by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
The Northeast Florida Association of Realtors got on the road last month — that is, they found out what’s going on with the highways and byways of the area.
About 200 attended the meeting held at Jacksonville’s Radisson Hotel and heard
Keven Feldt, the senior transportation planner of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, give an overview of the authority and what it is doing to improve and enhance the transportation means of the area.
The JTA, which operates the bus system and the skyway, is the community transportation coordinator, designs and builds highways and bridge projects, works on Better Jacksonville Plan projects and is working on the rapid transit corridor study.
One part of the Better Jacksonville Plan that Feldt focused on during his presentation was the 12 proposed intersection interchanges.
He discussed each at length and then explained that they have had some lessons learned since the plan passed.
“A lot of them are east and south of the St. Johns River which causes a lot of traffic problems from all the construction,” said Feldt. “Some of the lessons that we have learned from the first three or four projects is that we do need a planning stage to identify which roadway goes over which roadway or what is the exact optimum solution for a particular intersection is.
“We also found that public involvement is very important. We also realized we need to identify and involve all of the stakeholders in these intersections. We need to get their involvement and influence in the process and what the solution might be.”
Feldt said another important part of proceeding with the projects is to identify right-of-way needs early on.
“Typically right-of-ways are not identified for purchase until much later in the design stage,” he said. “For instance, at Beach and Hodges boulevards there are a couple of developers who want to build where we are going to put an interchange or some other intersection improvement. Trying to get the development and the right-of-ways deeds to match is important to do upfront rather than having to go back and buy land later that has already been developed.”
The intersection projects are broken down into three phases: the planning phase, which gives a conceptual design lasts about 18 months; the engineering phase, which produces a design, right-of-ways and permitting and lasts about another 18 months; and construction.
Feldt discussed possible alternatives to the interchanges that included deciding which road would make the best overpass for each intersection, making the changes at ground level or not building at all.
“Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages,” he said. “A decision should be made later this year. The entire project from planning to completion takes about 60 months.”
Feldt went onto say that in the planning process for the roadway changes in Jacksonville, JTA also did a property value analysis that basically showed that the short-term and long term effects of the proposed interchanges really won’t affect property values that much.
The final thing he discussed was the rapid transit corridor studies.
He said they identified six corridors that a rapid transit corridor would benefit the city. They prioritized the corridors into four areas: North/Southeast, East/Souteast, West and Beaches.
The process involves coming up with an alternatives analysis/draft environmental impact statement, preliminary engineering and a final environmental impact statement, right-of-way purchases and construction.
Creating the rapid transit corridors for light rail would also open an opportunity for real estate opportunities. He said there would be transit supportive land uses, sustainable successful developments, increased mobility, increased quality of life and reduced travel costs.
“We will be identifying station locations and what type of stations they will be,” said Feldt. “Will they be more commercial, more residential or a park and ride facility? We need to identify what type of land use will be around those stations.”
Feldt said the keys to transit-oriented development is that there would be a five-minute walk to a transit stop, balanced mix of uses, placed-based zoning code and fast reliable transit service. It would discard minimum parking requirements, establish maximum parking standards and separate parking costs between parking garages and the buildings they serve which would encourage more people to use the rapid transit system rather than drive their car and park.
“Real estate advantages of transit-oriented development are that it will create additional housing and transportation choices, increased job opportunities, new market creation, increased property values, especially close to transit stations and profit for all,” he said.