This does what you want:
reduce((x, y) -> x + y[2], a, init = 0.0)
To better understand what was going on in your example, try
reduce((x, y) -> (@show x y; x[1] + y[1]), a)
This does what you want:
reduce((x, y) -> x + y[2], a, init = 0.0)
To better understand what was going on in your example, try
reduce((x, y) -> (@show x y; x[1] + y[1]), a)