Reasonable Long Term Hopes

While the Newtown project is likely a nice project, it is essentially the same as Quakertown, the same as Wawa and West Chester, Phoenixville, even King of Prussia, Glassboro, the Navy Yard, waterfront, etc. etc. etc.

Transit system expansion is not going to happen in this region until the entire region gets behind one project. And that means everyone on board, rowing together. This has to be done in a forum other than DVRPC, which isn't a body that can make these decisions. But SEPTA has a huge problem - their system is in such disrepair and plagued with so much deferred maintenance, that it is hard for them to lobby to expand a system that is in need of immediate capital attention.

There's a lack of local leadership on transportation issues. You have SEPTA doing a couple of expansion projects with little or no chance to find a way to construction. You have DRPA with different priorities. You have PennDOT absent from the discussion except when it comes to the Keystone Corridor. The City is all over the place (Blvd., waterfront, Navy Yard). Montgomery County is backing projects that are either lame (Paoli) or are doomed to fair (KOP).

Until we are all-in on one project, and open to telling everyone else to get in line after our one regional priority, this whole discussion is academic. We are such a splintered and weak region that the only shot we have is to pick one project and have everyone read from the same script and throw their weight behind the project. This includes SEPTA, PennDOT, the City, DRPA and the counties. That's it. Push aside the MPO because its not a decision-making body.

But who is the person and what is the project?

FatPants wrote:While the Newtown project is likely a nice project, it is essentially the same as Quakertown, the same as Wawa and West Chester, Phoenixville, even King of Prussia, Glassboro, the Navy Yard, waterfront, etc. etc. etc.

Transit system expansion is not going to happen in this region until the entire region gets behind one project. And that means everyone on board, rowing together. This has to be done in a forum other than DVRPC, which isn't a body that can make these decisions. But SEPTA has a huge problem - their system is in such disrepair and plagued with so much deferred maintenance, that it is hard for them to lobby to expand a system that is in need of immediate capital attention.

There's a lack of local leadership on transportation issues. You have SEPTA doing a couple of expansion projects with little or no chance to find a way to construction. You have DRPA with different priorities. You have PennDOT absent from the discussion except when it comes to the Keystone Corridor. The City is all over the place (Blvd., waterfront, Navy Yard). Montgomery County is backing projects that are either lame (Paoli) or are doomed to fair (KOP).

Until we are all-in on one project, and open to telling everyone else to get in line after our one regional priority, this whole discussion is academic. We are such a splintered and weak region that the only shot we have is to pick one project and have everyone read from the same script and throw their weight behind the project. This includes SEPTA, PennDOT, the City, DRPA and the counties. That's it. Push aside the MPO because its not a decision-making body.

But who is the person and what is the project?

Many of your comments are true, but I'm not buying your notion. The idea that this region can't get long overdue projects to restore service to locations where there are already train tracks, parking lots, and stations, is ludicrous to me. We need to get behind all expansion plans, not just one, as they are all necessary, and all long overdue, then go for Federal funding. Other regions are expanding multiple lines concurrently, so we can, too. The notion that we can't is unacceptable. Seriously, are we a region of winners, or are we a region of losers?

I do agree that SEPTA has more pressing needs currently and should take 3-4 years bringing the system up to a state of good repair. They have had a legitimate reason for having not been bullish on expansion.

Here's my suggestions for expansion to illustrate what is possible:

Pottstown service (20 miles) electrified: $500M (seems high but this is what it is on SEPTA's long-range capital budget),
or Reading service (40 miles) via DMU's (~$400M as I've seen in more than one consulting report)

Newtown service (17 miles), electrified: ~$300M (as PA-TEC suggests will cost)

Bethlehem service (30 miles), via DMU's: ~$400M

West Chester service (17 miles), electrified: ~$400M

BSL to Navy Yard (1 mile(?)): ~$300M (as suggested by article about Bob Casey's suggestion that this be done)

Total: $2B, rounded up, which is about $19M a mile (105 miles, assuming going all the way to Reading) which is grossly skewed because of the cost of the BSL. Without the BSL it's $16M a mile for 104 miles. Note that these total are less than the $2.2B SVM absurdity from over 10 years ago. Also, to any train-haters: the widening of the Northeast Extension from MidCounty to Lansdale (10 miles) is costing ~$400M.

Feds pay 1/2, state/counties/SEPTA pay 1/2, or $1B, over 5-10 years, and SEPTA's regional rail is back to its glory days. Immediately we see enormous development occurring in long-moribund places, traffic reduction, home value increases, and quality of life improvement in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Lehigh, and Berks Counties. SEPTA's service area, and political clout, sees a significant uptick, and the pace of sprawl slows down as more transit-oriented development in established urban/town-areas with existing infrastructure occurs. The entire prestige of the region increases. Hello, politicians, are any of you seeing this? This is not an impossible task. It is a lofty, but absolutely reachable, goal.

So now that I've said this, all the train aficionados can start poking holes and coming up with reasons why this isn't possible, but if you do that, you are just as guilty as the politicians who claim this stuff can't happen.

BPP1999 wrote:So now that I've said this, all the train aficionados can start poking holes and coming up with reasons why this isn't possible, but if you do that, you are just as guilty as the politicians who claim this stuff can't happen.

Political will can make ANYTHING happen.

The issue with any expansion is always the following two questions:

1) How much will it cost? and,
2) Where is the money going to come from?

Re: 1: PA-TEC has at least been consistent in producing figures that reach the right order of magnitude, although they're consistently lowballed in a way that suggests that they're just using low figures for per-km contruction costs. What has never been explained to my satisfaction is how they intend to bend the cost curve to make reality match their model. I hope they have one, and I hope it's wildly successful! But I have no way of forecasting its success beyond PA-TEC's say-so, which is not strong evidence. Right now, we have about-national-average costs for putting up steel and concrete, higher than average if you remove New York from the national calculations, and I don't know what the process is by which that changes.

Re: 2: Simply put, as the law stands right now, mayors and city councillors and even county commissioners do not have the power to raise that level of local money themselves. Even assuming that a project qualifies for FTA New Starts matching the local contribution 1:1, which is a bad assumption for multiple reasons, any decent rail project is going to be out of the locals' price range. SEPTA can't pay either; the pre-Act 89 capital budget was a death pact in slow motion, and Act 89 has basically provided them with a maintenance budget into which they are going to try to shoehorn a project or two. Meanwhile, local electeds can talk, and have every incentive to talk, but they literally cannot turn their words into meaningful actions. For that, you need the support of State officials, especially legislative leaders. I have never seen any senior state reps or state senators in a PA-TEC endorsement list. Maybe I just missed them; I couldn't say I have every important name memorized. In any event, creating a lot of political pressure on SEPTA to reactivate Newtown, without also providing them with the funding that would allow them to relieve that pressure, is putting people at 1234 Market in a bind. Pat Deon chose to escape that bind early, before it could create problems for himself, by swatting PA-TEC down politically. That was not a kind act. But I'm going to wait until I come up with an equally effective alternative, before I judge him for it.


tl;dr: When the Borough of Newtown writes a $300 million check, I'm gonna look really dumb.

what lame project is montco backing at Paoli?

perhaps rather than one project it could be one series of projects. if there is anything the region can support it would be a targeted expansion of the regional rail network not unlike the one BPP is advocating. SEPTA's KoP project is much like it's wawa project, small and not the kind of project that can get people's attention. Keystone corridor projects seem set to move forward and will likely result in notable service improvements but aren't game changing for the transit system. If I'm not mistaken, the new transportation bill allows counties to add an additional driver's license fee to raise money locally. perhaps if SEPTA had a plan like this it could interest the counties in using this fee.

CComMack, BPP1999 - You are generally correct. Our estimate was based on distance, and a recognition that most recent nearby projects — like Wawa — were skewed upward by either garages, new yards, or major retaining wall work. Other items — like stations — were points of disagreement, as most of us felt current station projects were unnecessarily costly compared to similar projects around the country — high level platforms, for example, as opposed to ramps.

We are open to better estimates, though, as long as they are not simply "about a billion" type guesses. At one point we lowered our per mile estimate because additional professionals had presented ample evidence that we were too high on track costs (a good thing. But we will accept any reasonable estimate that includes a breakdown of costs. Obviously, we never got one from SEPTA, and if they had done a legitimate one we would have obtained it by now.

As for political will, again, you are correct. We met with higher-profile legislators, but one thing we found was that as the size of the district (or influence, in the case of party leaders) grew, so did the number of competing projects, including some that were clearly "pork" so to speak. We will not pass judgement on anyone, but it would indeed be accurate to say we were unable to get support from legislators that represented larger constituencies.

This should surprise no one, as SEPTA clearly has difficulty getting much support at the state level. It is very difficult to overcome the perception in our society that public transportation is unnecessary.

Suburban Station wrote:what lame project is montco backing at Paoli?

Paoli is not in Montco.

I wonder what everyone is smoking to believe that this region has any idea whatsoever as to how these projects move forward. Please let me know exactly where the money is for any of these system expansion projects. We can't even get Wayne Junction taken care of. What makes anyone think that we could ever restore rail service to Newtown, or Wawa? What makes you think that if the federal government offers us half of the money for the KOP project (which they won't), that the commonwealth and Montco will find the other half? Do you think PennDOT will find $300m for this? SEPTA? Montco?

You think that we can pay half of $2b for all of those projects? Not to be a negative Nancy but where in the world will that local share come from? So now take your list and pick one project to go the distance. Assume that the max we could do is a $400m project because the max we could come up with locally and regionally is $200m. What drops off?

Every single day that we wait to get all in on one project, another smaller and less important metro area calls Congress and the White House and makes an ask. Go to the FTA website and search for the annual New Starts report and read through those projects. Someone in this region needs to get pissed off about the fact that cities like Hartford, Tuscon, Stamford, San Jose, Fresno and El Paso all have projects that are getting funded and we don't. I guess we don't care that places like Orlando, St. Paul and Salt Lake City have projects that have received full funding grant agreements, while all we have are lines on maps and project ideas collecting dust.

But that's OK because we are getting bike lanes and a high speed rail station that will get us to NYC in 37 minutes in 2045.

Yes it can be done. Raise taxes & cut spending on stupid stuff. Like those retarded sidewalk pads and stupid bike trails for starters. Move it forward!!

Clearfield wrote:

Suburban Station wrote:what lame project is montco backing at Paoli?

Paoli is not in Montco.

hence the question

I think the larger point stands, regardless of whether I accidentally located Paoli in Montco.

Pacobell73 wrote: high level platforms, for example, as opposed to ramps.

You want high level platforms. It saves time for station stops. Not much at each station but as you go down the line it saves the same amount of time at each station. It pulls into Suburban ten minutes earlier.

I wish they would straighten out some stations on the Paoli/thorndale line because i've ridden down to Malvern today and banged my knees onto the stairs going into the return trip train

FatPants wrote:I think the larger point stands, regardless of whether I accidentally located Paoli in Montco.

so you meant chester and the paoli station project?
Regarding unification behind a project, I blame chester county. they've been bizarrely obsessed with extending septa to atglen at the expense of service to WC and more importantly Phoenixville. Phoenixville as you know is on the Reading/Pottstown route. If Chester county put a reasonable amount of priority on service to Phoenixville its support would coincide with montco
the city is always looking in the wrong places with bizarre routes like the cultural corridor and navy yard via the waterfront instead of useful places with established ridership. it also puts little of its own skin in the game

Sounds like some federal grants need to be allocated to newtown re-activation to get it going, including inspecting the line to draw up a list of needed improvements to get it up to the point of new tracks & signals.

If you build it, they will ride.....