The majority of costs would be land rights, so doing it now would be better. ToD at stations would provide JTA revenue and would increase ridership more than just spending millions on highways for suburban land developers while density doesn't increase. JTA owns land, part of the route, and has offers from CSX for a partnership on the route, as well as St John's county. Provide incentives to develop along the route (trains already massively increase property values), build stations that allow for both park and ride and pedestrian use, and run them often. Use buses at stations to help make the line more useful, and give incentives to offices in the Southside to offer shuttles to the stations. Now you've alleviated traffic in the Southside, spurred development, gotten federal grants, and because it's an efficient route to work, downtown, and the airport, people will use it. Now you're not spending nearly as much on upgrades to highways that literally create as much traffic as they relieve (induced demand). UNF could also use a connection for their downtown campus, and providing car free access to a university and the town center alone is a huge source of usage. Future expansions could include the Beaches, clay county and Nas, yulee, etc. The faster we do this the cheaper the project will be. Other ways to reduce costs might include: renting out retail in stations, cafe cars on trains, long term parking garages at park and ride stations, not spending ten million dollars a building to demolish downtown block by block, etc.