The Jacksonville Community Council released it’s 2008 Quality of Life Progress Report this week.
Tracking both positive and negative trends, this report provides an ongoing analysis of the state of our region. The report includes over 100 indicators that reflect trends in nine external environments: education; economy; environment; social wellbeing; arts, culture, and recreation; health; government; transportation; and safety. The document serves as a roadmap for community improvement, telling us where we are, how far we’ve come and where we need to go.
Of particular interest to me are the environmental and transportation indicators.
Environmental
Red Flags were assigned to indicators measuring the health of the St. Johns River and its tributaries and to recycling activity. A positive note earning a Gold Star was a decrease in motor fuel use per person.
This is particularly concerning in light of my post last week on the City’s efforts to reduce recycling expenses city wide.
Transportation
Transportation indicators reflected moderately reduced miles of JTA bus service and decreased bus and Skyway ridership. Restructuring of JTA routes largely accounts for the reduction in miles of service and a reduction in Skyway ridership will not suprise anyone.
I anticipate skyway ridership will increase as more people move to the Southbank and the new King Street developments come online.
I know this is a very brief analysis, but tune into Urban Jacksonville Weekly this Tuesday for a more in depth analysis with Tony Allegretti, Jonathan Bennett and myself. We’ll be broadcasting live video on the Internet at 5:30pm on our Ustream Channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/urban-jacksonville-weekly
