New RTS Bus Route 52 from Jonesville to UF Health
Press release from Alachua County
ALACHUA COUNTY, Fla. – The Alachua County Commission is pleased to announce that a new bus route has been added to serve the County’s unincorporated area in cooperation with the City of Gainesville’s Regional Transit System—the new Route 52 runs from Jonesville to the University of Florida Health Center. The bus route will run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and has four stops in Jonesville. During typical commuter times, the bus will run every 60 minutes.
Learn more about Route 52 (including its schedule and route map).
This is the first new route planned by the County to encourage transit-supportive development in Alachua County and will initially be paid for by Multi-modal Transportation Mitigation fees collected from new development.
“It is important to have strong transportation networks within the City of Gainesville and in the urbanized unincorporated area,” commented Alachua County Transportation Planning Manager Chris Dawson. He continued, “This new route will encourage bus ridership as the Jonesville area grows. It will provide accessibility to jobs, services, and healthcare.”
Let’s see if I have this right. First there was mixed use development, which promised live, work, and play.
Then there was transit oriented and traditional neighborhood development, which promised Bergen Norway style light rail.
Now Dawson and the BoCC seems to have scrapped all that and decided to go with transit-supportive development, which promises to solve the Newberry road traffic problem by adding a plain old bus route.
BRILLIANT!
There are many examples of mixed-use developments where live-work-play is available. Celebration Pointe, Town of Tioga, and Haile Plantation, to name a few. This route doesn’t “promise to solve the Newberry Road traffic problem, but it does take cars off the road and provides transportation options to get to jobs, services, and Healthcare.
So taking the bus will double the commute time for Jonesvillian UFHC workers, but they won’t have to look up even occasionally from their phones as they have to when they drive, so it may attract riders.
By offering service to Jonesville, Tioga, Haile, etc. the city would love to annex these tax rich areas to offset a small portion of its debt from less tax rich areas. Go west young man….
The County is paying for this service.
Makes good sense connecting higher density residential area to high employment – and health service – facility within walking distance of the entire campus. Given some people out in Jonesville may not have cars and others don’t like the commute through cattle squeezes at I-75, one would expect it might have high usage.