Quote:
Originally Posted by BroadandMarket
This is great insight. If PennDot cared about Philly, they'd expand the L all the way down 95 to like Oregon or Snyder in the median as they reconstruct the whole thing.
|
The El is a very poor candidate for branching. Ridership is extremely high and consistent throughout most of the line. Adding a branch to the MFL would only serve to either halve headways to Frankford (because now half of the eastbound trains would need to go to Oregon), or serve to further congest a line that, prior to COVID, was running at peak capacity during peak hours.
The original Delaware Avenue Branch of the MFL was an afterthought to tide the city over until the Frankford Elevated was built.
If you want service down I-95, the best way to do it is what Taylor identified in the 1920s: a new E/W trunk through Center City.
More realistically, if PennDOT cared about Philadelphia or about rail in general, they'd've realigned the 15/G1 to run beneath I-95 on its own dedicated ROW between the end of Girard Avenue and where Richmond veers out from under I-95.
Threaded Mode