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
SEPTA has a mockup of the new Silverliner V cars available for the public to walk through at Suburban Station. Unfortunately, my last couple of trips into Center City have been either too rushed or too late to go through the car. I plan to finally make it in next week during fall break. Having three level platform doors will really help reduce dwelltimes in Center City. I’m most excited about the digital LED destination signs. The plastic placards they use now are frequently wrong, though they are quite the ticket for dorm decorations around campus.
One of the many Silverliner V advertisments posted around Suburban Station
Some time has passed in which I’ve been able to reflect a bit on the collision between a Metrolink train and a freight train in Chatsworth on September 12th. It was a pretty horrific incident. I was especially shaken up that a Latin teacher Quinn and I know was in the train. The video of his story is intense:
There has been some valuable discussion about transportation investment priorities in the Los Angeles area in the wake of the disaster. CityWatch discusses the relatively unsafe record of public transportation in Southern California and the systemic reasons for this. In the LA Times, Steve Hymon writes about the management and budget of Metrolink. He raises some salient points, including Metrolink’s unusually high farebox recovery rate, and how concerns about “homeland security” have harmed rail safety.
I’m becoming less of a fan of the PIRGs after I spent the summer two years ago canvassing for them. (Working for the PIRGs’ fundraising branch ended up being an ideal summer job for me two years ago. I enjoyed it and am glad that I applied and interviewed on a whim when they were on campus through Career Services). PennPIRG’s latest report, entitled “Getting on Track: Good Investments for Pennsylvania’s Public Transit System,” had some good suggestions but was not particularly well done.
I’m glad to see projects like the Roosevelt Blvd. subway in Northwest Philadelphia and Regional Rail extensions getting some good advocacy. The report summarizes basic information about the importance of public transit in a way that seems pretty formulaic (cf. CalPIRG’s report on transit). What really bothered me was a misleading caption on page 20 of the report. A picture of Amtrak Acela trainset 4/20/24 is shown with a caption that reads, “Highly successful high-speed rail service from Philadephia to Harrisburg could be extended to Pittsburgh.” While the Keystone Corridor serviced by Amtrak is a designated High Speed Rail corridor between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, I’d definitely be surprised to see an Acela trainset running along it.
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