JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Things got heated Wednesday morning as Jacksonville City Council members grilled leadership at the Jacksonville Transportation Authority over a pilot program that would raise rates for the city\u2019s premium paratransportation service by more than 300 percent. <\/p>\n
That debate put renewed scrutiny on another JTA service: the autonomous NAVI shuttle program.<\/p>\n
JTA is justifying the rate hike on Connexion Plus by pointing to the fact the cost of subsidizing the service has increased roughly 800 percent since its launch, ballooning from under a million a year in 2019 to $8 million in 2026.<\/p>\n
The agency claimed the rate hikes would cut the overhead down to $5 million this year, but at the same time, the agency admitted it expects to spend $7 million on the NAVI this year.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIf you cut NAVI could you keep Connexion Plus fares the same? Would you save enough money?\u201d Councilmember Rory Diamond (R-District 13) asked JTA CEO Nat Ford in Wednesday\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Ford responded.<\/p>\n \u201c$7 million is not more than $3 million?\u201d Diamond rebuffed. <\/p>\n Diamond ripped into Ford over the proposed rate hikes during the hearing, calling the move \u201cmorally wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cExplain to me how hundreds of millions of dollars on NAVI and this whole autonomous thing is tightening your belt? You\u2019re creating a whole new thing, sending all this money,\u201d said Diamond. \u201dIf you didn\u2019t do NAVI, would we have to increase these fares on the basically completely disabled people in Jacksonville?\u201d<\/p>\n Ford noted that unlike most JTA services, Connexion Plus offers private rides like Uber or Lyft, and rates for the base multi-rider Connexion service would be cut by a third under the agency\u2019s proposed plan.<\/p>\n He argued the agency doesn\u2019t pit riders against one another and has to balance priorities to the benefit of all riders.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201c32 percent of our customers that have gotten used to Connexion Plus, we\u2019ll continue to provide Connexion Plus, but we\u2019ve got to get closer to the actual cost of the trip in terms of managing that subsidy,\u201d Ford said.<\/p>\n Despite the NAVI having only about a quarter of the average daily ridership of Connexion Plus, Ford argued NAVI is worth the current investment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s at the very beginning. Research and development is still happening with autonomous vehicles, but that\u2019s mobility of the future,\u201d Ford said. \u201dAnd I think that JTA has shown that from a national and international standpoint, the NAVI service is gonna bring us returns far greater than the actual today\u2019s cost.\u201d<\/p>\n During the meeting, JTA indicated it would look into a potential two-year phase-in of the rate hikes at the council members\u2019 request. <\/p>\n The board is expected to take final action on the proposal Thursday at 2 PM.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Things got heated Wednesday morning as Jacksonville City Council members grilled leadership at the Jacksonville…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,58667,28,348,116,351,118,117,62845,62844,62846,799,62843,62842,349,350,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-127049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-cbs47","10":"tag-connexion","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-fox30","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-fl","15":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","16":"tag-jacksonville-news","17":"tag-jax-connexion-plus","18":"tag-jax-navi","19":"tag-jax-transportation","20":"tag-jta","21":"tag-jta-navi","22":"tag-jta-shuttle","23":"tag-northeast-florida","24":"tag-southeast-georgia","25":"tag-wfox","26":"tag-wjax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}