JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax has obtained the Jacksonville Transportation Authority’s answers to a series of questions posed by the Duval DOGE committee.
Last month, Action News Jax told you when the committee called JTA’s autonomous vehicles project into question following two years of our reporting.
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<
Investigator Emily Turner has covered the embattled project, reporting on cost overruns, delays, and questionable ridership numbers.
Now, she’s digging into what JTA has to say in defense of a project expected to cost $465 million.
Jacksonville City Council member Rory Diamond submitted 17 questions for JTA, and the clear theme from JTA’s answers is “you can’t touch us.”
RELATED: JTA faces questions from Duval DOGE committee about Ultimate Urban Circulator
It’s a message encapsulated with this line, repeated three times in the authority’s letter: “The JTA is solely responsible for delivery and management of the project,” and even goes on to say “the City or Council has no recourse if the project fails to meet key benchmarks.”
The first phase of JTA’s autonomous vehicles project costs has cost $65.5 million. It’s a Ford Transit van with a driver who’s there to take the wheel when navigation gets too tricky for the tech.
But it’s navigated squarely into the cross hairs of DOGE for questions about accountability, viability and cost efficiency, with Diamond leading the charge.
RELATED: ‘Can we cancel it?’ Jacksonville councilman talks possibility of nixing JTA’s NAVI, U2C
“I think that’s straight in the target of what DOGE is about,” he said, it “is just looking for boondoggles -- killing them off and getting people money back.”
JTA’s answers fire back, saying the project “represents one of the most significant mobility and economic innovation initiatives in Jacksonville’s history,” and that cancelling it at this point would be the real waste of public funds.
JTA also make sure to say the Authority, no one else, is solely responsible for delivering it, with oversight from the JTA board. We should note, JTA’s board has not once in the two years Turner has covered the authority voted against anything CEO Nat Ford has put forward.
The last board member who publicly questioned Ford during a meeting was removed by the mayor before her unanimous first term ended.
[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]
In JTA’s DOGE answers, it relegates council’s power to the budget process and a council liaison, Council member Rahman Johnson, who attends the board meetings and has been bullish on the project since we started investigating in 2023.
“The people in JTA are the experts,” he told us in May of last year, ”but I’m certainly willing to at least give them the leeway to try to figure out how we can get to something that’s going to provide an opportunity for the city to move forward and be world class.”
According to JTA’s letter, the total price tag for all three phases of the project will be $400 million, on top of the $65 million already spent. Two hundred-forty million dollars comes out of your pocket. You pay every time you’re at the pump, thanks to the local option gas tax, it says.
[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]
While JTA has to report back to the U.S. government on the federal money it spends, apparently JTA maintains there’s no separate accountability for the local funds. Even, the letter tells DOGE “if the project fails to meet key benchmarks.”
Council’s DOGE committee will tackle JTA Tuesday during its meeting, where JTA executives will be in attendance. It starts at 11 a.m.
For all of Turner’s JTA reporting, visit the Taken for a Ride page.
To read JTA’s full responses to Diamond’s questions, take a look below:
Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.
