SEPTA Regional Rail is on a Saturday Schedule, except for Wilmington/Newark and Cynwyd which are on special schedules. Suburban Station is closed until 4 AM Monday. 5th St/Independence, 15th St, and City Hall stations are closed until 5 AM Monday. City transit is running, but lots of buses are being detoured around the secure vehicle …
Author Archives: Michael Noda
Pricing parking is not regressive
People who object to putting a fair price on parking often claim that it would be a regressive tax falling primarily on the poor and working class. That assertion is not supported by the arithmetic. Based on an unscientific survey of Philadelphia’s poor and working class, conducted by watching Twitter keyword searches for the last …
That This House Has No Confidence In the Leadership of the World Meeting of Families
I keep wanting to write further about the endless logistical and communications bungling that is the hallmark of the leadup to the 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. Every time I make the attempt, some new gross error renders me unable to write in polite terms about people who, for all that they have thoroughly earned …
Dear New Yorkers
If Governor Andrew Cuomo’s continued blithering idiocy manages to stall Amtrak’s Gateway tunnels until after one or both of the Hudson River Tunnels fails, and if Mayor Bill De Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton succeed in wiping out the Times Square pedestrian plazas, one of America’s most successful urban street interventions, over a handful …
The Secret Service Is Not a Transportation Agency
Since SEPTA’s service plan for the Papal Visit came out, transportation experts and casual riders alike have been picking apart what seem to be obvious flaws. As suggestions for improvement are met with uncharacteristic silence from 1234 Market Street, the picture has become much clearer: it’s not SEPTA’s transportation plan, it’s the transit component of …
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Visualizing parking is the first step to resolving parking politics
A new map shows exactly which block faces in Philadelphia require the pittance of $35/year to keep a car on them. The terms of parking politics in this city may never be the same. Lauren Ancona’s previous magnum opus was a map showing the boundaries of the PPA parking permit districts, a work that landed …
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Wednesday morning service disrupted on PATCO and SEPTA after storm
The violent thunderstorm that swept over Greater Philadelphia Tuesday evening, disrupting all modes of travel during the evening rush, has apparently let the magic smoke out of at least six area rail lines. The most serious outage is PATCO, which is entirely without electric power and does not expect restoration until after the morning rush. …
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Indego stations bedeviled by power problems
Today, for the second day running, the Indego bikeshare system’s twitter account was apologizing to users in the early morning for dead docking stations. Good morning! Some stations are temporarily w/o power. If a station does not have power, you can still return your bike! (1/2) #solarsorry — Indego (@RideIndego) June 5, 2015 You will …
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Would anybody ever say no to a carshare car?
Even under the most venial interpretation of the support requirement, the RCO and District Councillor veto points are a waste of everybody’s time.
About the engineer lawyering up
I’ve seen quite a lot of nonsense being written about the engineer of Amtrak 188 lawyering up and not giving a statement to the Philadelphia Police, and I can’t let it all slide. So here’s a few words on the subject. In the Navy (American or anybody else’s), if a ship away from the pier …
Sic Transit Philadelphia 