John Scott, PA-TEC wrote:Nobody has explained why a rational human being would ride 2 hours a day all the way from Wyomissing to some high-paying job in Conshohocken, instead of just moving there and walking to work. Not one person has explained how an expansion of 422, if successful, wouldn't completely undermine ridership and sap either SEPTA or some tollpayers with a railroad with 3% farebox recovery.
I don't know why rational people live in Berks County, or really anywhere beyond Royersford, and drive to jobs, high-paying or otherwise, in Conshohocken, but clearly some do, since none of us are hallucinating the current traffic on 422. I don't let my lack of understanding cloud my ability to recognize the reality they create. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dream't of in your philosophy, or mine. If and when this train runs, people will use it commute from Pottstown and Reading to Conshohocken. Others will use it to commute from Manayunk to Phoenixville. I guarantee that these things will happen; the only question is in what order of magnitude. People will take the jobs they have access to, in this economy. Sometimes they will move to be closer to those jobs; this often takes some amount of time. Sometimes, they don't move. Ask me about my commute from Philadelphia to Delaware, sometime.
The best thing to do at a time like this, when money is tight, data is lacking, leadership is non-existent, and "planning" is really a game of pin-the-sprawl-on-the-map, is to do NOTHING until we have a real plan.
Tell me why we REALLY have to do something on 422 in a recession, and how you think that proposal will improve people's lives.
Asserting that "money is tight" is an absurdity, given that we are talking about a proposal to toll a well-traveled highway, which is as close to a license to print money as you will ever see in the United States.
I applaud your efforts to improve what you see as one flawed plan, but there are three, mostly separable components, one of which (tolling 422) is urgent and can be done quickly, one of which (restoring rail service) is important and should be done as soon as is practical, and the third (expanding 422) I doubt will ever be a good idea, something you should probably not be surprised to learn that I agree with you on. But PA-TEC seems to have taken the tack of, instead of separating the highway expansion out so that it can be killed, either separating the rail component out like a lamb to the slaughter, or killing the entire package. I find this bewildering.
As for why we are doing this in a recession, the announcement may have escaped your notice that
Reading now has the highest poverty rate in the United States. 422 as it exists today does not seem to be giving the unemployed of Reading much access to the healthier job markets of KoP/Conshohocken/Valley Forge. As you pointed out, that's a very long schlep, and even on subsidised transit, it's not cheap, but it's a start. And while Reading's problems grow, I don't think I can look the people there in the eye and tell them that they have to wait even longer so that we have a comprehensive collection of ramp counts before we start. But that's me.
