JTA has $198M impact on city's economy, report finds

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) commissioned a study in partnership with University of North Florida’s Coggin College of Business to look at the impact transit has on Northeast Florida’s economy.

The “Economic Impact Study of Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) Operations, 2018,” report concluded that JTA’s total economic output exceeded $198.8 million in 2018, and that JTA services saved customers more than $23.4 million in transportation-related expenses.

The study was completed by UNF Professor of Economics and Director of the Local Economic Indicator Project at UNF’s Coggin College of Business, Chung-Ping (Albert) Loh. His work is based on figures from the 2018 fiscal year that concluded Oct. 1, 2018.

Loh’s study measured the economic contribution of JTA’s operations to the five-county Jacksonville Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including output, employment, labor, compensation, and tax payments. He also measured several economic benefits of JTA’s operations to JTA customers and other Jacksonville citizens.

Some of the highlights of the report include:

Labor - JTA’s employment roster generated $43.7 million in direct labor income for the area, and $112.5 million in direct economic output. Additionally, JTA’s operations are supported by other industries within the Jacksonville MSA, and their employees. This indirect impact represented more than $14.1 million in labor compensation, and more than $37.3 million in indirect economic output.

The study found that labor earnings by JTA employees and those in related sectors also led to the consumption of more goods and services like groceries, entertainment and retail shopping. This induced impact, due to JTA’s operations, added $15.7 million in labor compensation and $48.8 million in economic output.

Combined, the JTA’s operations led to more than $73.6 million in labor compensation, $118.6 million in total added value, and $198.8 million in economic output.

Savings for Customers

JTA customers rode a total of 64,332,545 miles in 2018, taking more than 12 million trips. According to the study, if those customers traveled the same distance in their own vehicles, the cost of doing so would be significantly higher compared to using JTA services.

As a benchmark, Loh used data from a 2017 AAA study, “Your Driving Costs,” which calculated the annual expenses of owning, operating, and maintaining a personal vehicle, based on driving 15,000 miles annually. The AAA data calculated expenses ranging between $6,354, $8,171, and $9,399, depending on the size of the vehicle.

“Based on the unweighted average of costs across these three vehicle types, the cost of operating a car per mile is 53 cents,” Loh writes. “This implies that the total cost of traveling 64,332,545 miles would have amounted to $34,096,249 through passengers driving themselves.”

Compared with the $10.7 million JTA received in FY-2018 from passenger fares and passes, Loh concluded that customers saved more than $23.4 million by using JTA services instead of driving their own vehicle.

Reducing Congestion

Loh utilized data reported in the 2017 and 2018 North Florida TPO Annual Mobility Reports, which indicate traffic delay, traffic congestion, and traffic volume trended upward from 2010 to 2016.

Drivers spent an estimated 37,979 hours in traffic delays in 2016, according to the North Florida TPO. About 10.6 % of their total driving time in 2016 was spent in severely congested traffic situations.

Loh found that about 18% of JTA customers surveyed in 2016 said they would’ve driven their own cars if not for JTA services. Based on that figure, and others, Loh concluded that without JTA services, those additional drivers would’ve increased traffic delays by 20.84 vehicle hours per day.