Note: this post is intentionally long, take the weekend to absorb and think about it. I encourage you to watch the videos and explore the sites I link to in this post. Please leave your thoughts and plan on a live Urban Jacksonville Chat event to discuss these issues next week.
I’ve always been a supporter of public transportation, but I never connected it 100% to the future health of Jacksonville. To me public transportation was an environmental issue. Fewer people driving means cleaner air, better world, right?
I spent some time last weekend looking into the issue and realized we need to start investing in transportation planning now if we want Jacksonville to be livable and attractive in 20 years.
Let me take you on my journey of discovery from last weekend. It began with Tony Allegretti’s recommendation of Streetsblog:
Streetsblog is a daily news source, online community and political mobilizer for the Livable Streets movement.
Exploring the site led me to the documentary Blueprint America: Road to the Future. While it was corny in places, it got me thinking more about transportation:
An original documentary on the country’s aging and changing infrastructure, goes to three very different American cities – Denver, New York and Portland, and their surrounding suburbs – to look at each as a microcosm of the challenges and possibilities the country faces as citizens, local and federal officials, and planners struggle to manage a growing America with innovative transportation and sustainable land use policies.
The segment on Portland really teed up the big payoff for me, which was watching the Portland episode of the PBS Series e:2 on Transportation. Earlier in the week my friend Shann Batten, owner of nestliving, recommended I watch the episode. I did. It changed me and what I want for this city. You can buy it for 1.99 on iTunes. I highly recommend it.
My main takeaway from both shows is transit planning cannot be done in two years, but we can start planning now. Also, we should take a serious look at a street car line with a permanent track to link our urban neighborhoods.
We can start by “reconnecting our urban core neighborhoods with fixed mass transit“, as Ennis Davis from Metro Jacksonville said in a comment he left on this blog last week.
This post could not have had better timing with today’s release of the Metro Jacksonville post Jacksonville Should Love A Streetcar: Ten Reasons. The writing is on the wall today!
Well-conceived streetcars do much more for a city besides move people from point A to point B. As fixed-rail transit, they uniquely shape urban land-use, development, and growth patterns. The “streetcar effect” serves to stimulate desirable development along the line. In fact, streetcar lines shaped how most American cities (including Austin) developed in the early 1900s. – Jacksonville Should Love A Streetcar: Ten Reasons
We discussed this issue Tuesday night on Urban Jacksonville Weekly, you can find it around minute 23:00. During the discussion I make a case for installing fixed rail, mass transit by arguing it will double property values on either side of the rail line and qaudruple values nears transit stops. Cool eh? The video below is about the modern streetcar in Portland.
The Modern Streetcar, Portland
Imagine a free, or event paid, streetcar that connects Downtown to the stadium via Bay Street. Maybe the streetcar turns North on A. Philip Randolf and runs through Oakland to Springfield. From Springfield it could turn South through LaVilla to 5 Points and Riverside, then back Downtown.
Streetcars promote growth add economic development in a myriad of different ways. The make downtown housing more affordable, bring in more customers to support downtown retail, improve property values, create a more vibrant city, and increase public safety by keeping more eyes on the street which improves the overall business climate.
The Streetcar is a powerful tool for stimulating economic development. In Portland (Oregon) an investment of $72 million dollars has yielded $2.28 billion in economic development, 7,248 housing units, 4.6 million sf of office, institutional, retail and hotel uses, and allowed the number of cars per unit of housing to be reduced. – Stimuluswatch.org
A recent Denver Post story noted property values had increased 4 percent along the Southeast light rail line – the Post called it “the money train” – while declining by 7.5 percent regionwide. Portland’s Pearl District has seen property values increase more than 1,000 percent along its streetcar line since 2001, while Tampa has seen increases of up to 400 percent. Another recent study found property values along the light rail system in Dallas increased 50 percent from 2005 to 2007, noting that existing and planned development near stations would bring in an additional $127 million in tax revenues a year. – Capturing the Value of Transit
Could a streetcar help jump start Bay Street, strengthen the Oakland neighborhood and revive LaVilla? Let’s continue to refine and make our public spaces the best they can be, but also open up the transit discussion.
In an attempt to get the discussion started, we’ve invited and confirmed representatives from JTA to guest host a transit edition of Urban Jacksonville Weekly. We’re in the process of confirming times, but that show will be coming soon. I’m also planning a live Urban Jacksonville chat next week to discuss this post and other transit issues.
Mayor Peyton commented in his press conference that “it’s possible to make Jacksonville a great city, because other cities have done it.” He said it much more eloquently but, now is the time to start planning for our future.
Some Other Articles I Liked
How Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan Manages to Be Equal Parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses
Keeping Talent (& their kids) in Cities
The Mysterious Math of Cities and Math and the City
Florida High Speed Rail – Brain Dead In Florida
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