Skyway image from Wikipedia

A recent post about the soon-to-be constructed Atlanta Streetcar/downtown circulator prompted a reader to forward an article from Jacksonville about their downtown circulator, which happens to be an automated guideway, or people mover, JTA calls the Skyway.  Ridership is low, 30% of their pre-construction estimates, and the service is very expensive to the tune of a $4 million deficit each year (which seems weird because it is automated and electric so there are no driver salaries or fuel costs) and at least one councilman wants to destroy the thing.  The best line from the story:  “[JTA Director] Blaylock said he wasn’t looking to get rid of the Skyway, and the system still had a chance to be viable. That claim drew snickers from some City Council members.”

This story caught my attention because the Skyway is a downtown circulator in what is the weakest downtown I have ever seen.  Jacksonville is this strange place that lays claim to being the largest city in America; this has not to do with population but with the geographic extent of the place:  Jacksonville consolidated with Duval County in 1968 so city and county are the same size, over 900 square miles with a population under 900,000.  The downtown is typical of Florida downtowns (Tampa, Tallahassee) where they roll the sidewalks up at night and nothing happens.  There is little activity and few attractions outside of the office towers that attract people in cars to drive downtown to work.  The Skyway is one of those transit projects (like, I believe, the future Atlanta streetcar) that was built to attract people rather than to serve people and in doing so has failed miserably.

More importantly for this post, however, is the crazy part of the article.  JTA director Michael Blaylock said the Skyway could be torn down at the end of its design life which is in 2036.  At the current level of fiscal health that would mean a cost of $100 million to the transit agency over the next 25 years.  Why not tear it down, council members asked?  Because JTA would have to pay FTA back for the money it provided to construct the system, in the neighborhood of $80 million. 

This brings me to the difference between a property and a recipient.  A Property is a governmental or commercial operator of public transit. A Recipient is a government or commercial public transit provider that accepts funding from the Federal Transit Administration.  Becoming a recipient of the FTA is the transit equivalent of selling one’s soul to the devil; in exchange for funding the recipient is obligated to follow FTA regulations like Charter, Half Fare, and Buy America, and endure Triennial Reviews, or in this case give back 80 million dollars if, after 30 years, the project doesn’t work out.  Most recipients receive only capital funding from FTA but that mammon is hard to resist.  That money comes with strings attached.  Well, chains really.

Councilman Guliford also asked about reducing service?  “At least then we could limp along without paying as much to operate it,” he said.  Blaylock replied FTA would not accept that and would ask for its money back and this at a time when JTA is hoping to get federal money to construct a $180 million multi-modal station that would help with the ridership on the Skyway.  So let me revise my earlier statement:  FTA money is impossible to resist.