New York City has high capacity rail lines because New York City can support them. These three track lines were not built for possible express service - they provided such service when they were built. And once again, you're not going to find such high capacity layouts in most cities because they do not have the passenger density. WMATA, MBTA and BART each carry more passengers yearly than SEPTA does but interestingly they all carry fewer passengers per mile than SEPTA does despite having much more extensive service areas. I'd need to see evidence that these systems operate at crush capacities proportional to that in New York but I doubt they do - Philadelphia certainly doesn't. That what makes the difference. Today, nobody is going to build something on the possibility that someone is going to ride it someday. Subways today are not built to draw people, they're built where people are drawn which is why all the new systems are being built in the Southwest and nothing is being built here.
As you insist on complaining about things that never were, I insist on being pragmatic in noting that the existing imperfect sytem does work and if it didn't no one would use SEPTA.
That being said, I'm no SEPTA apologist and if you've paid attention to any of 13,000+ plus posts I've made on this forum over the past seven years you would be aware of that. There is nothing but sorrow to be found when looking at the proposal maps and diagrams that have been made for the system that never existed here but wishing that things were different will not make it so. Taking note of some realities will temper ideas on how to expand and improve the system. It isn't enough to make it easier for people to get downtown at high speed from a node on the edge of the city. There are four million people in the suburbs who we'd all like to have come into Philadelphia more often than they do but I can also tell you that there are a million and a half people in the city of Philadelphia who would certainly see their transit system in a different light if it made the experience of getting around Philadelphia more easy. Right now, I'm more interested in late night service, more frequent service on arterial rail and bus routes and higher capacity service, in whatever form that takes, on such routes. Those are realistic solutions to improving the transit situation in this city because that is what federal money is going to pay for. Not adding tracks to a subway line that has existed for 102 years and isn't adding the necessary number of passengers, not rail routes to an entertainment complex that does not exist, not connecting a new subway line to an overutilized route as opposed to an underutilized one that already has the physical capacity for it built into it.
I appreciate and respect your passion for making things better (in the old days on SubTalk I used to say the very same things), but age, reading and listening to the people who plan, build and ask for the money for these sorts of things tends to temper ones fervor. We can always dream but in Philadelphia in this day and in this condition much of what exists has to be improved before it can be built upon. Putting granite counters in a dilapidated house makes little sense - fix the house first.
Last edited by volguus zildrohar; May 26, 2009 at 10:26 PM.
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