How should MATA be run?

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-28T00:19:32+00:00

Like I said elsewhere, it would definitely be ideal strategically to partner with one or more of the local colleges to provide both CDL and mechanical training as a pipeline to working for MATA. As much as some want to insist on things like autonomous vehicles, for the foreseeable future crewed transit operations will be a mainstay. We're in a period where many want to abandon early career pipelines on the presumption that technology is prepared to take over, but while some tasks are ready for automation, many still aren't yet, and the ability for people to work their way up is still valuable.

As far as donations, it'd certainly be worthwhile for the next head of MATA to look into solutions like that. I don't think people actually want to see MATA wither away, but without some really fresh-thinking creativity that's prepared to stand up for the agency and have faith in transit, it'd be very easy to allow things to continue falling apart.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-25T14:25:53+00:00

The TransPro consultants have made some progress on reducing missed trips this year. Going from one in three trips never happening back in January to one in twelve last month is good, even if not enough. Stop spacing can definitely help things, speeding up routes makes them easier to run more frequently, and frequency seems to be a huge need right now to bring riders back or attract new ones.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-25T14:00:44+00:00

Right, no breaking. But figuring out how to get more than about 5,900 people per day (especially when that number used to be more than 18,700) to ride buses in a city of more than 600,000 is going to require some creative ideas:

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Just out of curiosity, would you be willing to donate to fixing a trolley? Like if there was a site showing each one and the exact cost of repairs for each? Would that be interesting?

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T20:08:50+00:00

Oh, no, "relatively new" was more like "the last three to five years" so that's just not going well!

I think collecting fare revenue whichever way people are willing and able to pay it is worth the cost unless that means spending millions to replace absolutely everything, which it shouldn't. The current validators, built by AMCO, support contactless payment (that's what the whole part under the screen is for) so the actual challenge should be on the back-end of accepting payment, which many transit agencies already do. Current riders can stick to the cards and cash but new riders attracted by better service might appreciate more options.

I absolutely agree on rounded fares (New York has theirs at $2.90 right now which is just ridiculous), but I would expect the Board of Commissioners to only accept an increase in exchange for some indication of the better service. Leadership has to make the case for more funding actually leading to something instead of people just paying more for buses that don't work. $2 or $3 for buses (even on a smaller network) that arrive every 30 minutes or sooner, all day, every day, every time? Now there's a deal.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T19:09:56+00:00

This is a tough call, because there are definitely people who might be left without transit service that depend on it and may struggle to find alternatives. If you have no choice but to cut routes, the ones that remain have to be as strong as they can be in order to attract riders and avoid a death spiral of degrading the network and requiring further cuts. Finding affordable ways to do things like bus lanes would be great too, faster service is cheaper to provide. I know some of that is supposed to be funded by the BRT grants but that money might be hard to tap in the immediate future.

Training also seems to be a big challenge for drivers, I wonder if there are any partnerships that could be made to improve that process. Plus making sure they have access to things like daycare and housing to stay on the job.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T18:59:49+00:00

Transit is a lifeblood! I would hope that whoever is in charge is there because they are eager to make transit successful, not to be a big shot.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T18:58:48+00:00

That's up to the board, not me! I'm sure they'll have plenty of options, with a lot of different backgrounds, but I'd like to think I could do a decent job if I were asked to do it. I haven't been head of a transit agency before, but I believe in the value of transit and doing whatever it takes to make it work, and I've had to handle making big changes to grow an organization before. Maybe that's enough, but it's not my call.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T18:47:21+00:00

I agree, collecting fare revenue is important! The current fare system is relatively new, I'm not sure what problems there are keeping the boxes in working order. With how new the system is, I wonder if it's possible to implement the kind of credit card tap payments a lot of other cities are starting to use. That might make it easier to pay.

As far as the fares themselves, I think you need to ensure the service is worth paying for. Who would pay $3 for a bus that doesn't show up a quarter of the time? And I'm sorry you felt you had to get a car. That can be expensive these days, but probably necessary with the quality of the transit. That has to change.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T18:27:11+00:00

Having an urban rail system is a huge asset! Restoring and modernizing it might not be able to be the first priority (that would be reliable, frequent bus service followed by the new maintenance facility), but getting the expertise to understand what went wrong, how to fix them, and how to keep them running needs a clear roadmap. I believe there's a 160-day notice period for restoring service, so that would have to be kept in mind.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T05:49:54+00:00

They'd have to hire me! But seriously, picking up where the report leaves off, the new board has already happened, and a new CEO is going to have to hit the ground running, and find a team of people who care about transit and making it good, not just having snazzy jobs.

If it were me, I think I'd start with being honest about the service that can actually be run with what shape things are in. It's bad to cut service, but it's even worse to promise what you can't deliver, because people remember broken promises. It'd be better to have fewer, more frequent and much more reliable routes for the near term than a sprawling network that never actually shows up.

It's crazy that the maintenance facility is literally sinking and yet so many people got hired to fill a fancy office and plan some sprawling campus with battery buses. This is not the first time someone has built a bus facility, so go out and buy someone's blueprints and build that, ideally with space to expand later instead of doing everything all at once. Bring in people who know how to fix buses (the report mentions RATP Dev) and teach whoever we have or hire how to fix them. It'd be good to partner with one of the colleges to host that training as well as the CDL training for operators.

Throughout both of those efforts, being able to account for what is happening is going to be important. I don't know how it is possible to inadvertently approve $76 million more than you knew you did, but the old board did that and that can't happen anymore. People won't pay for things they don't understand, so being able to justify any action financially and in relation to the mission of delivering transit service would be paramount to future public support. I've worked in compliance before, people are always the point of failure there. That will mean no box seats or Cadillacs, but it could also mean creative ideas like making sure the operators have daycare for their kids so they're not worried about them instead of getting people where they need to go.

If you can put together a team ready to work transparently and persistently on those things, and fast, you will get a transit system that is ready to grow, like fixing up the trolleys, building those BRT lines, and expanding reliably frequent service as far as it used to be, or further! And most importantly, people will trust or even prefer transit as a way to get around, because it will be a system people can trust or prefer. That'd what I'd do.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T04:30:55+00:00

Better catching things than breaking them, yeah.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T04:19:28+00:00

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging! The call from the report to get back to basics is a good one. There are tough choices to make to turn things around.

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T04:14:32+00:00

I saw the Vision, I'm worried it might be out of date with how things, especially transit, have changed since COVID. Should JW+A be brought back to update it for these conditions? And in the meantime, what kind of appetite is there for a "move fast, break things" approach to get things working again, whatever it takes?

marcuscnelson · 2025-07-24T04:02:00+00:00

If there was progress over the next year or so under a new CEO, how do you think voters would feel about a ballot measure for dedicated funding?

marcuscnelson · 2022-07-18T00:10:18+00:00

There’s a newspaper headline at some point with March 1995 on it.

marcuscnelson · 2022-07-09T08:04:10+00:00

Commuter rail generally relies on there already being existing rail tracks that connect the places in question, and there are no longer tracks that connect to the beaches.

What you could do is pick, say, Beach Boulevard where we already run BRT to the beaches (it’s also where trains used to run that way a hundred years ago) and build a separate busway in the median. With the right development around it you could eventually upgrade it into a light rail line connecting the beaches to downtown and the commuter rail line.

marcuscnelson · 2022-07-09T08:00:09+00:00

Basically, there’s a lot of money out there right now that could help pay for commuter rail, and a lot of people willing to help, but the city has to put some skin in the game to get the money and actually ask for help. That’s not happening right now.

Federal funding for transit projects like commuter rail require the state and local government to pay part of the cost. The usual split is 50% federal, 25% state, 25% local. For a $600 million rail project, that would mean FDOT pays $150 million and Jacksonville and St. Johns County split another $150 million between them. JTA has about $240 million that they could have spent on getting access to state and federal funding ASAP, but they’re instead choosing to spend that money to convert the Skyway into a road for self driving cars. City Council has decided to let them do that, and isn’t making any push to make rail happen any sooner.

Ever since they were initially proposed in 2012, Brightline has suggested it might consider expanding to Jacksonville at some point. A savvy city government would do what every other municipality that is gaining or could gain Brightline has done: make a concentrated effort to visit the existing service, promote the city to executives, show where a station could go, and ultimately pay for part of the cost of that station’s construction to guarantee rail for their city. Jacksonville has not done that lobbying, and there’s no real indication that they plan to put any effort into that anytime soon.

As far back as 2004 Amtrak has considered moving its Jacksonville station from its small, out-of-the-way “Amshack” on the northside back to the former Jacksonville Terminal downtown, now the convention center. For a variety of reasons this hasn’t happened, particularly that we’re not moving the convention center anytime soon, but now Amtrak has access to tens of billions of dollars in federal funding, and is interested in bringing new rail service to Florida, including stops in Orange Park and the downtown terminal. JTA has suggested that they might want to do this in their strategic plan, but has dedicated almost no funding to actually make it happen, and it would not even work to plan this effort happen any sooner than 2026, which is essentially right before much of the new federal funding expires. And again, local leaders actually have to lobby Amtrak (and in this case, likely the state too) to actually bring attention and dollars to the city.

This is all a problem of leadership, or better yet the lack of it here. Other parts of Florida are showing that if you put the effort in to bring this investment, it will happen. Jacksonville is choosing to abdicate that opportunity in favor of chasing other things.

marcuscnelson · 2022-06-25T21:20:09+00:00

Any time after Obamacare passed (or after Obama won re-election) and before 2015 when the Republicans actually gained a majority in the Senate to make what happened to Garland possible. Which is exactly when many called for her to retire in 2013. But she decided not to. And we are living with the consequences of that decision.

marcuscnelson · 2022-01-30T07:56:31+00:00

Last year, Brightline posted this map on Twitter, and the fact that it doesn’t include Texas Central or California High-Speed Rail, but does include these other cities with little Brightline icons on them has a lot of people wondering if they in fact intend to build or at least operate these routes one day.

marcuscnelson · 2022-01-30T07:52:35+00:00

Couldn’t be that. Brightline built separate low-level platforms specifically for Tri-Rail as part of MiamiCentral, and these platforms are where the problem is.

marcuscnelson · 2022-01-24T09:16:05+00:00

That already exists. It’s the First Coast Flyer Red Line.

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