INTRODUCING Jax in Under 60 Seconds, a new mini-video series produced by The Coastal that offers quick peeks at some of the most interesting places, things, or events in Jacksonville, FL.
The first episode of Jax in Under 60 Seconds focuses on the Myrtle Avenue Tunnel.
The tunnel is a relic of the old Jacksonville Terminal Company, and the days when streetcars carried citizens around downtown Jacksonville and its neighboring areas. The tunnel actually served as a subway back in those days, carrying traffic on the popular public transit system in both directions between downtown and the westside.
Nowadays, the tunnel serves vehicular traffic passing through on Myrtle Avenue near the Bay St. intersection. It can be found underneath the Myrtle Avenue Bridge which carries traffic on I-95 over both the tunnel and the railroad tracks laid over the top of it. (The bridge is not to be confused with any of the seven bridges that pass over the St. Johns River.) As a result of the tunnel’s presence, traffic on Myrtle Avenue is unimpeded by the commercial trains that cross it.
The tunnel still features its concrete platform in between the two lanes. The walls of the tunnel are now coated with graffiti. Not much aside from the platform indicates the former presence of streetcars – many residents drive through the tunnel on a daily basis without any knowledge of the history behind it.
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It’s pretty cool to stand on what used to be the subway’s platform inside of the Myrtle Avenue Tunnel and imagine what the city was like back when we had streetcars, and what it might be like if we had them today.
(NOTE: We do not recommend checking this area out after dark – there are a lot of blind spots where cars passing through can’t necessarily see pedestrians, and vice versa, and low lighting only amplifies the problem. If you do go, be extra cautious!)
Well done EXCEPT for a misunderstanding of the nature of the Myrtle Avenue Subway.
It was constructed to avoid crossing multiple railroad tracks at the ‘throat’ (west of) the Jacksonville Union Terminal. It was modeled after a similar project in Savannah. There was just one track that passed through the center of the tunnel. There is, never was, a ‘platform.’ The floor of the original center-of-tunnel track was lower than the two roadways, so water drained into the track. The track was built 12” ABOVE mean high tide in the nearby creek and lined with a grating for drainage. Thus water ran into the street and down into the tunnels, then cascaded down to the lower track level, then it passed through a grate and into a pipe which led to McCoy’s Creek. Imagine Myrtle Avenue without drainage trouble! The concrete on either side of the rail tunnel is tapered to match the rooflines of the large streetcars. Down the center of the ceiling one can see where a metal collector channel ran through the tunnel. The trolley wheel at the end of the trolley pole transitioned from an overhead wire to a ‘Trolley Pan,’ as it moved through the tunnel, then back onto the contact wire at the far end of the tunnel.
The ‘old platform,’ the writer was nostalgic about didn’t exist. When the system was scrapped, some brilliant engineer decided the old car line was the perfect spot for a massive under street box culvert. Storm water drainage on upper Myrtle would be a thing of the past… Never mind that they destroyed the original tunnel drainage system in the process creating the ‘Myrtle Avenue Underwater Caverns,’ in the process.