Almost No One Is Riding $200 Million Skyway By Charles Herman ABC
NEWS.com "It's strictly a waste of money from beginning to end,"
decried longtime Jacksonville critic Marvin Edwards. He blames the builder and
supporter of the Skyway, the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA). "They lied about ridership projections," explained
Edwards. "They said 56,000 a day at first, then dropped that to 30,000,
then last it was 18,000 to 19,000." Currently, the Skyway sees 3,000 riders per day who pay 35 cents a
trip. In fiscal 2001, the Skyway brought in $513,694 in revenue but its
expenses were $3.5 million. Fights for Funding The Skyway was first proposed back in 1971. It took more than a
decade before the funding — federal, state and local — could be secured to
start construction. At the time, the goal was mainly for development so the
Skyway to connect the downtown core with parking facilities away from downtown.
The Jacksonville Skyway was part of three demonstration projects
to see if "people-mover" systems could stimulate business expansion
in downtown centers. Detroit and Miami received federal funds for similar
projects. Some officials within the Department of Transportation's Federal
Transit Authority questioned the ridership projections for the Jacksonville
Skyway. In an interview with ABCNEWS' John Martin in 1994, Federal Transit
Administration official Gordon Linton said, "We and this department, this
administration and previous administrations, have not supported it." Nevertheless, Congress eventually provided more than half the
funds for the $182 million Skyway. In 1987 construction began on the first 0.7-mile portion of the
system. "It was mainly for political reasons, not transportation
reasons," explained former Rep. Bob Carr, who chaired the committee that
approved funding for transportation projects in the early 1990s. "Like so
many projects, they get a camel's nose under the tent and then it gets very
very difficult to stop them." Few Riders From the Start In 1989 the first section was completed and opened to the public.
Jacksonsville's transit leaders projected more than 10,000 people would ride
the Skyway a day on this 0.7-mile starter section. Instead, only 1,200 rode the Skyway. In 1993 Transit Authority member Miles Francis defended the system
to ABCNEWS. "Until this thing is finished, there's no way to measure its
performance or its potential." Now it's finished and the Jacksonville Transit Authority is still
waiting for the riders to come. Open for Business In November 2000, the complete Skyway opened to the public. Nearly
two years later, with ridership at an average of 3,000 a day, the Skyway has
not met even the projections for the starter section. "No one will argue with the fact that ridership is not where
we would like it to be," admitted Steve Arrington, director of engineering
with the Jacksonville Transit Authority. He says the lack of riders is
attributed to economic recessions in downtown Jacksonville in the early 1990s
that led to a decrease in development in the area. "Any number of things predicted to occur that didn't occur
development-wise has an effect," he added. "Fuel prices, parking
prices." Arrington still believes in the Skyway and expects to reach its
ridership goals. "You don't build a system like this or a roadway for the
next four years," said Arrington. "You try to built it for the next
20 to 30 years." Riding an empty car from one station to another, critic Edwards
disagreed. "This really is a public rip-off and a total waste of money
that could have gone for something not quite as fancy, but a lot more
practical." |