Month: August 2018

To transform Philadelphia into a transit oriented city is a massive undertaking, but while New York is choking on its own infrastructure as its employers and residents flee the rising cost of doing business there, now is the time for Philadelphia to make itself.

The vision for a new Transit Authority of Philadelphia will be realized upon completion of these initial phases.

• Phase 1 – Design a Transit Network with a declared scope and committed level of service, as well as an financial and administrative paradigm to allow the system to sustain itself.
• Phase 2 – Establish a uniform fare control within the designated City Transit Zone.
• Phase 3 – Utilize existing track and rights of way to establish 3 new metro services within the Central Transit Zone.
• Phase 4 – Improve the tunnels under market street to accommodate new services, realign station stops to connect with new loop services.
• Phase 5 – Construct new tunnels for two new metro services along 5th St and Ridge & Allegheny Avenues, and complete the delivery loop.
• Phase 6 – Dig tunnels for an outer delivery loop, redirect PATCO service to terminate at City Hall. Realign I-76 through a new tunnel under Belmont Ave. Construct central parking garages along the outer loop area and at other inter modal hubs.
• Phase 7 – Dig tunnels for a subway on 28th St via the unused tunnels under Pennsylvania Avenue.
• Phase 6 – Establish streetcar lines to fill in gaps in metro service (Supplemental) and deliver people from stations in residential areas (Last Mile).
• Phase 8 – Extend the Market-Frankford Line to Northeast Philadelphia Airport and realign stations along the route to connect with intersecting services.
• Phase 9 – Close access to the area within the outer loop to other than emergency vehicles except along Broad Street and I-76. Discontinue bus services made redundant by the metro system

Check back in the coming weeks while I discuss each of these phases in depth.

Philadelphia is, and has been, a car city for a long time. Once upon a time, it was a streetcar city, with PCC trolleys running up and down just about every street in town.

Deindustrialization hit Philly hard, by 1990 population was down 25% from its historic peak of the 1950s and 60s, and it has remained down since. Redlining, White Flight, and disinvestment hurt the city in a way that it has only just started to recover from.

With economic recession and dwindling population, there is no mystery as to the lack of investment in the city’s transit infrastructure. As the car culture came into its heyday, transit became associated with low class and undesirable neighborhoods. As the social isolation of the suburbs has been compounded with that of the internet culture, the value of cities in quality of life has been rediscovered.

The novelty and expensive burden of personal vehicle ownership has grown stale in the eyes of many, yet there remains an inexorable truth: If transit does not meet ~95% of one’s transportation needs, one must own a car. It then follows that if one owns a car, they would be unlikely to utilize transit as they already bear the fixed cost of vehicle ownership, doing so would only be economical when parking at the destination is prohibitively expensive or impossible.

If transit serves 95% of one’s transit needs, and one need only use a taxi or car share once or twice a month, then it is uneconomical to own a car.

So, let’s design a transit system that meets 95% of transportation needs for 95% of the city’s residents.