Okay, confession time.  As huge of a proponent as I am for mass transit and the screaming and kicking that I do for Jacksonville to get on the fixed rail bandwagon (especially streetcars), I have never been on Jacksonville’s Skyway.  I do not think I’m alone in that, however.  One of the reasons I’ve never been on it is that I never seem to need to go on it.  I think one of the main issues that I have, as well as many others, is that it is very limited in where it can take you to.  It seems that it is about 1-3 stops short in every direction and if it extended a bit more, or if I could transfer onto another fast/timely mode of transportation to get to say, the beach or the airport, I would make more use of it.  But I digress…this was supposed to be about me actually riding it.  Greg had been on the Skyway once before…in the 80′s, you know back when the Landing had Fat Tuesdays.  I’m not trying to age him or anything, but he was of legal drinking age at the time.  Ok, I’m doing it again, sorry.

Why did we decide to take the Skyway?  It was beautiful this past Friday and since the move to downtown, we’ve pretty much exhausted all of the places in walking distance here on the Northbank and really hate to get into our cars in the middle of the day when we don’t have to go to a meeting.   That’s when we remembered how much we like the chips over at Hightide Burrito in San Marco.  This of course gave us a great excuse to ride the Skyway, and it’s free until September 30th, so how could we not want to give it a try.  The nearest station to our offices here at CoWork Jax is the Hemming Park station, which is a short stroll.  Once on the rail, we found that a couple others in our car seemed to be using the transit for grabbing lunch as well.  On the way back it seemed that our car was full of folks on a more leisurely schedule.

Check out the video of the trip to the Southbank that Greg shot and edited on his iPhone, below:

We really enjoyed the ride and found it pretty amazing to see things from a different vantage point.  Once over to our stop, Kings Avenue Station, we exited and began the final leg of the trip.  This is when we remembered just how far away Hightide Burrito was from the station and chatted again about how that extension of the Skyway would be a fantastic thing.  But, we realized if we were in New York this 12-15 minute walk wouldn’t be an issue and our Jacksonville auto-centric part of the brain needed to relax.  The entire trip over ended up being a little less than 30 minutes, each way.  Not exactly enough time for someone with an hour lunch break, but not sure someone would even try to make it over to the other side for a lunch break, with all of the options on the Northbank.

That being said, we really enjoyed the ride and will try it again soon.  As I mentioned, the Skyway is free until September 30th, with the original deadline being extended because of the popularity and ridership numbers.  For more information on the Skyway and latest news, head over to the Skyway Report.