JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Duval DOGE committee has a new target in its sights and it’s one Action News Jax has been covering for the last two years — the Jacksonville Transportation Authority.
In her “Taken for a Ride?” series, Investigator Emily Turner has dug into questionable spending, expensive corporate travel and salaries, and the embattled autonomous vehicles project. Now, that project is the center of one Jacksonville City Council member’s call for action.
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Rory Diamond is flat out asking if it’s possible to cancel it — not just the portion that’s already in service, but the future expansion as well. He said he wants to put JTA’s autonomous vehicles project on the chopping block.
“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.”
He’s specifically referring to JTA’s NAVI, a project that cost more than $65 million. More than $50 million of that is local. The NAVI carts riders around a three-mile loop downtown on converted semi-autonomous transit vans with a driver behind the wheel.
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Diamond is concerned NAVI doesn’t have nearly enough riders. Action News Jax reported in September that it has already crashed into a light pole and carried about 6,000 riders total since it started at the end of June.
“I’d like to get some of those questions answered,” Diamond said. “What’s going on with the U2C? If it’s not working, if no one’s riding, can we cancel it?”
U2C is short for the Ultimate Urban Circulator — the name for the overall project that includes the NAVI and the conversion of the Skyway. Action News Jax reached out to JTA and it has not responded.
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Diamond plans to send JTA a list of questions the DOGE team wants answered. He has been a longtime critic of the project, especially phase two: the conversion of the Skyway.
Phase 2 is slated to cost more than $300 million dollars, funded in part by you at the pump in the form of the local gas tax.
As of JTA’s last appearance in front of the City Council, the project had no set price, no scope or design, and no timeline.
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