Jacksonville Transportation Authority

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority, almost always called the JTA, is the agency that runs public transit in Jacksonville and builds a share of its roads. It is an independent authority created by the Florida Legislature, not a city department, which is why its buses, Skyway trains and ferry carry their own brand rather than the City of Jacksonville seal. According to the JTA Rider Guide, its services include fixed-route buses, the First Coast Flyer, the Skyway, ferry service across the St. Johns River, paratransit, ReadiRide, on-demand rides, Gameday Xpress shuttles to EverBank Stadium and NAVI, an autonomous vehicle network.

The agency's reach goes beyond Duval County. The Rider Guide describes JTA services across Duval, Clay, Baker, Nassau and St. Johns counties, and ReadiRide, its phone-bookable shuttle, offers door-to-door rides in 14 Jacksonville neighborhoods. The JTA's headquarters sits in LaVilla, next to the Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center that opened there in 2020 as the main hub where city buses, the Skyway and intercity buses meet.

That hub replaced an older arrangement. The JTA timeline dates its earlier main transfer point, FCCJ station, to 1994. WJCT reported in March 2018 that construction was underway on a new transit hub and JTA headquarters in LaVilla, across the street from the Prime Osborn Convention Center, with an intercity Greyhound terminal as the first phase. The timeline records the Intercity Bus Terminal ribbon cutting in 2018 and the opening of the Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center at LaVilla in 2020, which the U.S. Green Building Council certified LEED Gold in 2021. Park-n-Ride lots at Armsdale, Baldwin and Avenues Walk feed express routes into it from the edges of Duval County.

The JTA started as a road builder. Its own history timeline records that the Jacksonville Expressway Authority was formed by the Florida State Legislature in 1955, and that the Riverside Interchange section of the Jacksonville Expressway opened in 1956, connecting the Fuller Warren Bridge to the Stockton exit. In 1958 the first automatic tolls went on the Fuller Warren Bridge. Construction of the Commodores Point Bridge, the Isaiah David Hart Bridge, began in 1963, and the Hart Bridge opened in 1969. The Expressway Authority used the initials JEA in its own records, years before the city's electric utility took the same three letters.

The shift to transit came in 1971. That year, the timeline says, the Jacksonville Expressway Authority became the Jacksonville Transportation Authority by act of the Florida Legislature as it entered the bus business, the same year construction started on State Road 202, J. Turner Butler Boulevard. The new agency added a Park-n-Ride lot at JTB and A1A served by an express flyer bus in 1974 and Dial-A-Ride paratransit in 1976, and it restructured the whole bus system for the first time in 1984.

The road side of the agency kept going for decades. Tolls at the Mathews Bridge, Fuller Warren Bridge, Hart Bridge, Trout River Bridge and J. Turner Butler Boulevard were removed in 1988. The Dames Point Bridge, officially the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge, opened in 1989. The JTA opened the Atlantic Boulevard and Mayport Flyover in 2002 and the Wonderwood Bridge in 2004, widened Heckscher Drive to four lanes in 2006, and finished its MobilityWorks 1.0 road program in 2025 with a San Pablo Road ribbon cutting, two years ahead of schedule.

The First Coast Flyer is the JTA's bus rapid transit network, built in stages across Jacksonville. Mass Transit reports that the JTA launched it with the Green Line in December 2015 and the Blue Line in December 2016, the north and southeast corridors. The East Corridor Red Line followed on December 3, 2018.

The Red Line is the longest. News4JAX reported that the 18.5-mile route takes riders from downtown Jacksonville to the beaches using the Arlington Expressway, Southside Boulevard and Beach Boulevard, starting at Rosa Parks Transit Station, with 10-minute frequency during peak hours. Mass Transit lists stops at FSCJ Downtown Campus, Regency Mall, FSCJ South Campus and Jacksonville Beach, 21 branded stations and transit signal priority at 32 intersections that hold green lights for approaching buses.

Federal money paid for half of it. According to WJCT, the Federal Transit Administration awarded a $16.9 million Capital Investment Grant in March 2018 toward the $33.9 million East Corridor, with the rest from the Florida Department of Transportation and the JTA. The JTA timeline adds that groundbreaking for the Orange Line on the Southwest Corridor took place in 2020.

A seven-member board governs the agency. The JTA leadership page states that four directors are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate, one each representing Duval, Nassau, Clay and St. Johns counties, and three directors are appointed by the Mayor of Jacksonville and confirmed by the City Council. Directors serve four-year terms without pay, and the board elects its own officers. As of October 2026 the leadership page lists Aundra Wallace, president of the JAXUSA Partnership, as chair and Patricia Gillum Sams as vice chair, with Max Glober as secretary and Elaine Brown as treasurer. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the Jacksonville Transportation Authority leadership page.

The JTA is in a leadership transition. Nathaniel P. Ford Sr. became CEO in 2012, according to the JTA timeline. The Jacksonville Daily Record reported that Ford announced his resignation on July 3, 2026 and was named CEO of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, starting October 26. In an August 27, 2026 press release, the JTA announced that its board unanimously selected Cleveland Ferguson III, its executive vice president and chief administrative officer, as Interim Chief Executive Officer, and retained the search firm KL2 Connects. Jacksonville Today reported that the board hopes to name a permanent CEO by late 2026 or early 2027. The board's minimum qualifications, the Daily Record noted, include living in or moving within 12 months to one of the five Northeast Florida counties the JTA serves.

The Skyway is the most visible piece of JTA infrastructure Downtown. The JTA Skyway page describes a 2.5-mile elevated monorail that charges no fare and runs weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with stations from LaVilla, Jefferson and Central stations along Bay Street to James Weldon Johnson Park and Rosa Parks Transit Station, and across the river to San Marco, Riverplace and Kings Avenue. The JTA states that Skyway operations will be pausing on November 2, 2026, as the agency moves toward its Ultimate Urban Circulator autonomous vehicle program.

The timeline traces the Skyway to a federal grant of more than $23 million in 1985, a seven-tenths-of-a-mile starter line in 1989, and the extension across the Acosta Bridge to San Marco in 1998. During the four-day 2005 Super Bowl event, the JTA provided more than 450,000 trips on the Stadium Shuttle and Skyway. In 2016 the JTA assumed ownership and operations of the St. Johns River Ferry between Mayport and Fort George Island, and in 2025 it launched what it calls the nation's first public transportation autonomous vehicle revenue service.

Road money still flows through the agency too. The JTA timeline notes that in 2014 the local option gas tax was extended to 2036 to fund transit and road projects in Duval County, and the Rider Guide describes the current MobilityWorks 2.0 program as $490 million invested over 30 years. That mix of roads and transit, inherited from the 1955 Expressway Authority, is what still separates the JTA from bus-only transit agencies elsewhere in Florida.