1.2 million free trips for Duval County middle and high school students since launch in January 2022, with a growth rate of 297% between August 2022 and Janu- ary 2024. This year, we expanded fare-free access to include col- lege, university, trade, technical, and apprenticeship students across Duval County. When we remove the daily cost of transportation, we do more than give a ride, we support attendance, graduation, and house- hold stability. Mobility also defines community identity. In October, Gameday Xpress carried 3,426 Jaguars fans to and from EverBank Stadium for Monday Night Football — our strongest performance since 2019. Fans chose JTA because it was faster, easier, and smarter than driving, and because they trust us to deliver them safely to the moments that define this city. That same reliability drives our fixed-route buses, First Coast Flyer, paratransit, Skyway, St. Johns River Ferry, and emerging on-demand services across Duval, Clay, Nassau, Baker, and St. Johns counties. When structural repairs temporarily closed the St. Johns River Ferry, we responded with transparency, communicating repair timelines, launching a full inves- tigation with our partner, and committing to a safe and efficient restoration. Our customers deserve hones- ty, urgency, and accountability , and that remains our standard.
On 904-Day, HOLON announced Jacksonville as the site of its first large-scale U.S. manufacturing facility, a de- cision projected to create hundreds of jobs and gener- ate hundreds of millions in economic impact . For us, innovation isn’t a press-release headline; it’s an eco- nomic development strategy for the region. In April, this Board unanimously approved Resolution 2025-07, authorizing the reservation of purpose-built autonomous shuttles for the Ultimate Urban Circula- tor (U²C) program, a roadmap to scale our innovation. That action enables negotiation for an initial order of 14 HOLON urban movers for the Bay Street Innovation Corridor and positions the Authority to procure up to 100 autonomous vehicles as the system expands. Over the next decade, the U²C program will convert and modernize the existing Skyway connecting Spring- field, Brooklyn, Riverside, San Marco, and Jackson- ville’s medical, education, business, and entertainment districts. This is the direct descendant of the 1976 “people-mover” vision. Then, Jacksonville imagined a signature downtown circulation system; today, Jack- sonville is building it, expanding it, and using it to knit our neighborhoods together. Yet as we lead the nation in autonomous transporta- tion, we remain equally focused on fundamental access to opportunity, especially for youth and working fami- lies. Our My Ride 2 School program has provided more than We are completing an unfinished story when we convert, modernize, and repurpose existing infra- structure with the Skyway Conversion. The U²C program will deliver an estimated 10-mile au- tonomous transportation network into adjacent neighborhoods in a cost-effective method that leverages existing infrastructure with agnostic and evolving system upgrades. Excerpt of Testimony to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on behalf of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). —Former Chairman of APTA Board of Directors
JACKSONVILLE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY | 2025 JTA YEAR-END REVIEW | 3
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