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Apart from the fast food places, how many of these restaurants are closed except for 9-5 Monday through Friday? How well do they serve the people that live in Riverside? And like I said Riverside has only 1 grocery store and only 2 drug stores. Now tell me how many Riverside residents live too far away to walk to these stores? As for the other retail stores, aren't they more in the way of specialty stores? How many people can do their general shopping for household goods in these stores?

If this line goes north-south, how many of the people served will earn their living in Jacksonville without paying the Jacksonville's taxes that will support the rail line?

But Jacksonville has already tried park-and-ride lots and we don

Until very recently Riverside did not have a grocery store so a car was necessary. Also, Riverside has few drug stores, no office supply store (to my knowledge), very few clothing stores, no movie theaters, no bookstores and very few restaurants. I don't see how many people can live in Riverside without a car. And Riverside is like most of Jacksonville- you must have a car to survive because public transit is next to useless and the heat and humidity make even short walks unbearable- even if we had enough sidewalks. You cannot even live in the La Villa end of downtown and have a grocery store within walking distance. All of Jacksonville is essentially a suburb.

What have I posted that is "remarkably outrageous or false on their face"? I have asked another poster how long he has lived in Jacksonville. I recently read that roughly half of the city's population is not from here. However, I was born and raised here and likely know more about how this city operates than some of the rest of you. If my comments seem negative, they are supported by a 37 years of experience.

We have no express buses or park-and-ride lots anywhere near where I live. And If I had to have a car anyway, I see no reason to bother with JTA. And why should the more populated parts of town not have easy access to the rail line?

I guess freedom of speech is an unknown concept here.

How do you define a suburban neighborhood? I live near NAS and I am certainly not in the suburbs.

If this route goes from Amelia Island, past Gateway, through downtown and on to St. Augustine, how will will serve people at the beach or on the westside?

You are thinking in terms of preserving the personal-use automobile. As it stands now I have a 10-15 minute walk, depending on the weather and how many library books I am carrying, to get to the nearest JTA bus stop from my house. And I must be sure to arrive early just in case the bus is running ahead of schedule, meaning I have to wait in either the cold or heat. And my stop has no cover or bench. But, why should this first line be what is proposed instead of something that will benefit more people who actually live in Jacksonville? I

I heard it on the local TV news.

Only if no bus service to the stations is provided. And traffic congestion we already have makes people seek out alternatives like car pooling? What happens if the city imposes fees for the park-n-ride lots that are as high as what you find elsewhere? What about the beaches (part of Duval County) and Crystal Springs and the housing developments and apartment complexes in Jacksonville along Blanding Blvd? Why should St. Augustine or Amelia Island be served before the the People of Jacksonville have all of their needs met? Exactly what I said, although the lines were not completely underground. It cannot be compared to MARTA either since MARTA is actually useful. A study was conducted during the Superbowl regarding the people mover. Based on the cost it took to operate the system and the number of people that actually used it, it would have been cheaper to provide cab fare.

We have (or had) park-n-ride already using buses. I know that the intersection of San Jose and I295 was a park-n-ride lot. But this means that people towards Fruit Cove still had to have a car and still had to fight San Jose just to spend an hour on the bus. But, if someone has to have a car to get to a commuter station or bus stop, what will keep them from using that car to go all the way to work? I don't see a mass-transit system as an adjunct to automobiles. I see it as a way to replace automobiles.

How many people can afford taxis? This depends entirely on how the system is designed. It will depend on how many rail lines the system has, how far apart the stations are, how often the various rail lines intersect and how many buses you have to take people back and forth to the stations. With enough airport shuttle-type buses, each one covering a very limited geographic area and enough rail stations, you could have door-to-door bus service. And the older the population gets, the more door-to-door service would be needed. I am only 37, but already have arthritis in my knees and have trouble walking at times. Be serious. I once read a book by John Todd (if I remember correctly). He proposed bus shelters built around giant tanks of water that were used to grow tilapia. This would be suitable in cold climates, but why couldn't we have solar powered air conditioned bus shelters here? And again I point out that in comparison to places like Mandarin and Orange Park, not many commuters would come from St. Augustine. There are other rail lines that would be more useful and more needed.

The people mover is the result of a very long term planning and design process. I remember hearing about it back during the Carter Administration. I cannot help but be hard on any JTA plan. Their track record is abyssmal.

I was in Atlanta before the '96 Olympics, when the MARTA trains did not go far past the city limits. I know there was talk of extending the trains to Stone Mountain to reach some of the Olympic venues, but I've never heard if it was built. Such a link would be a heavy rail system in my view since it connects people who live in suburbs far away from the city center. But when I was in Atlanta MARTA was nothing more than Jacksonville's people mover- other than the fact that MARTA actually served a purpose.

How often do these points north have 110 degree humitures?

I would have to see a map of the entire system and the timetable for construction. And still I would not worry about tourism before I would people who have to commute to work every day. But, in our heat and humidity, even a 5 minute walk to a bus stop would be horrendous. I would want something close to door-to-door bus service to the rail stations, using small buses like shuttle services have. But, is it cost effective to build one thing because its cheap while ignoring what is really needed?

When I was in school in Atlanta, MARTA had 2 rail lines- one running north-south and the other running east-west. Then buses traveled from a station on one line to a station on the other. You could easily use MARTA to travel Atlanta in circles. I could go from Emory University on the eastern edge of Atlanta (on Decatur's doorstep) to the airport on the south of Atlanta by taking 1 bus to a north-south station and then taking the train to the airport and the trip took less than 45 minutes. In Jacksonville it takes almost an hour to go from NAS to the library downtown. JTA does not have a good track record and I doubt than it can design an effective commuter rail system. Wouldn't it be best to start with whatever line would reduce the most traffic? If most of the commuter traffic goes from Orange Part (or Mandarin or wherever) to downtown Jacksonville, shouldn't that be the first commuter line built? The trouble with Jacksonville is that city hall goes first for the flashy instead of dealing with legitimate problems.

Having to walk a mile from a commuter line to a destination when the humiture is 110 means the mass transit system serves nobody's needs. We do need a commuter rail system, but instead of sending business to Amelia Island and St. Augustine, we should be solving our own problems first. Think of a rail system consisting of a dozen routes traveling in a concentric circle with another route running east-west and another running north-south and then two more making an X over the center. Then put stations no more than, say, 4 miles apart and then use buses to filter the commuters out to their destination.

Why not take 1 lane of Beach Blvd. each way and use it for commuter rail and simply do away with the automobiles that now use these lanes? I don't think building rail lines along with auto lanes will solve anything. As big as Jacksonville is, as long as people have cars and roads to drive them on, they will drive rather than ride.

But, what purpose should our mass transit system serve? Should it cater to leisure travelers or should it be designed to serve the daily needs of people going back and forth to work? I live near NAS and once had a part-time teaching job at Seacoast behind Regency Square. To use JTA I had to leave home by 8:30 in order to reach work for an 11:00 class. My work day lasted only about 3 hours, but I never got back home before 4:00 in the afternoon.

If the route goes from one tourist trap to another, wouldn't it serve mostly tourists?

A rail line from Amelia to St. Augustine? Why? If a commuter rail does not connect the beaches, downtown, the Southside Blvd. corridor, Baymeadows, Mandarin and Orange Park, what good will it do?

I understand the basics of New Urbanism- recreate the city as it was before the post-WWII suburbanization movement in that you mix residential, commercial and civic functions within a "neighborhood" so you can minimize the burden placed on the transportation grid. I like the idea of having your basic needs within a 5 minute walk- but a 5 minute walk here in Florida's 100+ degree humiture cannot be a 5 minute walk elsewhere. I also like the idea of destroying Wal-Mart- which would be a requisite for the widespread adoption of New Urbanism. However, I don't believe that simply re-arranging cities is enough. My version of New Urbanism would also take demographics into account so neighborhoods would have a cohesive human society. My version would also address human ecology- how we use natural resources (water, sunlight et cetera) and how we deal with waste products (storm water, sewage, msw et cetera). I can handle the ecology aspect since I have a degree in biology and have spent some time researching the issue on my own. But, what about the sociological component? Does anyone know of anything that has been published recently on urban demographics? For example, how many people should a New Urbanism neighborhood have? Also how big should a grade school be to make efficient use of teachers, buildings et cetera without being big enough to encourage anonymity? If everyone in a school knows everyone else, then any one individual is less likely to cause trouble due to peer pressure. Someone who is just a face in a crowd could easily become a delinquent without suffering any general social stigma. Also, how would an urban planner go about deciding what types of businesses and retail stores should go in a neighborhood and how large should the stores be?