either succeed or fail totally based on lunch hour for a few firms, which really pinholes its probability of long term survival. Hopefully, I’m wrong on this one and it will grow to expand or be replaced by a real streetcar system, before the majority on these blogs have grandkids.