Philadelphia 2035 (Erie, Jenkintown, Girard: buying a house, property taxes, subways)

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Summersm343

Yes. Well worth it. There are currently over 10,000 employee in the Navy Yard. By this time next year there will be over 12,000 employees in the Navy Yard as Urban Outfitters expands and there will be more added year by year. The Navy Yard is growing quickly and I think right now it is more important than expanding into the Northeast or Northwest. The Northwest is already served pretty well by multiple regional rail lines and while the Northeast is lacking, it is mostly car-oriented anyways. I think there needs to be more service in South Philly, a light rail line along the Delaware Waterfront, Regional Rail expansion to King of Prussia, a subway stop at 19th or 22nd and Market or another Regional Rail line at 19th or 22nd and JFK, a Regional Rail stop at the zoo, the re-use of the Spring Garden subway stop along the Broad-Ridge spur and the re-use of the old city branch right below Spring Garden that runs through the Franklintown/Parkway Museum District before SEPTA should consider expanding into the Northeast. Everything I mentioned will be much more frequently used.

Ridden the 14? (The 20 runs in the same corridor but meanders to serve some residential neighborhoods east of the Boulevard near Holme Circle.)

Of those improvements you list above, I think the only one that would indeed outperform a Northeast Spur subway would be the Navy Yard extension. A Route 100 spur to K of P would indeed do well and is high up on SEPTA's capital wish list (easier to connect to than a Regional Rail spur would be to existing lines), but even though I also think we should run transit through the City Branch cut, it won't attract the ridership a Boulevard subway would. The additional transit stations on or near Market West, ditto - they're mainly for convenience.

Originally Posted by Duderino

Regarding the extension of the BSL to the Navy Yard, it's very good news that Pennsylvania has a fairly influential Senator advocating for this. It will make a difference regarding funding decisions in Washington.

Other than the increase in mass transit funding finally enacted in Pennsylvania -- which will finally allow SEPTA to make its expansion plans a reality in the coming years -- there is actually a movement to give states more power to implement federal funding based on their priorities.

I know SEPTA does have some expansion plans, but I think right now Priority One for the agency is replacing some critical infrastructure that's on the verge of failing (Crum Creek viaduct on the R3 Media/Elwyn, Schuylkill River crossing on the Route 100 NHSL).

Impact of Turning over the Federal Highway Program to the States

Not surprisingly, this is a conservative-initated effort, but I think there could be bi-partisan support for this because more mass-transit oriented states would no longer have to contend with more highway-focused states for funding priorities that are decided in DC.

I think that aspect of the idea has something to recommend it. But don't forget that the urban-rural split - which I consider THE most significant political cleavage in this country, more than red state-blue state - manifests itself in several states, including this one, and could play hob with the allocation of transportation dollars within states, as it keeps threatening to do in this one.

[Lenses & Lights.]

Will there be an increased sense of urgency to get started on the revamping and restructure of Market East?


Market East: One of the city's 'biggest challenges'

[kidphilly]

Girard Square Plans Coming Early Next Year - Development Watch - Curbed Philly

[Lenses & Lights.]

Originally Posted by kidphilly

Girard Square Plans Coming Early Next Year - Development Watch - Curbed Philly

Coool...Thanks KP!

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Ridden the 14? (The 20 runs in the same corridor but meanders to serve some residential neighborhoods east of the Boulevard near Holme Circle.)

Of those improvements you list above, I think the only one that would indeed outperform a Northeast Spur subway would be the Navy Yard extension.

Do you have anything to back this up? I know you know what you're talking about when it comes to transit. But I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the Navy Yard extension having a higher ridership than the Roosevelt Boulevard extension, let alone the massive impact it would have on both NE Philly and the never-fully-built Broad Street subway system.

It's only like a couple minute bus ride from Pattison to the Navy Yard. Sure, it's a big psychological impact to get the one seat ride. But I'm just having trouble picturing it outperforming the NE Spur with all of the residents and jobs located there.

[gwillyfromphilly]

Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat

Do you have anything to back this up? I know you know what you're talking about when it comes to transit. But I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the Navy Yard extension having a higher ridership than the Roosevelt Boulevard extension, let alone the massive impact it would have on both NE Philly and the never-fully-built Broad Street subway system.

I'm confident if they took a poll, most NE Philly residents would be oppose to the Roosevelt Boulevard extension.

[phillies2011]

Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly

I'm confident if they took a poll, most NE Philly residents would be oppose to the Roosevelt Boulevard extension.

Absolutely agree. Even many of those who would directly benefit would oppose it.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly

I'm confident if they took a poll, most NE Philly residents would be oppose to the Roosevelt Boulevard extension.

Absolutely agree. Even many of those who would directly benefit would oppose it.

Yeah, and it's not necessarily difficult to see why. I agree that the Navy Yard extension is more likely to be built. If talking simply ridership and other areas of impact, I still am not sure how a one mile extension to an office park that would save people a little bit of time would outperform an extension that stretches many miles and serves many tens of thousands of people and save people a lot of time.

But looking online for projections is kind of rough on both counts, and I'm interested in where MarketStEl got his info from, because I'm totally open to believing him.

[MarketStEl]

My statement about a Navy Yard extension vis-a-vis the Northeast Spur (Boulevard subway) is based not on studies I've seen or read, for as far as I know, there have been no studies of likely ridership on a Broad Street Line Navy Yard Extension comparable to those done on the Boulevard line, which has been studied to death by now.

It's based on the way the Navy Yard has changed and is still planned to change since it ceased to be a military installation. One is that it is now a major employment center in its own right, and when fully developed, may well contain as many jobs in it as Center City does now. (And that's a partial indictment of how well we've done at maintaining Center City as a job generator.) Another is that the full vision for the site includes a residential component still - and the Navy Yard extension plans I've seen would have the line serving it too. The extension would be longer than just one mile and contain two or three stations, not one; the last station would be over in the former Mustin Field area that is slated for residential development.

As for whether Northeast residents would welcome a Boulevard subway: Keep in mind that the Northeast has experienced significant demographic change since the 1970s, when Mayor Frank Rizzo told old friend and outgoing Secretary of Transportation William Coleman that if he could only fund one of the two city grant requests on his desk, he should choose the Commuter Tunnel over the Boulevard subway. The last time the Philadelphia City Planning Commission did a transportation study for the Boulevard corridor, in 2003, the subway came out on top among the "locally preferred alternative" options, and in a more recent (and probably less comprehensive) cell phone poll of riders and residents the commission conducted last year, 97 percent of the 600 respondents said they'd use a Boulevard rapid transit service.

The Lower Northeast in particular has become very multiethnic, with immigrants from the Caribbean, Central and South America now a major share of the population - and the Lower Northeast was the fastest-growing part of the city in the years since 2000, according to the Planning Commission, which goes on to note that births account for most of the increase. There are fewer of the people who feared a subway would bring Them up to their middle-class haven living there now and more of the people who moved there to grab a rung on the ladder of middle-class upward mobility - the "bourgeois proletariat," in the words of a friend of mine.

I give a pretty good history of the star-crossed Boulevard line in this PhillyMag blog post.

[MarketStEl]

One more relevant comment, to give everyone here a number to chew on:

The City Planning Commission's 2003 study, and most of those that predated it, project a daily ridership in the neighborhood of 100,000 for the Boulevard subway. I will allow that truth to tell, a Navy Yard extension may not match that number even after the land is fully developed, though commuters to the Navy Yard from outside it may make a difference.

To put this in perspective, keep in mind that the city's busiest transit line, the Market-Frankford Line, carries about 2.5 times that number daily, and the Broad Street Subway itself roughly splits the difference.

Finally, while I don't have the ridership numbers at hand, I believe the 14 is one of the 10 most-used surface routes on SEPTA's system. (The 23 is No. 1. I live along the routes of the second-most-used, the 18, and the ninth, the 26.)