Guest column: Skyway doesn't have a place downtown
Your turn
These last several weeks have brought focus on the downtown Skyway. It is incomprehensible that we are debating increasing the gas tax to continue to invest money into a system that has never had any significant usage. In 2015, I served on an advisory group convened by JTA to determine what options existed for the Skyway. Nothing discussed by this committee made up of city and business leaders led me to believe the best option was to invest more than $400 million to expand the system.
There is a reason the Skyway was considered a demonstration project and it is time to acknowledge that the project demonstrated that the concept is a failure. Other cities have not implemented similar systems. The JAX Chamber annually visits a city to find projects and learn about polices that further economic development with the goal to replicate these ideas and policies in Jacksonville. The reverse also occurs. Cities visit Jacksonville. And I cannot think of a single visit where a city’s business and political leadership has returned to their home with the idea of replicating the Skyway. That should further validate that the Skyway’s life is over.