by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
If the Southbank trolley route doesn’t work — and it should be up and running by the end of February — don’t blame the Jacksonville Transportation Authority.
Past marketing failures — or marketing plans that took a while to catch on — have taught JTA officials that the best way to formulate a marketing plan is to ask those it will most affect. On Jan. 9, JTA will meet with San Marco-area merchants for the third time to finalize the plan that will see the long-awaited Southbank route become reality.
JTA spokesperson Joanne Kazmierski said the transit authority has spent a lot of time and effort going door-to-door, literally, on the Southbank, talking to restaurant and shop owners about the best way to make the new route work. The consensus: adopt a consistent, long-range plan that will allow the route to capitalize on what’s sure to be a great deal of initial interest. Kazmierski said there will be a much-publicized kickoff, but JTA and San Marco businesses are more concerned about the long haul.
“The merchants want more energy put into the first week and the first month than one event that lasts three hours,” said Kazmierski. “We’ll have a kickoff event, but it will last about a half-hour.”
The Southbank trolley route has been planned for well over two years. Only recently has the funding — $50,000 from the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission’s Southbank Tax Increment Fund and $50,000 from the Florida Department of Transportation — become available.
Perhaps the person most interested in JTA’s marketing plan is City Council member and mayoral candidate Matt Carlucci. Since 2000, Carlucci has been working on a San Marco route and he’s eager to fulfill the promise he made to merchants in the area.
“I’m interested to see what they [JTA] propose,” said Carlucci. “We’ll sit down and think out loud and determine whether the plan will be effective from my point of view. I certainly think I have some say to say, ‘Think about this or think about that.’ We’ll have some kind of kick off and get as much publicity out of it as possible.”
According to Kazmierski, JTA plans to create a grass roots marketing plan that will start and end with the merchants on the Southbank. Virtually every merchant that JTA representatives spoke to echoed the same sentiment: make sure the plan has longevity, make sure the route goes to the right areas and make sure the routes include the Southbank hotels.
“A lot of ideas have been tossed around,” said Kazmierski. “We did a survey about the route in August 2001 and we found that about 40 percent of our target audience is the restaurants. The San Marco merchants want us to target the hotels, especially those on the Southbank, and develop relationships with the hotel concierges. There will be a lot walking to promote the route giving things out.”
Kazmierski said many San Marco merchants have expressed the desire to promote the route in their storefronts and have even offered coupons and other discounts to riders. Because the route is a one-year pilot program, the first year is especially important.
“We’ve done other marketing campaigns where there was an initial blitz, then you didn’t hear anything,” said Kazmierski. “This will be an ongoing effort. We have the funding to do the route for a year. If we do well and ridership is at a good level, we’ll look to add funding.
“We want to make sure nobody says the San Marco trolley route failed due to a lack of marketing.”
Kazmierski said JTA expects to take delivery of three new trolleys, two of which will be used in San Marco during peak lunch hours on weekdays, within the next several weeks. Kazmierski said JTA needs 10 days to get the trolleys inspected and released for use.