Transit Visions Publication

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Regional rail for a more connected Jacksonville

Jacksonville's First Coast Commuter Rail has given us a glimpse of what's possible. Yet, like other bold ideas for transit in the U.S., the process has dragged out and is still just an idea.

March 25, 2025

Like most midsize major American cities, Jacksonville once had the ambition to enhance transit with bold ideas. But, also like most American cities, it has struggled to make these projects come to life.

After almost two decades of planning and studies, the city’s First Coast Commuter Rail (FCCR) initiative has made little progress toward actually becoming a reality. According to my hours of deep research—and my conversation with a plugged-in transit advocate from the Jacksonville area—it’s pretty clear that regional rail is not happening anytime soon, as there have been no public updates on FCCR since the end of 2023. Further, JTA is focusing on other flashy projects that serve no real purpose and are an expensive alternative to adding a few new bus routes.

But still, as a frequent visitor, I wanted to look more into JTA’s plans and the potential for a great system.

The evolution of FCCR proposals

In 2008, JTA hired a consultant to conduct a feasibility study to assess the different route options for the service. The report, completed in July 2009, started by identifying 9 possible corridors. After briefly examining each one, the study selected the top 3 to evaluate more in-depth.

The final 3 corridors were (also see Image 1):

1. CSXT Kingland Subdivision: Runs north up past Jacksonville International Airport into Nassau County, terminating in Yulee.

2. CSXT Sanford Subdivision: Runs southwest to Clay County, terminating in Green Cove Springs. (A segment of Amtrak’s Floridian and Silver Meteor routes).

3. Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) Main Line: Runs southeast into St. Johns County, terminating in St. Augustine.

In the end, the FEC Main Line to St. Augustine was the selected corridor for FCCR service.

Bringing trains back to downtown

Jacksonville’s current Amtrak station is about 5 miles northwest of downtown in the middle of a multimodal freight hub. The area is not walkable, with no attractive development nearby. It is surrounded by surface parking, truck storage in industrial yards, vacant plots of land, and a train yard. (see Image 2). The only housing that is close by is low density and across a wide and busy stroad.

A big part of JTA’s plans for FCCR was to repurpose the old Jacksonville Terminal downtown back into a train station and integrate rail service with the other travel modes at the Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center (JRTC). This would enable rail passengers to make easy transfers to JTA’s bus system, the Greyhound bus station, the Skyway monorail, and the Ultimate Urban Circulator system (currently in testing phases).

If FCCR becomes a reality and Brightline eventually follows through with plans to extend service up to Jacksonville, the city is going to need a bigger station with sufficient capacity and a better surrounding area. Reviving the old station would accomplish both:

• There is plenty of space to build multiple platforms and new tracks on the FEC right of way that passes by the old Jacksonville station.

• While downtown Jacksonville still needs more redevelopment, it certainly beats the current train station location.

JTA not only wanted to bring trains back downtown, but it also worked with the Downtown Investment Authority to lay out ambitious plans for redeveloping the surrounding neighborhood (see Images 4 & 5). A project overview from the end of 2022 and a 2023 transit-oriented development study show bold ideas for a new walkable and lively neighborhood around this new transit hub.

The latest proposal

The most recent proposal for the FCCR network was presented in a transit-oriented development study completed by WSP USA for JTA. The report identified 15 potential stations and studied each one pretty comprehensively for potential development around them. JTA’s consultant then selected the top 7 to assess more in-depth (also see Image 6).

The 7 selected sites:

• Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center (JRTC); downtown Jacksonville

• Baymeadows

• Avenues Walk

• US 1 / County Road (CR) 210

• Palencia

• King Street

• State Road (SR) 312

According to the report, these locations are the top candidates for FCCR stations. The study evaluated these sites based on current readiness with population and existing developments and the best potential for future growth.

Speed and runtime

The route is 38.4 miles long and a 2022 proposal estimated a runtime of 48 minutes from JRTC to St. Augustine. However, that plan only featured four stations and terminated in downtown St. Augustine, not going all the way to SR 312 which is another two miles south. These additions would push runtimes closer to an hour.

How can we get the most out of this network?

Let’s forget about this project’s limited resources and the process that has dragged it out over so many years. I want to explore an alternate reality where JTA has the resources and will to build a robust rail network that connects the entire Jacksonville region.

Here are some of my ideas:

I have no planning, engineering, or architectural background. Part of the goal of this publication is to document my educational journey in those fields. If you have an education, working experience, or general knowledge of these concepts and railroad operations, I welcome comments with critiques, corrections, and thoughtful discussion to help me learn.

Add service on the north and southwest corridors

Investing in service in all three corridors would create a complete network covering the Jacksonville region and spark new growth throughout it.

Through-running for better connectivity

Through-running is exactly what it sounds like. It is where regional trains come from one branch of stops in suburban towns, run into the major city center, and then continue onto another branch to surrounding suburban towns on the other side.

Image 7 is a great visual aid for understanding through-running created by Liam Blank, a New York-based Urban Mobility Strategist who has written several great articles on the topic.

What would through-running look like in Jacksonville’s regional rail network?

Northbound trains from the southeast branch will come into Jacksonville, stop at the station, and then continue north to the Yulee branch; southbound trains will go from Yulee to St. Augustine.

Trains will terminate and turn around at the end of each branch, not at JRTC. This creates a regional rail line that connects St. Augustine to Yulee and everywhere in between with a one-seat ride, no transfers necessary.

To make this a reality, it will require some work.

As shown in Image 9, new tracks will have to be built from the TTX Acorn Yard through the industrial yards and an old abandoned railway that runs through the center of the city that was turned into a walking trail.

The repurposed walking trail—the S-Line Urban Greenway—will eventually connect to the existing right of way that runs north up to Yulee.

If you look closely at the map from the 2009 proposal, it appears repurposing the trail back into a railway was part of the original plan for the northern corridor.

We can also tell by looking closer at the map why through-running on the southwest corridor is not possible as it is currently laid out relative to JRTC. If you look at the screenshot from openrailwaymap.org (Image 11), southwest trains would have to connect to the tracks that approach JRTC from the northwest. This means trains cannot run straight through the station and just continue north onto the Yulee corridor; they would have to turn around.

That is not through-running.

The only through-running route possible is St. Augustine to Yulee. While most passengers from St. Augustine may not be looking for a direct trip to Yulee, there are still many travel possibilities in between.

The idea of through-running sounds even better if some trains went directly to Jacksonville International Airport.

New right of way to the JAX terminal

Building a station along the existing right of way to Yulee with a shuttle service would be a lot easier and cheaper, and is not a terrible plan. But trains running directly to the terminal would truly be a game-changer. A one-seat ride without transferring to a shuttle bus is always better and will make the regional rail service a more attractive travel option.

On Google Earth, I sketched two potential routes (orange and blue) that branch off and carry trains between the northern main line to Yulee (green) and a new approach to the terminal (yellow).

Click here to view the map in detail on Google Earth

Terminal approach on Airport Road

Airport Road is a wide road with a good-sized median that could easily fit a new elevated railway. Once trains reach the loop, they will run parallel to car traffic—counterclockwise—on the inside of the loop (to the left of the road).

A new small station will be built right next to the existing parking garage or somewhere close that allows a direct walk to the terminal. After droping off and picking up new passengers, trains will depart and continue running along the road until they reach the end of the loop and merge back into the main artery over Airport Road.

This is the easy part of building a direct connection to the airport. The hard part will be branching off the existing right of way to Yulee and connecting it with the Airport Road elevated track.

At a glance, I see two options.

Branch #1: Airport Center Drive

This option starts with a new ramp that will branch off from the main line to Yulee and connect to an elevated track in the middle of Airport Center Drive. The right of way will continue west toward Interstate 95 where it will connect to the approach on Airport Road.

Like Airport Road, Airport Center Drive is also a pretty wide road separated by a spacious median, making it a suitable corridor for an elevated track. The issue here is crossing I-95, which passes over Airport Road. So if an elevated railway is built off the initial branch and connects to an elevated railway on the other side, it’ll have to be really tall.

Branch #2: I-295 and I-95

The second option is to build tracks where trains branch off the Yulee line at I-295, and then run along I-95 until it reaches Airport Road where it will connect to the approach.

While building around the highway may be tricky, there appear to be some options to construct elevated tracks between medians and ramps over and around car traffic to make this route to connect to Airport Road possible.

Let’s reimagine daily travel in America.

I want to explore the possibilities for a future with safer, cleaner, more comfortable, more equitable, and more efficient travel transit-deficient regions like Jacksonville.

We can make them happen. But we have a lot of work to do, and it starts with breaking down the stigmas and myths that have shaped the perceptions of mass transit in this country. Part of that is exploring what is possible with fully funded investment in improving and expanding our systems.

Presenting vision.

Day trips are better by train

Fast and frequent high speed rail between cities would make easy day trips a reality.

March 16, 2025

I just had my biggest culture shock since moving to New York, and it has inspired me to write about something I think is an underrated benefit of high speed rail and frequent intercity rail service.

I recently booked a day trip between New York and Philadelphia on Amtrak’s Northeast Regional. While it’s not a high speed train, having this kind of convenient travel mode, which was also quite inexpensive, is enough for this guy from the Midwest to appreciate.

It made me think that if other major cities were connected by actual high speed trains (and/or frequent departures between cities really close to each other), this kind of travel would be possible all over the U.S.

Many Americans can’t even begin to comprehend this kind of travel. So, I was inspired to write an article that could maybe stimulate the imagination of the car-conditioned American, or how the one crazy transit-obsessed family member (me) can back to their home suburb for the holidays and pitch high speed rail to their family.

What kind of day trips could we take?

Here is a broad list of different day trips that are possible with fast and frequent trains:

Business meetings and conferences

If the city you have to travel to is close enough to do a trip by high speed rail, it’d be nice to have the option of not paying for a hotel there and being able to return home, see your family, and sleep in your bed. Especially if you’re only traveling for a couple of meetings or a one-day conference.

Plus, you get to do work before and after while on the train. If you were driving, you couldn’t do that!

Visiting family and friends

When I lived in St. Louis, visiting family and friends in Chicago and Kansas City was not difficult, but it certainly wasn’t convenient, either. It was always easier to consolidate visits into a few days in one city or the other, and with busy schedules, sometimes plans like that are prone to falling apart.

But with fast and frequent trains, day trips on weekends for family lunches or a quick round of golf with my friends could’ve been more a regular occurrence.

Sporting events and festivals

Is your team playing its rival in a nearby city? Is your favorite band playing in a music festival in a city near yours?

Well, it’s not only faster to get there by high speed train, it’s also more comfortable and fun to sit around a table with your friends than cramming into a car. Plus, if you want to pregame with a few drinks (responsibly) or need a snack on the way home, you can just walk to the café car!

Quick visits home for college students

Many high speed rail corridors have college towns with large universities along the way and are large enough to justify a stop. Those smaller cities or college towns likely have other small colleges in addition to the large university, and the major cities at each end of the corridors probably have a good number of students as well.

As a college student who didn’t venture far from home, imagine being able to hop on a high speed train to visit family on Mother’s Day or Easter Sunday for a few hours and then be back in the evening. Plus, not only would the journey be faster than driving, but you can also do your Sunday studying on the train journey both ways that you can’t do behind the wheel.

The importance of frequency and affordability

The key to making day trips a viable option between cities is not only fast trains, but frequent departures.

Cars offer the unmatched convenience of being able to leave whenever you want, you have full control over your schedule. But a minimum of two departures per hour from about 6 or 7 a.m. to about 9 or 10 p.m. makes high speed rail more competitive with driving in terms of convenience.

Every city pairing should run this kind of service to maximize the potential of its corridor, and it would unlock so many possibilities to make day trips between major cities more viable. On my upcoming day trip, I leave New York at around 7 a.m. so I can show up early for a conference that starts at 9. In the evening, my train back leaves Philadelphia at 8 p.m., which is great, so I can stay after the conference and network a little bit.

Early morning train schedule from New York to Philadelphia:

Evening train schedule from Philadelphia to New York:

Making these trains affordable is also a huge factor, especially when booking on short notice. For my day trip to Philadelphia, I was initially considering staying the night, but after looking at hotel room prices and then seeing that my Amtrak trip could be as low as $30, I didn’t think twice about booking my return train in the evening instead of the next morning.

Yes, my upcoming trip is on a conventional train, and high speed rail is a much different beast in terms of upfront and operating costs, and operators need the revenue. But affordable high speed rail is possible; just look at Spain. I went through the train schedules for a day trip between Barcelona and Zaragoza and was able to plan a day trip for as low as $50 with a pretty optimal schedule (see Image 7). It’s worth mentioning that I was able to get this fare THREE DAYS BEFORE the trip.

Let’s reimagine daily travel in America

The voices that look for any reason not to build bold new transit infrastructure in the U.S. have dominated the conversation for too long.

At Transit Visions, I want to add a voice to the fight for better transit. I not only want to be an advocate, but also help shift the paradigm of our country’s mindset regarding mass transit and fully explore what is possible for better daily travel within our cities and between them.

Phase 1 of High Speed Rail in St. Louis

High Speed Rail Alliance's vision for a new rail hub in St. Louis.

March 6, 2025

I’m happy to finally be able to share my first freelance article since starting this publication and freelance business:

The Case for a High-Speed Rail Station in East St. Louis

I recently wrote a blog post for the High Speed Rail Alliance that lays out its vision for a new train station in East St. Louis. The article highlights key aspects of HSRA’s proposal and makes arguments for how it will optimize modern train service between Chicago and St. Louis by:

• Unlocking faster runtimes.

• Being a great “Phase 1” for high speed rail service in the St. Louis area.

• Enabling better transit connectivity for the entire region while still allowing easy access to downtown.

Read the proposal now:

The Case for a High-Speed Rail Station in East St. Louis

(NOTE: I don’t want to take credit for any ideas in the article; I simply wrote the blog post based on HSRA’s proposal and arguments.)

Hire me for freelance writing!

If you like this work and are a transit organization looking for some writing help, message me or visit my Freelance Services page today!

Building more excitement behind high speed rail in the Midwest

We need to get Midwest corridors in the conversation.

January 21, 2025

It makes total sense that California High Speed Rail and Brightline West dominate the conversation around high speed rail in the U.S. since those two projects are actually under construction.

The High Speed Rail Alliance’s objective of getting one high speed line in operation this decade is paramount. Just getting one line running will transform the perception and demand around high speed rail in America, and cities all over the country will see the benefits and scramble to bring it to their residents. CAHSR and Brightline West are the furthest along, and we should push them to the finish line.

“The best way to get high-speed rail going and expand is to actually get people riding trains” — Seth Moulton, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts (Source: HSRA)

However, there are so many good corridors in the Midwest worthy of discussion that we should be pushing for as well. There is so much potential for high speed rail to create a more interconnected region, and it doesn’t get enough attention.

There is a proposal for a line between Chicago and St. Louis and is currently being designed by the Illinois High Speed Rail Commission. The corridor began reaching speeds of up to 110 miles per hour in the summer of 2023, which has gotten the Lincoln Service trip times to under 5 hours. The car trip—which I did many times as a child and will never do again—is about 6 hours. A high speed line could get the journey between the two cities down to two and a half hours. If we wanted to go all out, the trip could be cut to under two hours.

I say it’s time to build more hype and support behind this project and make this part of the bigger conversation, let’s make it the next big thing happening for these two cities. Let’s build momentum now before NIMBYs and other opponents try to stop the project.

That is why I will be doing an article soon diving deep into the proposed STL-CHI route and launching an initiative to build more excitement behind the project. It is such an exciting development, especially for St. Louis, as it would be transformative for a city that has been declining for decades. But it’s also good for all cities in the Midwest. Getting this line built and in service would transform the region, and residents of other cities will be clamoring for high speed rail service in their cities.

It’s time for the Midwest to be a bigger player in the conversation of American High Speed Rail. What are the other top corridors in the Midwest that you think should be serious contenders? Let me know.

No one talks about the trains in Missouri!

Imagining a better future for my transit-deficient home state.

January 19, 2025

The silver lining of there not being a lot of transit in Missouri is that you can ride almost everything there was possible to ride in about a day.

Now, I am going to explore the potential of these places in a series I will call “Visons After Visiting” where I present my thoughts and observations about a place’s current transit operations and infrastructure, and then share ideas and proposals to take them to the next level.

These ideas will not be based on budget constraints and seem like pipedreams, which is why I want to make clear these are ideas about exploring what is possible if the money and political will were there. It’s about vision.

I have no planning, engineering, or architectural background. This page is to document my educational journey in those fields. If you have an education and/or working experience in these fields, I encourage you to leave comments with critiques, corrections, and thoughtful discussion to help me learn.

Visions After Visiting: Missouri – December 2024

Here’s my initial review and background on the highlights of my Missouri transit travels with short previews of in-depth articles coming soon:

From ‘04 to '24, Amtrak’s Missouri service has barely changed.

When I was a little kid, I used to take Amtrak's service from St. Louis to Kansas City—today called the Missouri River Runner—every holiday season to go visit family. The last time my family did the trip was probably around 2004 or 2005 when Amtrak ran two services—Ann Rutledge and Missouri Mules. The two routes were consolidated into the Missouri River Runner in 2009. However, not much has changed in the last 20 years.

According to what I’ve found, the average runtimes of the Ann Rutledge and Missouri Mules were 5 hours and 50 minutes. In late 2009, Amtrak and Union Pacific completed a 9,000-foot passing loop near California, Missouri to remove a huge bottleneck. This enabled massive improvements in on-time performance (OTP). So even though the scheduled trip was 5:50 before 2009, it was more prone to delays and many trips took over 6 hours before this short project was completed.

The scheduled route in 2024? 5 hours and 40 minutes—and that’s about how long both trips took—with average speeds of around 50-60 mph; top speeds are just over 70 mph.

So even though OTP has improved on the route, the state of Missouri and Amtrak have not prioritized the upgrades and modernization of the service with faster-scheduled runtimes. But I guess if Missouri was serious about passenger rail, we’d have a high speed—or at least “higher” speed—line between St. Louis and Kansas City by now, or at the very bare minimum, conventional intercity services to Columbia and Springfield.

St. Louis Union Station is great already. But it can be even better than before.

One of my biggest grievances with the state of U.S. transit is taking this beautiful and still perfectly intact former train station and repurposing it as a tourist destination by adding a bunch of tacky and gimmicky attractions.

But I must admit, they did a wonderful job with its rehabilitation, and despite my qualms with its current function, it is a lovely place for families to visit. Especially under the old trainshed that used to be the train terminal; they turned into a lovely outdoor space with restaurants, a koi pond, a mini golf course, and more.

I’m sure the families that come through there enjoy those things. That’s great, I love that for them. But it’s time for those activities to move somewhere else. I don’t care that train travel slowed down in the last half of the 20th century, we’re trending back in the other direction and it’s time to get real. The current Gateway Transportation Center is not going to cut it if (when) St. Louis becomes a thriving, world-class city again.

At this point, you might be thinking I want to re-purpose Union Station for sentimental reasons. You aren’t completely wrong.

However, there is a lot of land in the surrounding area of Gateway Transportation Center and Union Station that is taken up by surface parking. Could you take all that surface parking between Union Station and Gateway and turn it into a new state-of-the-art transit hub? I can’t resist the urge to start thinking of ways to make this possible.

Here are some early thoughts about why restoring Union Station, or at least better integrating it with Gateway Transportation Center, makes sense:

Ample space for concourses and waiting areas.

Within the old station, there is an abundance of very nice places to sit and hang out (*cough* *cough* wait for trains *cough*).

The station could have two large open spaces for the train station, and each space offers something different:

1. The Grand Hall and the concourse on the way out to the old trainshed are beautiful places to hang out, with a bar and café and room to add more.

2. The nice outdoor space within the old trainshed—with its restaurants and walkable plaza around the koi pond. In fact, it could be expanded to replace some of the surface parking just outside.

To make the building more functional, it will likely require renovations to improve the pedestrian flow between the old main building and the outdoor trainshed.

While this is a much more complex architectural project than I am making it seem and there are factors of train station design I am not considering, I know enough to say that Gateway Station will not cut it long-term. It could be repurposed as a southeast entrance/exit for the new station, but it does not have the space to accommodate more passengers if (and when) rail services in St. Louis increase to be the main station. Good thing there’s a large building to serve that exact purpose close by.

Lodging within walking distance.

There are 539 hotel rooms currently part of the St. Louis Union Station Hotel, which is optimal for intercity travelers. While the hotel is within walking distance of the current Gateway Station, it’s not the closest or easiest walk.

The area layout is optimal for continuing through-running.

The current layout of the surface parking areas relative to the existing tracks that run adjacent makes the area optimal for building a through-running station (see Image 6). It would sense to continue to through-run trains—as the Lincoln Service Missouri River Runner currently does at Gateway Station—and not build a terminal like it used to be (see Image 7).

If there is ever enough growth in the region to create demand and political will for regional rail, through-running would allow for one-seat rides—or at least easy transfers—from the suburbs and surrounding counties out west to Madison and St. Clair counties in Illinois.

I wish more metros were like the St. Louis MetroLink.

Hear me out.

The St. Louis MetroLink is obviously not as great a network as systems like the NYC Subway. That cannot be disputed. What I’m saying is that it was more about the experience.

Maybe it’s because it was something different, but I really like St. Louis’s mostly above-ground station experience. The stations are not overly built out, are easy to get in and out of, and aren’t tens or hundreds of feet below ground; most of the time you are above ground. I loved walking across tracks to get to platforms at some stations, it felt so laid-back compared to heavy metros, if that makes sense.

Again, St. Louis and NYC are very different cities. I, personally, just enjoyed a different experience.

Each line runs on 20-minute headways, with trains coming every 10 minutes in the central corridor—where the Red and Blue lines are interlined—from Forest Park-DeBaliviere to Fairview Heights. If St. Louis's population were to explode, with lots of development near its stations and the demand for transit would increase, an easy adjustment would be to increase frequencies.

A note about western station locations.

For those of you unfamiliar with the system, I want to highlight sub-optimal station locations and surrounding development on the west end of the Blue Line (see Image 10). Once the Blue Line passes through Clayton station going west, it turns south and runs parallel to Interstate 170 and Hanley Road for about five miles for the line’s final five stations.

This is where density starts to fall off, and the line enters suburban areas where many residents don’t take transit. The stations are plopped next to strip malls and shopping centers and surrounded by acres of surface parking—Sunnen has four car dealerships right next to it. Most of the surrounding areas around these stations are not what I would call “walkable” with some housing nearby, but not much. Four of the five stations on this final stretch of the line offer free park-ride.

On one of the days I rode MetroLink, I parked for free and got on the MetroLink at Richmond Heights. Like other stations on this portion of the line, there’s a decent amount of housing close by, but the area overall is not very walkable. Richmond Heights is only accessible from one side (see Image 11).

Let’s explore what’s possible.

There is so much potential for Missouri and the city of St. Louis, something I will explore with this publication.

Part of this page’s mission is to help promote the rebrith of America’s once-great cities, like St. Louis. A major component of reviving these metro areas is building great transit.

Learn more about what I’m trying to do by heading to my About page!