thus passes the city of brotherly love
I’d like to write an enormous longform piece on how, in the first five weeks of this year, SEPTA and PATCO have been handling the disruptions of winter weather, for better and for worse. In lieu of the time to crank out the 10,000+ words the subject could take, let me take some time this …
Continue reading “Twitter helpdesks are too valuable to be turned off so early”
Back in July, Wilmington-based grad student David Curtis launched an online petition asking Delaware for increased SEPTA Regional Rail service to Wilmington. This week, we are seeing the first results of that show of public support with two new trains to Delaware each weekday. It’s a very promising start. Curtis and I both estimated the …
Continue reading “December schedule change will carry first fruits of #SEPTAWILM campaign”
A young girl is in the hospital, not expected to survive. Her cousin has leg and head injuries, and her mother is also injured. And mild-mannered Minnesotan Chuck Marohn is in a white-hot rage about it. I don’t fundamentally disagree with his point that we’ve shielded civil engineers from our liability- and litigation-happy traditions, and …
Continue reading “How do we stop Civil Engineers from killing people?”
Originally posted on Itinerant Urbanist:
Apologies for the long periods between posts. I’ve been caught up with school, work, and the Jewish holidays, so time for blogging has been infrequent. That being said, here’s a short post on something that caught my eye as I was doing research for a paper. Anyone interested in planning,…
Another edition brought to you by the World’s Worst Blogger: In the end of an era, SEPTA has announced that, beginning on September 1, pay-as-you-leave will be abolished on the Suburban Transit routes out of 69th Street Terminal where it is currently the rule. This will standardize the entire SEPTA transit system on the more …
In remarks to Jake Blumgart writing for Next City, John Sisson, CEO of the Delaware Transit Corporation, says as part of the first official response to the #SEPTAWILM petition that doubling service will result in quintupling costs. That is an extraordinary claim, and nobody should take it at face value until they provide extraordinary evidence, …
Continue reading “Somebody get John Sisson a calculator and show him how to use it”
On the subject of Better Living through Higher Frequency: Friend of the Blog David Curtis has posted a Change.org petition calling on DelDOT and SEPTA to attack the low-hanging fruit of SEPTA’s Wilmington/Newark Line, and extend all off-peak and weekend Marcus Hook trains to Wilmington. This comes after the bewildering success of the petition to …
Continue reading “Sign the Petition: Unsuck SEPTA Wilmington service”
Greetings from East Glacier, Montana! I hope everyone back in Greater Philadelphia had a good holiday weekend, and that the weather I hear you’ve been having hasn’t been inconveniencing you too badly. The scenery here is breathtaking, and the weather has been mild and cooperative. I want to tell a few stories about Frequency Anxiety …
Continue reading “America is about Freedom. Freedom comes from Frequency.”
As the I-495 bridge closure passes its third day with not even a hint from DelDOT that they are considering expanding transit service, Reddit user /u/wild-tangent has created an excellent overview of bike facilities in Northern New Castle County, especially those that interface with SEPTA Regional Rail stations. Check it out. If you use Reddit …
Continue reading “A bicyclist’s guide to Delaware Carmageddon”
Part 1 of a 3 part series. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh would probably be inextricably linked together even if history hadn’t lumped them together into the same state. As it stands, though, we have a lot more than an ugly blue flag and a bunch of corrupted mountebanks in Harrisburg in common. Both cities fell hard …
Continue reading “Two cities separated by a common everything: Pittsburgh and Philadelphia”
Sic Transit Philadelphia 