Philadelphia: home of the 5th of July hangover

Slogging through a tedious to-do list today. Not helped by the transit situation last night after the Art Museum fireworks. I get that holidays are holidays, and transit shouldn't run a weekday, business rush-hour schedule on a holiday; but I sure do wish SEPTA had put a few more buses on the neighborhood trunk lines last night. The fireworks wrapped up shortly after 11:00, but we didn't roll home until after midnight.

My dentist this morning asked, "Why do we even live in the city?" Of course, she had pointy, scrapy things jammed into my mouth at the time, so I couldn't answer. And a huge part of the issue is that SEPTA's governance is based on a Senate-like system, not like a House of Representatives -- that is, Philadelphia and the surrounding counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania are equally represented on SEPTA's board, one representative per county, even though more Philadelphians than residents of the other counties actually ride SEPTA any given day. End result is that Philadelphia gets short shrift sometimes when it comes to SEPTA improvements or scheduling considerations.

But I live in the city so that I can enjoy 4th of July stuff in the city where they have the country's best party for it, and I can go see a movie or music on very, very short notice, and I can run to the grocery store without having to drive, and I can visit world-class museums and other attractions without having to get a hotel room. The local taxes are formidable, but I like having my trash and recycling picked up and street plowed for "free," and I always tell my pals in the 'burbs to do the math: their taxes are certainly lower, but their cost of living is higher in other ways.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!

José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

This week's topic: The new SEPTA Fare Guide (PDF) includes a system map that (finally!) indicates the Regional Rail zone limits -- now you can see at a glance which zone fare you'll have to pay to get to the 'burbs and back. To pay for this change in convenience, SEPTA will be eliminating mid-day, counter-commute, and off-peak fare discounts: fares are now "weekday" versus "evening and weekend," rather than peak versus off-peak. Base fares on the buses and trolleys will stay at $2, but a transfer will be $1. Oh, and my monthly TransPass is going from $78 to $83. Dammit. Changes will implement Thursday 1 July 2010. Happy Independence Day weekend!

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

SEPTA will give you a reimbursement or discount because of the strike

Reimbursements for SEPTA pass users who effectively lost money during the 6-day November strike:

Holders of eligible [i.e., unpunched] weekly TransPasses -- usually honored on buses, subways, and trolleys -- have until Dec. 31 to turn them in for new ones, SEPTA said. Those with monthly passes should finish using this month's pass, then surrender it to get a $20 discount for a December, January, or February pass.

[ ... ]

Eligible customers may use any sales location, SEPTA said. People with passes obtained through an employer program or a pre-tax program, however, must mail in their requests along with their passes.

Punched passes will not be honored. The punch indicates the pass was used to ride the Regional Rail system, which remained in operation during the strike[.]

[ ... ]

Those using employer or pre-tax programs to obtain passes should submit the pass by mail to: SEPTA SIP Refunds, Box 58609, Philadelphia 19102-8849. Be sure to enclose a note with contact information, including an address.

I'll probably re-post this message or at least put up a reminder -- mostly for myself -- at the end of the month.

Drexel Shaft to be demolished next month

Word on the street is that the Drexel Shaft (turn your sound off first) will be brought down by Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI), on Sunday 8 November, at 7:30 a.m. The Shaft is not actually a Drexel University structure, but is a chimney for an old Pennsylvania Railroad steam plant. The property belongs to Amtrak; the demolition may be related to the $25 million in stimulus money that Amtrak just got for upgrades along the northeast corridor.

As for CDI, they're known for bringing down various old casinos in Vegas, Seattle's Kingdome in 2000 (video), and some buildings in New York, depending on whom you believe.

Odd customer service hours

There are some great mysteries in life.

One of those great mysteries is why SEPTA's customer service desk on the Route 100 side of the Norristown Transportation Center is open only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

Of course, the Wednesday closure exactly coincided with my unexpectedly spending Tuesday night in suburban Norristown and needing to get back to Center City Philadelphia on my own Wednesday morning, and I'd neglected to get my September TransPass when I had a chance to do so on Tuesday afternoon. But that part of the tale isn't so much a mystery as it is a relatively straightforward example of my usual luck.

SEPTA cleaners?

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it: a couple of days ago, I saw SEPTA employees cleaning platforms, both on the El (30th Street) and the Broad Street Line (Lombard-South).

The guy cleaning at 30th Street was scrubbing with a long-handled push broom. At Lombard-South, it was a woman walking behind a motorized wet mopping machine.

Now if only something could be done with the terribly neglected Fairmount stop on the Broad-Ridge Spur. That station freakin' depresses me whenever I ride through.

Neat: Franklin Square station to re-open

Now that PATCO will be re-opening Franklin Square station, maybe SEPTA will re-open the now-ghostly Spring Garden station on the Broad-Ridge Spur.

Via Atrios.

SEPTA regional rail train burns down a house?

What's the torts case where the train generated some sparks on the tracks, and the sparks ignited a pile of hay, and the fire spread from the hay to a field, and the fire eventually burned down a house at some distance from the tracks, some time after the train passed by?

Yeah, that one.

Friday jukebox: Flight of the Conchords

The non-sequiturs are bizarre enough, but just wait until 1:41:

Diesel buses are a tool of Satan

Six cities in the United States resisted Satan, however, and refused to abandon their streetcars altogether. Let their names be entered in the rolls of God’s elect: Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New Orleans, and San Francisco.

Dr. Boli on trolleys.

Local transit updates

Round-up of a few recent SEPTA developments:

SEPTA may extend the R6 regional rail line way past Norristown, to Wyomissing (a little beyond Reading). The extension would almost double the length of the line. There are freight tracks already in place, so I guess the infrastructure question would have to do with building stations and parking areas. Or maybe there are some stations already there? I don't know if the tracks were part of the Reading Railroad, though it looks like it on an old map I just found, and, if so, whether any old stations could be re-opened or rebuilt or whatever. Sounds neat to me, anyway, for 2 reasons. First, transit to Valley Forge, which would be an intermediate stop a little under half the way from Center City Philadelphia to Wyomissing, would be cool. Imagine if they put a pod of carshare cars at the train station -- day trip to the national historical park without having to fight Schuylkill Expressway traffic. And second, speaking of traffic, I'm not a suburban commuter but I hear rush-hour traffic reports all the time, and this line would probably take a heck of a lot of cars off of U.S. Route 422 during peak hours. If or when SEPTA gets its $200 million in federal stimulus money, I say go ahead toss a handful of it at extending the R6 into Berks County.

SEPTA rail and subway network ops simulation (Java). It's mesmerizing. And you can make it beep.

Philly Beer Week is approaching (6 - 15 March). SEPTA has fixed the passes, which they first printed with a picture of New York City's skyline, and you can buy them now. What good is the Beer Week pass? It's a one-day pass that gives you unlimited rides on buses, trolleys, and subways, plus regional rail arriving into Center City after 9:30 a.m., for $9. Do the math to see if it's a deal for you. At the very least it beats the $6 convenience pass because it's not limited to bus-trolley-subway; likely, it's a better deal than a round-trip ticket from the suburbs plus a roundtrip subway ride to your Beer Week (or non-Beer Week) venue of choice. Or here's another one: if you're taking regional rail for any reason that week, daytime or nighttime, check the fare table and compare the cost of the Beer Week pass with your round-trip ticket. Depending on the time of day and the fare zone, and as long as you don't try to use the pass to arrive at Center City in the morning, the pass may be the better deal.

Oh, yeah, ballot questions

There are some ballot initiatives on offer today in Philadelphia County. Here are my recommendations:

State Bond Question: Vote YES on improving wastewater improvement!

Charter Change Question 1: Vote YES on merging the Fairmount Park Commission and the Department of Parks and Recreation into one entity, the Commission on Parks and Recreation -- thereby bringing Philadelphia's parks and recreation center administrations into the 20th century!

Charter Change Question 2: Vote YES on giving preference in city hiring to people who've lived in Philadelphia longer!

Philadelphia City Bond Question: Vote YES for floating more bonds for transit and other community development, especially if you're a tax-and-spend Democrat like myself!

The Committee of Seventy has provided more balanced descriptions of the ballot questions, as well as policy statements for and against.

Monday art house: SEPTA follies

Groovy old photo from Wikipedia. Philadelphia, like many cities, used to be crawling with trolleys. Then General Motors racketeered buses into cities for the low, low cost of $5000, and the federal government started tying transportation funding solely to the building of highways. Bye-bye, trolleys!

SEPTA has refurbished a few old-timey trolleys like this one and is running them on Girard Avenue. They're neat to look at from the outside; but inside it's harder to see the cross streets than when you're in a modern trolley or a bus, with larger windows.

My day got started a little late this morning after I dropped off my daughter at day camp, off Girard Avenue. On my way to work, I accidentally got on a Broad-Ridge Spur train, because (1) I hadn't remembered that the Spur served that stop at all; (2) the train was on the express track, so I thought I would be saving a couple of minutes on my way back to Center City; (3) there was no announcement, neither from the bizarre new automated recording nor from the train operator; and (4) I didn't notice the light configuration on the front and sides of the train. I didn't realize what I'd done until the train stopped at Fairmount, a local-only stop, and the doors opened on the "wrong" side. Next stop: Chinatown!

I've taken the Spur on purpose once or twice. The abandoned Spring Garden station is a hoot of graffiti and spooky corners. Today it made me even later for work than I already was, since my daughter is at a different camp this week.

I didn't know that Spur goes all the way north; I thought it terminated at Temple University. I knew that there is no free interchange with the El at the Spur's 8th Street terminus -- it should be done, but it looks like a heck of an infrastructure problem to solve. What I didn't know is that you can't use a 75-cent transfer from the El to the Spur. There was a sign in the SEPTA fare window that said something like "No Market-Frankford transfer accepted here." You have to use a pass, another $1.45 token, or another full $2.00 fare.

That's criminal, or at least nonsensical. I mean, it was a handwritten sign, so maybe it was just the window agent. But the sign didn't look new, and ragged, sub-literate, handwritten signs are kinda par for the course in SEPTA windows. But still, who takes the Spur? Poor people from North Philadelphia, that's who. Temple students and workers; people who mistake it for an express train because it uses the same tracks where the non-Spur BSL lines run; and low-wage workers at the Gallery. Of course, if you get a weekly or monthly pass, then you don't have to buy transfers or subsequent fares at all. But still.

SEPTA is its own racketeering conspiracy that merely fills the void of the National City Lines holding company. It'll never change. But it's too bad and really weird that you can't use a transfer between the El and the Spur.