This is a proposal for a full intercity surface transit network for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, implementable within 5 years of commencement. The primary component is a core network of bus services, provided on a fully accessible intercity motorcoach fleet, but the plan also encompasses PennDOT-funded rail service. The core network bus routes are distinguished from their counterparts today by being far more frequent
Category Archives: Politics
I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things.
I have tried, over the life of this blog, to strip away as much of my own personal political views, to present a non-partisan view of the topics I cover here. Most of them are technical or mathematical in nature to begin with, and many others are the subjects of broad left-right consensus, so this …
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This, too, is America: Burlington Route edition
I’m on the California Zephyr, on my way home from Denver, and the big stories back home are about the continuing lack of Silverliner Vs, and the announcement by Vice President Joe Biden that the Federal Government will be providing $2.45 billion in loans to Amtrak for the next generation of high speed trains on …
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A brief summary of my remarks to the NEC FUTURE hearing
I wasn’t expecting to speak at Monday night’s hearing on the NEC FUTURE Draft EIS, mostly because I failed to do my homework and realize that they would be accepting spoken testimony. So I winged it, with some hastily jotted notes. Here are the highlights of that extemporaneous speech, heavily revised and extended, as best as …
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New Year / New Mayor Resolutions for 2016
It’s a time of new beginnings, and hopes for a better future! Or at least, trying to be better than we are now, in ways that will fade along with our newly-renewed gym memberships. In no particular order: No more “SEPTA Key is Late” complaints. It’s very late. We all know it’s very late. We …
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The argument for Philadelphia from cost control
A lot of local political bigshots came out to the Navy Yard last Monday to announce full funding for another study of the case for extending subway service to the South Philadelphia office park. It may not be the most pressing transit need in the region, but it does have good potential. Perhaps more important: if …
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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 …
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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Sic Transit Philadelphia 