OK, this post is now 48 hours overdue, but mostly because I have no idea what is going on with Majority Leader Turzai’s sudden move to bring the SB1 transportation funding bill to the floor of the House. And as far as I can tell, nobody who knows is talking. But here’s what I do …
Author Archives: Michael Noda
Weekend Update
Happy weekend! Pennsylvania’s SB1 Transportation funding bill may be back from the dead; I’ll have more by tomorrow morning, or you can look in on the Pittsburgh Comet or Keystone Politics for the fast update, or if you’ve forgotten what SB1 actually does, there’s the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from June. Meanwhile, we have a big weekend …
Act 44: Part 0: I DO NOT WANT your filthy money
To open the series on replacing Act 44, I feel I should put my cards on the table as to what my political goals are, as framing for readers. I am keeping liberal/conservative, Republican/Democratic politics out of this as much as I can, because I feel that they mostly contribute noise and bias versus signal, …
Continue reading “Act 44: Part 0: I DO NOT WANT your filthy money”
A Letter to the Past: Jonathan Chait, August 2002
Philadelphia-based freelance journalist (and one of many official reasons I will never have a paid writing gig) Jake Blumgart must have been doing some background reading last Wednesday, because he tweeted this excerpt from Jonathan Chait’s 11-year-old article on Delaware for The New Republic: "The organizing principle of Delaware government is to subsidize its people …
Continue reading “A Letter to the Past: Jonathan Chait, August 2002”
SEPTA’s capital doomsday plan looks like blackmail. It’s not, and that’s terrifying.
It’s sometimes hard to believe, but it’s been six and a half years since the last of former SEPTA GM Faye Moore’s “doomsday plans”, an annual exercise in political hostage-taking with the goal of obtaining more stable funding for SEPTA. The proposed cuts were severe and carefully targeted to inflame the most politically active communities, …
Labor Day service advisory reminders
Good morning, and happy Labor Day! Just a quick roundup of service changes for the holiday: SEPTA Transit and Regional Rail are running Sunday schedules today. Trolley service is restored on Route 10, and Route 15 west of SugarHouse Loop. New transit schedules are in effect as of yesterday. Bus detours related to the Made …
Bus detours for Made in America start today, Extra El/Subway/RRD service Sat and Sun
The Made in America festival is back in town this weekend, with Beyonce headlining on Saturday and Nine Inch Nails headlining Sunday. Due to road closures around the Ben Franklin Parkway, SEPTA is detouring six bus routes away from the festival area, broadly defined as Market to Girard, 16th to the Schuylkill, beginning at 5:00 …
Ride-and-park Reverse Commuting
A bleary-eyed man staggers, coffee mug in hand, into the depths of Market East Station. In the pre-dawn gloom, he makes his way to Track 2, and boards a train. Fifty nine minutes and twenty ounces of coffee later, the train pulls in to West Trenton station. The man, fully awake and caffeinated, has caught …
Don’t know what you got, ’til it’s gone
As I believe I’ve mentioned, I moved this summer, and I had a six week period in between when my old lease in Point Breeze ran out and when my new place in Francisville was ready for move-in. In the meantime, I crashed in the spare bedroom of a friend and former flatmate in Swarthmore …
Weekend shuttle busing on the Chestnut Hill Line continues
Tomorrow and Sunday will be the second weekend out of six of bustitution on the Chestnut Hill West Line for a track maintenance blitz. Catching up to this project six days after it’s started disrupting travel is a new low for timeliness on this blog, which I’m sure that this summer-of-moving will see surpassed, ironically …
Continue reading “Weekend shuttle busing on the Chestnut Hill Line continues”
Sic Transit Philadelphia 