Dan Padova posted:"The ridership on the regional rails is so heavy, we owe it to the
public to move this along,"That thought escaped me while reading and writing earlier posts. I live in Fort Washington and SEPTA's station here is always jam packed with cars, as I'm sure other stations are. Many years ago, long before the new station and parking lot were built, there was not nearly the amount of cars parked in the small lot and on the streets around the station. I'm going back to the late seventies and eighties. So my conclusion is that ridership must be up!
Most stations along all of the routes have either been upgraded or rebuilt. The Wayne Junction area is unrecognizable when one thinks of it 30 years ago. All of this takes money, probably our tax dollars. Which I don't mind if it's going to create a transit system that can carry us into the future. After all, isn't the grand scheme to get cars off the road ?
What I don't get is why things like the cross county line aren't moving forward. If the powers that be want to create a state of the art transit system, why are they moving at a snails pace ?
Regional Rail carries an amazing amount of passengers during peak/commuter times and it much of it runs quite well on a 1900's Reading Railroad infrastructure. I don't think that is the question or the issue, and it's not the biggest cause of SEPTA's financial woes.
The "Cross County Metro" hasn't been built for obvious reasons - it's a multi-billion dollar project and Harrisburg (and DC) are broke and much of the discussion so far has been lead by "dog and pony show" consulting firms looking for an early in for those billions. Remember the proposal to run along the Trenton cut-off?
Certainly commuter rail plays a large part in the metro Philadelphia area. But like anything else it takes money and that's in short supply. Thus the letter you cited in your original post, while certainly political in nature, had indicated decent amount of interest by those in Harrisburg who are quite appropriately worrying about the tax dollars that they are stewards of.
Bottom line - Whether it's highway or railway infrastructure improvements it takes money from tax revenues. And that's in short supply.
