I’m happy to announce in association with Wingard Creative, Black Sheep Restaurant Group (Orsay/Chew), RAP and of course JTA the Riverside Trolley will run until Midnight on Wednesday November 3rd. This will be ArtWalk’s 7th birthday and we’re bringing this awesome present!

This is a trial run and if successful it’s something we could see more of for ArtWalk. Please find a way to ride the trolley on November 3rd. The more people we have, the better, as we’re trying to reach a very modest goal. If you’re unsure how to ride the trolley, this simple instructional video will show you everything you need, compliments of Wingard Creative. Tony Allegretti says so far, so good and this:

The trolley is just $1 each way, and sure, its just a bus that looks like a trolley, BUT, think about how awesome it will be to not have to deal with parking and traffic. Leave the driving to JTA!

The trolley will run at 35 minute intervals and we are working on getting a map with all stops. Come back and get updates!

If that wasn’t enough, the November ArtWalk is also the Movember ArtWalk in honor of beards and men’s health. There will be an art show at the 229 Hogan Street Studio. I (DJ ‘Mo) will be DJing with with DJ Debo on the 1′s and 0′s. So definitely make it out for that.

More about Movember

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days.

I grabbed a few pics of the new JTA bus shelter being unveiled today. What are your thoughts? I’m reserving judgment for a bit. If you want to see them, get down to Bay and Main in Downtown Jacksonville. There’s also a media event this morning at 10am.

View All Photos

• Unveiling of JTA’s first new downtown bus shelters
• Wednesday, July 28 at 10 a.m. JTA representatives will be onsite until 11
  a.m. to answer questions.
• Northeast corner of Bay and Main streets

In partnership with the Downtown Development Review Board, the new shelters were designed to reflect the character of the Downtown area and to support JTA’s green initiatives. Special features of the shelters include solar lighting, mesh walls for better air circulation, new trash receptacles, bike racks and maps of the entire JTA system.

The paint used on the shelters consists of low volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which minimizes the negative effects paint can have on air quality. Some of the shelters also incorporate panels that can accommodate advertising.

This is the first of 24 new shelters to be installed downtown with 50 additional shelters coming online throughout the JTA service area.

Another phase of the Downtown shelter project will be the placement of 30 shelters for bus rapid transit along the BRT alignment in Downtown scheduled for completion in late 2012.

In the middle of yesterday’s push to build support for the Riverside Trolley once funding ends in September, I began hearing the trolley will be extended and not sent to the corner with our other tried transit ideas.

Metro Jacksonville is saying the trolley will now push into Avondale and service will be extended to weekends, they have an article scheduled to run tomorrow with all the updated information.

We still need to push for support so I encourage everyone to come out to the public meetings this Friday at JTA offices downtown to show love for our little fixed rail gateway drug, the Riverside Trolley.

I’ve set up a Facebook event to Get Jacksonville Back on Tracks which has all the details of Friday’s public meeting. If you can’t make it you can always show your love for the trolley online with a few choice comments.

Friday · 11:00am – 1:00pm
JTA Offices Downtown
100 N Myrtle Avenue
Jacksonville, FL

Friday July 23rd from 11am to 1pm the Jacksonville Transit Authority will host a public hearing to present proposed changes to the transit system (including Riverside Trolley) that go into effect September 6, 2010. Support for the proposed Riverside Trolley service is critical to its continued success.

The amazing Art Behind the Fridge boys contributed cover art to this Urban Jacksonville Mixtape. You won’t meet a nicer pair of dudes in the city. They’re always involved in the art community and we’re lucky to have them. Thanks to you Nick and Jim!

Download Urban Jacksonville Mixtape #13

If you like what you hear, you can get more tonight at First Friday’s in 5 Points. I’ll be DJing at Underbelly from 9 till close. Treehouse Yall! Nick Fresh will be there from 6-9 and there will be a show featuring art from the famous Jacksonvillian Jim Draper.

On To The News

Credit: I’m Board IV from Tara Kane

Credit: I’m Board IV from Kicksluvme904

It was an epic FAIL to miss last night’s I’m Board IV. I heard it was awesome. Until next year! Here’s some footage from my friend Dennis, now let the rest of the photos and videos roll in!

I’m Board Art Show from Thought & Theory on Vimeo.

Re-imagining JTA

The Concept Design students at the Art Institute have been working on a JTA re-design project. The studente have re-envisioned the logo, the bus stop sign, bus wrap and bus stops.

You can see all of their work on the class blog.

Springfield Car Wash Heading for Appeal

The Springfield car was hype machine is revving back up
Silas Jones is probablly silently singing that O Jay’s song to him self: they smile up in your face, backstabbers. Last month Silas’ carwash was approved by the SPAR and now there are behind-the-scenes efforts to get the approval reversed by some on the SPAR board.

Many supporters of the carwash say this negatively impacts the development of the neighborhood by devoting energy to sqaushing a project instead of working with the business owner to help him push his project forward. At this point Silas Jones has spent about $400,000, according to some.

Quick Hits

Abel Harding says Jaguars should market to women
Fogle Art Gallery to close
Lomax Lodge (aka Shantytown 2) to open on 2/15
Why Jacksonville Should Immediately Invest In Rail
Late Night Cookery with Bert Noshirt

This morning on First Coast Connect at 9:00 we’ll be discussing the City Council’s decision to allow the JTA to hire an independent company to build dozens of bus shelters around town these would be paid for with print advertisements that would appear on the shelters.

Opponents of this move have argued it would lead to lawsuits and too much visual blight. However, advocates say this is a win for lower-income residents of the city who regularly ride JTA buses and have had to wait at bus stops with no shelter in rain and heat.

This is a good idea and adds to our cities competitive advantage when it comes to public transportation. Metro Jacksonville has two great articles on this topic.

While some may view the bus shelter discussion as simply an aesthetic one, it’s actually an issue that will determine the direction of our city’s economic future. A look around the country reveals that quality mass transit is one of the top urban amenities that appeals to the creative class. It is a critical element in the recruiting of highly skilled and educated workers that are essential for the new economy. Locally, mass transit happens to be one of Jacksonville’s major weaknesses.

From Bus Shelter Advertising Debate headed to City Council on Metro Jacksonville. They also take a look how how Boston successfully implemented bus shelters with advertising in the article Bus Shelters Done Right.

Here are links to articles on Jacksonville.com which detail the dissenting views on allowing a private company to build new bus shelters.

Building bus shelters with ads stirs debate through Jacksonville
Bus shelter battle heads to Jacksonville City Council

Listen and Subscribe

Download audio file (urban-jacksonville-weekly-episode34.mp3)
Subscribe with iTunes

You can now listen right now, click the play button above.

Topics and Poll on the new Time Slot

BYOT – Bring Your Own Topic Day!
New time slot? – Tony has a “job”
Morning show?

[poll=12]

Nation’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood
not much of a neighborhood
from walletpop.com

Jags tix @ RAM
Jags experience
TU article – What if we lose the Jaguars

Joey and Abel on WJCT tomorrow
First Coast Connect 89.9

Jack gonna be on TV y’all!
CW17 Your Jax Music
Saturdays 10pm, Sundays 6:30pm

Jacksonville commuter rail would be costly
Costly but neccesary
Lines based on existing rail to Yulee, Green Cove, St. Augustine

Uptown Market
don’t watch the video
Jack loves the pickles and the tomato basil soup

Jacksonville now owns shell that was Genovar’s Hall
coming down?
historic jazz venue

Recommendations

Jonathan – Totem (If You Got ‘Em) @ Bogda October 3rd
Jack – Bright Orange CD Release Party @TSI September 30
Joey – 8th Annual Oyster Roast (St. John’s Riverkeeper)
Tony – Springfield Music Festival (not Project Backpack @ RAM) @ Three Layers October 3rd

NEXT WEEK: Chef from Taverna

Music

Wednesday, September 30
TSI
Bright Orange CD Release Party
w/ Omebi

Thursday, October 1
Doozer’s Pub
Routine Scheme (Boynton Beach, FL)
Skatterbrain
Grabbag (Gainesville/Duval)

Friday, October 2
Plush
Lamb of God
GWAR
Job For a Cowboy

Saturday, October 2
Freebird Live
Evergreen Terrace (Duval)

Sunday, October 3
The Florida Theatre
Silversun Pickups
An Horse
Cage the Elephant

JTA joins Urban Jacksonville Weekly to discuss streetcars downtown and connecting urban neighborhoods. In addition to JTA reps we also had Ennis Davis from Metro Jacksonville. Ennis makes talking about transit easy. It’s a complex topic and we try to sort it all out. Thanks to Mike Miller and James Boyle from JTA.

Note: if you have questions about the show notes, just leave a comment and I’ll hook it up.

Listen and Subscribe

Download audio file (urban-jacksonville-weekly-episode22.mp3)
Subscribe with iTunes

You can now listen right now, click the play button above.

Listen and Subscribe

Download audio file (urban-jacksonville-weekly-episode18.mp3)
Subscribe with iTunes

You can now listen right now, click the play button above. Thanks to Bob Mann from the Jacksonville Transit blog, our special guest co-host.

Topics

• Transit discussion: what we need and how can we get there
• Proposed Annie Lytle demolition and what we can do to save the school
• Make a Scene Downtown

Recommendations

• Joey: Urban Jacksonville Fan page on Facebook and live transit chat on Urban Jacksonville
• Jonathan: 48 hour Film Festival
• Tony: The First Hollywood (book)

Show Links

• Bob’s blog – jacksonvilletransit.blogspot.com Go there!
• HOW TO: Kill your parking meters, employ Parking Enforcment, and pay for TRANSIT
• Metro Jacksonville’s story on Annie Lytle
• 10 Reasons Jacksonville Should Love a Streetcar
• Make a Scene Downtown

Urban Jacksonville will host it’s first ever live chat Thursday June 4th at 9pm. It’s easy to chat, there are no logins or plugins required. Simply go to the homepage of Urban Jacksonville and you’ll see the chat window. Bring your transit questions, because you never know who might show up.

For a recap on what inspired this transit chat, check out last weeks post Public Space is Good, But We Need To Talk Transportation Too and the Metro Jacksonville post Jacksonville Should Love A Streetcar: Ten Reasons.

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