thus passes the city of brotherly love
Yesterday, at 5:39a, the first scheduled passenger service pulled into the new Pennsauken Transit Center, NJT’s newest rail station connecting the River Line and the Atlantic City Line. Festivities, dedications and a general atmosphere of celebration have settled over South Jersey. But was this station really what South Jersey, and the Atlantic City Line in …
Continue reading “The Pennsauken Transit Center is open. Was it worth it?”
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”
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 …
One measure of unlimited passes is: at what point do they become cheaper, per ride, than paying for rides individually? This ratio is one that calls for balance from any transit agency. Lower pass prices encourage the prepayment of fares, which is good for the agency financially, and increases discretionary ridership that drives mode shift …
Continue reading “FY2014 and NPT: The Monthly Pass Break-Evens”
Stephen J Smith has a piece up at the New York Observer on how much capacity can be squeezed out of New York’s L line (14th St-Canarsie), in relation to a massive proposed development in Williamsburg. The answer seems to be “a lot”, and Smith does an excellent job in showing his work. A combination …
Continue reading “What Williamsburg can tell us about two tracks and short trains”
It’s almost treated as impolite to mention, but SEPTA’s Regional Rail system has a definite class structure to it. This is apart from, or perhaps parallel to, the actual class divides that separate the communities served, but I’m referring here to the differences created by the most fundamental attribute of the individual lines: length. Short …
SEPTA had a rough morning yesterday on the Paoli/Thorndale Line, with a broken rail taking one track out of service during the morning rush. Shuttle buses provided service between Thorndale and Downingtown, but the eye-opener of the morning came from this tweet SEPTA sent out: Thorndale: Amtrak train #605 will service passengers from Paoli to …
Sic Transit Philadelphia 