JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) is implementing austerity measures to fix what has become an unsustainable financial crisis.
Action News Jax was first to report the coming layoffs and major service reductions.
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Now, city leaders on both sides of the aisle seem to agree the agency’s decision to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the Ultimate Urban Circulator (U2C) and autonomous NAVI shuttles tops the list of fiscal fumbles.
“This was always something that I never thought was going to pan out,” said Councilmember Jimmy Peluso (D-District7).
“There will be no automatic shuttles going around downtown Jacksonville. It’s gotta be dead. We don’t have the money for it,” said Councilmember Rory Diamond (R-District 13).
And both Democrats like Peluso and Republicans like Diamond agree JTA’s past CEO Nat Ford shares the lion’s share of the blame for going all in on autonomous vehicles.
“Obviously, the prior leadership completely took their eye off the ball and did some things that were very irresponsible,” said Diamond.
“Mr. Ford was using this initiative for many, many years,” said Peluso.
But from there, disagreements emerge.
Peluso pointed the finger at former Mayor Lenny Curry’s administration, which was first to get behind the U2C and NAVI.
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“And I was always afraid that people were just going to lose faith in government, lose faith in JTA, if we went down this path,” said Peluso.
Mayor Donna Deegan’s office told us in a statement the JTA board was not aware of the agency’s dire financial situation.
“We became aware as they did,” the mayor’s office added in the statement.
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But Diamond argued there have been numerous red flags over the years, and Mayor Deegan has consistently stood behind Ford and his vision for the U2C and NAVI.
“I’ve been screaming for years that we’ve got a problem. They just, you know, they just ignored it,” said Diamond.
JTA announced it will end NAVI services staring January 1 as part of its cost-cutting measures.
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