Earlier this week, two suspects robbed a bank in Media and tried to escape on public transportation. They boarded Route 101, the trolley I often take from the Springfield Mall near Swarthmore to either Media or 69th Street. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Yesterday, after the Sovereign Bank branch at Providence Road and Baltimore Pike in Media was robbed, the two suspects were spotted climbing on board the Route 101 trolley…
News of the robbery went out on the police radio and officers were stationed at every stop along the trolley route, said SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams.
The Santa Ana Freeway - Will LaHood work for mass transit alternatives or expansion and induced demand?
I was well aware that President-elect Obama wouldn’t be able to live up to the high expectations that many people, including myself, had of him. This week, however, has been a particularly rough one. Monday’s announcement of his “Green Team” was lacking a Transportation Secretary. As Streetsblog reports,
“Obama still hasn’t made the transportation - land use - climate connection,” Petra Todorovich, director of Regional Plan Association’s America 2050 program said. “It’s clear he’s thinking about these things in separate categories.”
When he did fill the spot, public transportation and livable streets advocates were not particularly pleased. Most sources report LaHood to be pretty cozy with the highway lobby. It’s disappointing to have such a valuable spot in the cabinet go to a politician who is not very progressive. Again, from the Streetsblog report:
“This sends the message that the transportation secretary is a throw-away political appointment who doesn’t matter,’ said a city transportation official who, like others, asked to remain anonymous to preserve their relationship with the U.S. DOT. “This is the slot for the token Republican. It’s the bottom of the barrel. A bone you can throw.”
And to top it all off, it comes out that Rick Warren will be given the honor of giving the inauguration’s invocation. I apologize on behalf of Orange County, but at least the conversations behind the decision have been made public.
In contrast to the last two years, where most of my regional rail rides were to/from Market East and Suburban Station, this year I’ve been spending a lot of time at 30th Street Station. With my Intro to Education placement trips and my Megabus journeys, I’ve gotten plenty of chances to investigate different parts of the station, including the cool sculpture in the North Waiting Room. The Spirit of Transportation, sculpted by Karl Bitter in 1895, was originally installed in Philadelphia’s Broad Street station. A baby carrying an airship leads this procession of transportation innovations, “a prophetic vision of a mode of transportation to come.”
Futuristic transportation: paddleboats, dirigibles, and locomotives
This evening, I returned from a trip to New York that will be my last for quite a while. There were some enjoyable highlights on the ride back. Of course, I got stuck in an aisle seat and out of respect of others’ personal space (which some of my fellow passengers seemed to lack), I couldn’t lean over to the window and snap any pictures. What I saw:
While I missed the moonrise last night due to clouds, I got an awesome view of a huge full moon rising over Manhattan as we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel.
Around Exit 14-14C of the New Jersey Turnpike, the lights of five planes on approach to EWR’s runway 4R could be seen stretching out in the distance. They appeared to form a downward opening parabola, with the closest light about to land and the farthest just above the lights of the Goethals Bridge. It almost looked like the lights of the bridge were flying off and skipping over to Newark. Very cool.
One of the tall gas flares at the Linden Cogen Facility had numerous strings of lights attached to the top, spreading out to form a circle at ground level. That’s right, an illuminated petrochemical Christmas tree. Only in New Jersey…
We passed about 30 utility trucks and cherry pickers with their lights flashing heading north on the Turnpike. Quite the convoy of reinforcements heading up to get the power back on up in New England.
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