For 14 years, Miles Francis has been in the middle of
Jacksonville's tug-of-war over the best way to tackle the city's growing traffic
-- building more roads or taking the plunge into a citywide transit system.
As executive director of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, Francis
pushed transit. With his retirement this week, the Francis era at the JTA came
to a close in a city still skeptical about leaving cars in the garage but with a
$184 million Skyway monorail in place in downtown and plans under way to build a
rapid transit system citywide.
"Transit is still going to come," Francis said. "It's not a question of if
it's going to come, it's a question of when. And then you better have a
transportation agency that's ready to build it because it's going to be needed."
Still, he said it won't be easy to convince people to get out of their cars.
"It's been awfully frustrating to spend the money and time and effort on
transit and not get better results than we have," he said. "Jacksonville has
been a tough sell because of its geography and the way it's laid out, and
because we have a very good road system."
Francis, 60, has been at the center of Jacksonville's transportation debate
because the JTA builds roads and also runs the bus system. During his tenure,
the JTA completed construction of the Dames Point bridge, built new interchanges
on Butler Boulevard and part of Florida 9A, started the Wonderwood Connector
from Mayport to Arlington and did a number of smaller projects around the city.
Francis also guided the JTA through two galvanizing elections that raised the
sales tax, first to replace tolls in 1988 and then in September for the Better
Jacksonville Plan.
His tenure was remarkably long for an executive director of a transportation
agency. During the job search for a successor, a headhunter told JTA board
members that on average, executive directors stay four years with an agency.
Francis led the JTA long enough to work with four mayors.
JTA Chairman John Peyton said Francis' ability to work closely with the
changing lineup of board members was the key.
"Miles had the ability to earn the trust of the board chairmen through the
years, and he did that because he spent every dollar like it was his own,"
Peyton said. "I think that kind of longevity is rare in any kind of organization
in this day and age."
Roads vs. transit
Looking back on his career, Francis said voter approval of the Better
Jacksonville Plan last September was a turning point for the agency. Since the
mid-1990s, the JTA has been shifting money from its road-building side over to
transit. In 1999, the agency launched a study to map out routes for rapid
transit, such as light rail lines or busways, which are lanes dedicated solely
to express buses. In terms of roadwork, the JTA had been on track to issue bonds
over the next 10 years for about $110 million in roadwork.
The Better Jacksonville Plan boosted the JTA's spending on roadwork to $685
million this decade. The Better Jacksonville Plan also earmarked $100 million to
buy rights of way for a future rapid transit system, but Francis said building
roads has become the JTA's main mission.
"You come to a fork in the road and you go one way or the other," he said.
"It's hard to do both because it's so expensive and you get too spread out."
He said the roadbuilding will ease traffic congestion, but one of the big
questions facing Jacksonville over the next 10 years will be how long that
traffic relief lasts. Wider roads will promote more growth, and that in turn
generates traffic that clogs roads, Francis said.
But at least in the short run, it's easier to win public support for road
construction, he said.
"You have immediate gratification," he said. "You never have problems with
usage. It's just a lot more fun. The hard deal is transit."
Rising through ranks
Francis rose to the JTA's top spot through the agency's bus division. In
1986, he was named interim executive director when then-director John Meyer
abruptly submitted his resignation via a long-distance phone call from
California, citing strained relations with City Hall.
A year later, the JTA board made Francis the executive director, partly on
the basis of his ability to present the agency's program in public forums. The
major project facing the JTA at the time was the Skyway, an idea that went back
to the 1970s. The JTA had secured some funding for the 2.5-mile system when
Francis took over. Getting the rest of it built occupied his entire tenure,
causing him to call the hard-fought lobbying for Skyway money his "nemesis."
The last leg finallyd last year, albeit with a daily ridership of
roughly 2,000, far below the 38,000 that JTA officials had once predicted.
Despite that, Francis said he remains convinced that ridership will increase
gradually as more people park on the edge of downtown and ride the Skyway to
work. And he said that as Jacksonville grows, air pollution will loom as a
bigger threat to the city's expansion, making the all-electric Skyway more
attractive.
"I think it's better to have it and not need it, than it is to need it and
not have it," Francis said. "This is a vision, and you've got to give it time to
prove itself, and it will."
Francis' retirement from his $168,000-a-year job was long expected. He told
the board in 1997 that he planned to retire on his 60th birthday, which was
Wednesday. He and his wife, Sandy, will move to Virginia, his home state, where
he will oversee one last construction project -- a new home on 50 acres that he
calls Journey's End.
