Route 15

keeping the topic alive:
Residents' opposition stalls trolley project. IT BEGAN AS A grand and ambitious project, heralded by SEPTA officials and rail enthusiasts as a glorious return to the golden age of trolley transit in Philadelphia.
The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time:
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/new ... 095036.htm

Read the article. If the folks living on 59th Street don't want the trolleys, SEPTA can lay a little track in Bucks County. We'd love to have 'em running up here.

SEPTA ought to tell them "Screw you. This line was here before all of you and there were trollies running on it then."

Don't these people understand that this is ultimatly costing THEM in the end?

SEPTA and the city should come to an agreement, leaving these few people out of the say. "You can't please everyone all the time."

... but with the elected officials so scared that they might lose their cushy 'do nothing' positions, I doubt that they will want to piss anyone off.

I certainly agree with all that the trolleys should be able to roll up 59th street, but come on, folks... if SEPTA told you that they were going to change traffic patterns on your street or take away the parking spot in front of your house when you had bought that home on a 2-way street with plenty of parking never expecting that trolleys would be running there... wouldn't you be upset? Don't take it out on those few residents who are only voicing their opposition to a plan that inconveniences them (which is their right).

Don't these people understand that this is ultimatly costing THEM in the end?

How so? What are they losing by fighting? What do they lose if they don't fight (answer: parking spaces and/or easy driving access to their own homes)?

SEPTA and the city should come to an agreement, leaving these few people out of the say. "You can't please everyone all the time."

queenlnr8, I hope that there is never a public works project that will hamper your life somehow that can cause other people to say "make the decision without his opinion, since you can't please everyone all the time."

The residents of 59th Street are upset, will fight, and will be beaten. Don't get mad at them for not agreeing with you, though.

I would have to agree and have some sympathy for them. They live next to a sleezy, smelly, noisy bus depot. This is their chance to get SEPTA. We don't get that chance too often where they need something from us.

I'd like to see an elected official ask SEPTA why they need more subsidy when they just spent $58 mil on a trolley line that doesen't run.

Hi everyone.Been awhile since I posted,been pretty busy.I just want to say that with this latest Septa controvery, only in Philadelphia this can happen.Being a native Philadelphian,I'm pretty used to by now!If I lived on 59th St,I would rather have it one way then have to lose parking on one side of the street.I lived on one way streets before and it not that bad.Hopefully,they can come to middle ground and get the trolleys running ASAP!


In the mean time,couldn't they run the PCC's on the Sub Surface lines?I know they don't have the Cab signals in them like the K's,but put in cab signals and run them in tunnel and in the future if they decide to run them there from time to time.



One last note,if the 59th St residents don't want them running,lay some track from 69th St,up W Chester Pike,up Darby Rd and on to the Bus ROW into Ardmore(Rte 103).I would love to see the PCC's running in Ardmore and so would some other people I know.

Umblehoon, you have to remember that those tracks were IN PLACE probably before there were even homes for sale there, not to mention before some of these people bought into the neighborhood.

Them saying that they didn't ever expect trollies to run on that line again is like saying "I never expected a commuter train to run here now, even though there are tracks that have been here since before I was born. I saw them when I bought the place and now, I'M MAD!"

Please. Can't the city excersize eminent domain and make it a one way with parking on both sides? What harm could be done with a one way instead of two ways?

Queenln: The amazing thing is its the city that is holding this up. In order to change the direction of the street, City Council must pass an ordinance which must be introduced by the local councilman, Nutter, who all of the sudden cares about his voters. So we're basically at their mercy.

queenlnr8 wrote:Them saying that they didn't ever expect trollies to run on that line again is like saying "I never expected a commuter train to run here now, even though there are tracks that have been here since before I was born. I saw them when I bought the place and now, I'M MAD!"

Gimme a break. Those people haven't seen a trolley go down that street in over a decade, and in the meantime they've gained two-way traffic and parking in front of their houses. Now all of a sudden SEPTA's forcing a change in traffic patterns with as little lead time as possible. I'd be mad, too.

Face it, SEPTA screwed the pooch on this one.

Please. Can't the city excersize eminent domain and make it a one way with parking on both sides? What harm could be done with a one way instead of two ways?

Well, apart from the opinion of the residents, it looks like City Council is annoyed at SEPTA as well. I hope the issue with the Route 15 trolley gets resolved soon, but not before City Council siezes this golden opportunity to take SEPTA out to the woodshed.

jfrey40535 wrote:The amazing thing is its the city that is holding this up. In order to change the direction of the street, City Council must pass an ordinance which must be introduced by the local councilman, Nutter, who all of the sudden cares about his voters. So we're basically at their mercy.

Yep. And Nutter is hacked off at SEPTA for more than just this. First there were the service cut threats last year, with a significant potential impact on his district; then there was the R6 shutdown for the catenary project and the resulting shuttle buses on his constituents' streets. Just like with this 59th St. situation, SEPTA was planning that shutdown for a full year and failed to contact Nutter or the community groups out there to let them know about it and make suggestions for mitigation until a few weeks before, when there was nothing they could do about it.

It happens again and again (see the NHSL extension planning, for example). SEPTA management is amazingly effective at turning potential allies into opponents. Why don't they ever learn???

jfrey40535 wrote:I'd like to see an elected official ask SEPTA why they need more subsidy when they just spent $58 mil on a trolley line that doesen't run.

The serious answer is that the $58 million was from the capital budget, while SEPTA's structural deficit (and genuine underfunding) is in the operating budget.

R3 Rider wrote:I hope the issue with the Route 15 trolley gets resolved soon, but not before City Council seizes this golden opportunity to take SEPTA out to the woodshed.

Much as Moore, Nowakowski, and especially the planning staff need to be called on the carpet, I can't see much good it will do.

Council members will grandstand for the TV cameras, Moore will pout about SEPTA not getting enough funding from SEPTA, and all of them will go home thinking it's not their problem; instead of city government actually getting involved in making transportation policy(*) and the SEPTA board cleaning house so it can show Harrisburg that additional funding isn't going to be wasted.

*--those paragons of representative democracy think the focus of transportation policy-making should be handing out reserved parking places to their pals and micromanaging whether there's a stop sign or a traffic light at each intersection. Meanwhile, Street demoted the Office of Transportation from cabinet level to a division of the City Planning Commission. Is there any city government anywhere in the world that takes less interest in transportation?

Is there any city government anywhere in the world that takes less interest in transportation?

Yes, there is. Legend has it that Arlington, TX (2000 census: 332,969) is the largest city in the United States with NO public transportation.

Meanwhile, those of us who use the 15 bus have to carry our schedule re-calculators since the schedules for the trolleys are much different than the buses. The drivers didn't run on-time with the old schedule, now they must be having a field day. And I'm not making a fuss because they are late. They run EARLY--WAY EARLY, like 10 minutes in some cases. So if you're riding after 10pm and you miss the bus, you're waiting another 30 minutes.

Septaman113 wrote:


One last note,if the 59th St residents don't want them running,lay some track from 69th St,up W Chester Pike,up Darby Rd and on to the Bus ROW into Ardmore(Rte 103).I would love to see the PCC's running in Ardmore and so would some other people I know.

You actually mean RE- lay that trackage---- That was the exact route of the Red Arrow Ardmore Rail Division which was bustituted in 1966. As for PCC's running into Ardmore, they would be a poor substitute for the much faster double ended PCC-Type St. Louis cars which made the final run to Ardmore on Dec 30, 1966. ( Well they were supposed to make the last run---- a major snow storm hit and they couldn't make it all the way to Ardmore)