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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Philly Updates: SEPTA Cuts & The Roosevelt BLVD Subway
Philadelphia stands at a transit crossroads. Amidst uncertainty over SEPTA's financial future, ambitious plans for a Roosevelt Boulevard subway system offer a glimpse of what could transform the city's northeastern corridor. Our conversation with Jay from the Roosevelt Boulevard Subway advocacy group unpacks both challenges and opportunities facing Philly's transit landscape.
The SEPTA funding situation exemplifies the frustrating cycle of American transit politics. Despite service resuming after threatened cuts, CEO Leslie Richards has made clear: this is merely a temporary patch. Pennsylvania legislators have essentially kicked the problem two years down the road while depleting reserves meant for critical infrastructure maintenance. What makes this particularly maddening? Solutions exist and work elsewhere. From municipal self-taxation models that built Seattle's light rail network to congestion pricing in urban centers, proven funding mechanisms remain politically untouchable in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, a transformative vision continues gaining momentum along Roosevelt Boulevard – a notoriously dangerous 12-lane thoroughfare stretching through Northeast Philadelphia. This grassroots campaign for subway service along the corridor has evolved from a university project into a serious transportation alternative currently under study by PennDOT. With a projected ridership of 62,000 daily passengers and a uniquely wide median offering construction advantages, the subway option presents compelling benefits.
Perhaps most exciting is the economic development potential. Roosevelt Boulevard's car-centric design has created vast swaths of underutilized land, particularly surface parking lots. These spaces could become vibrant transit-oriented neighborhoods without displacing existing communities – a rare opportunity in established urban areas. With a locally preferred alternative selection expected in 2026 and potential construction readiness by 2030, this century-old dream inches closer to reality.
Want to support better transit in Philadelphia? Check out Transit Forward Philly's advocacy work connecting volunteers with decision-makers. Follow the Roosevelt Boulevard Subway campaign on social media or visit blvdsubway.com to learn how this project could finally connect Northeast Philadelphia with opportunities throughout the region.
Doors are closing.
Speaker 2:Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Public transit, it's the rhythm of my life.
Speaker 1:This week on Transit Tangents, we have a special guest to give an update on the current public transit funding situation in Philadelphia. We also dive into a project that could extend the city's subway system along Roosevelt Boulevard, a corridor we checked out over the summer. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents. A few weeks ago on the channel, I spoke with Steve from the YouTube channel how we Get Around, discussing what then was the potential for huge service cuts at SEPTA. At the time, we were fairly optimistic that some sort of deal in Harrisburg would be met. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Cuts began rolling out throughout the month of August and into September, but recently service has been reinstated.
Speaker 1:Despite the service levels coming back to normal, there is still quite a bit to be worried about. The SEPTA GM in a recent letter warned quote while we are restoring full service, I want to be clear that we still don't have a long term solution to the funding crisis that's at the heart of it all. For the short term, we've received permission to transfer both the latest on SEPTA's funding situation as well as talk about some of the work he's been doing to get an extension of Philadelphia's subway system built along Roosevelt Boulevard. Thanks so much for taking the time and I guess, to get us started, can you get folks up to speed on that kind of latest news surrounding SEPTA's funding? You know services is being restored to where it was before, but it sounds like the funding problem still really hasn't been solved.
Speaker 2:To get everyone up to speed. The situation with SEPTA is essentially a band-aid. What was going on was that in the Pennsylvania Senate they were in a sense debating on what to do and how to move forward, and the Senate is led by, you know, the Pennsylvania Republican Party, and unfortunately, their primary idea was to raid the PTTF, which is the funding source that you were speaking about and that's primarily used for station rehabilitation, track work and the replacement of a rolling stock or trains, and it's something that is very, very much needed on the SEPTA system, especially our regional rail lines, which has trains that are between the silver line of fours, which are between the ages of 48 and 52 years old, which probably should have been replaced more than a decade ago. There's a dire need for rehabilitation of our stations as well. So there's a lot of things that the PTTF is used for statewide, and having SEPTA and PRT and Pittsburgh raid them is disastrous.
Speaker 3:Can you really identify what are sort of the long-term solutions here that could provide funding for the future? Is it that the legislature just needs to provide the funding, or are there alternative funding mechanisms that you know that you could speak to?
Speaker 2:Absolutely there are plenty. So the local metropolitan planning organization here in southeastern Pennsylvania, the DVRPC, came up with a list of different ways that we can gain revenue for public transportation, not only in southeastern Pennsylvania but in different municipalities. Number one in my book would be allowing municipalities in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to tax themselves toward public transportation, which is not allowed now, which is shocking because you see what happens in California or what's happened in Washington state and Seattle. We can't do that. We can't, we can't physically raise money for public transportation operations and and a more robust capital budget which leads to your point.
Speaker 1:in those places too I mean just to give folks who aren't aware of the context like in those places we're seeing major extensions of their public transit networks, whether that be in Seattle, which is extending their light rail significantly, in Los Angeles, where they're. It's like I've lost track of how many projects are going on in Los Angeles because they're building so many different subway lines and light rail lines and that's all because they're able to tax themselves to be able to do this sort of thing. Didn't mean to interrupt you, but I, just in case folks aren't, you know, aren't aware.
Speaker 2:No, it's absolutely true. Even with FastTracks in Denver, you know they've been able to build out a complete system and all we were asking you know the PA Senate GOP to do was allow that, but they wouldn't even bring it to the table, they wouldn't even negotiate around to the table. They wouldn't even negotiate around it. But there's other ways. One of the other things that have been suggested is congestion pricing, and at least Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. That's another way. There's creating TIFs adjacent to transportation projects to tax them for any gains in the area. That's another idea. So there are plenty of ideas that have been put on the table, but unfortunately we need a political solution first before we can get to any of those tangible benefits. We can't move unless we get the authorization to. It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1:And what's so frustrating, too, is many of those things that you just laid out. It's not like you need to reinvent the wheel here. These are things that are being done in other places. You don't need to create a new playbook. There are five different playbooks you could already look at and say, hey, you know, this has worked in California, this has worked in Washington, this has worked in you know some other country or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3:It doesn't work with Kansas City.
Speaker 1:Missouri for the streetcar.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, exactly yeah, it's really frustrating. And instead of looking to where other states, other cities, other municipalities have had success, they're essentially saying, ok, we've kicked the can down the road for another. What is this? This is for two years, or two years, two years, so we kick the can down the road. You know me being extremely with a negative point of view on politics in general at this point in time.
Speaker 1:Sorry, we'll probably wait until one year and 10 months, and then those last two months the politicians will put their heads together and try to come up with an issue, and it's just like we've kicked the can down the road for two more years, depleting the money that's supposed to be used to kind of continue maintaining the system.
Speaker 1:And now you've got a bigger problem because you still don't have your funding mechanism set up and you've now bled the reserves dry for what you're supposed to be doing to replace these decades old trains, these station improvements, all this sort of stuff. So yeah, definitely a little bit frustrating, I guess, to make sure that the situation I just laid out doesn't happen and politicians aren't able to get away with waiting a year and 10 months to kind of make this happen. Year and 10 months to kind of make this happen? Are you aware of specific ways folks can kind of get involved, the right folks to reach out to, to kind of, you know, light a fire under these politicians to make sure that they actually do take action and make sure that this isn't going to be just a repeat of the same problem in two years?
Speaker 2:Yes, I have to shout out Transit Forward Philly, which has been doing an amazing job getting volunteers to different SEPTA stations, getting volunteers to Harrisburg to talk to their elected officials, to email their elected officials, to send letters to their elected official. They've been really leading engagement and leading people statewide to have these conversations about how important public transportation is in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So I got to give a big shout out to Transit Forward Philly. Much love to them.
Speaker 1:Awesome. We'll make sure that there's a link in the description of this for folks if you want to get involved and check them out, Chris. Anything else you want to add in this section?
Speaker 3:Not necessarily to add to the section, but I do think that this is something that we should keep in mind as we move into the next section about Roosevelt Boulevard, because it seems like if SEPTA funding is not going to be there or that there's trouble with it, maybe this is also going to be sort of a troublesome project. So, Lewis, I'll let you do the intro for Roosevelt.
Speaker 1:First off, I don't know how, it was long before transit tangents Actually, I started following Roosevelt Boulevard subway subway on Twitter, kind of just like loosely saw what was happening over the years. And then, when we were planning our trip to Philly, I intentionally remembered that I had seen it and I was like this is probably not something that a lot of folks you know doing YouTube content on transit are going to do to ride the bus along Roosevelt Boulevard. So I was like let's go and check it out, we can talk a little bit about the project. And then, fortunately, after the episode came out, jay reached out to us and that's why we're here talking.
Speaker 1:But I, in kind of preparation for this interview, I found an article from Philadelphia Magazine, jay kind of talking about how you got involved in this, and I thought the story was really interesting. I mean, you grew up in New York, a big fan of the subway in New York, and this kind of turned into like a grassroots thing. You moved to Philly, you started asking some questions about it, you found some you know old plans that had been talked about with this and then the kind of one thing led to another and all of a sudden you know you've created this organization and you've got all sorts of folks kind of working towards this goal, how you got involved in all of this.
Speaker 2:To be, you know, 100% honest with you. It was one of those things that just grew naturally on its own. But of course it started out in a University of Pennsylvania classroom. I was a student in a class called Planning Practice for Transportation, which was taught by SEPTA GM former SEPTA GM Leslie Richards. Taught by SEPTA GM former SEPTA GM Leslie Richards. And in the class, you know, we had to do a capstone project and I, with a fellow student of mine named Ben Shee, actually worked together and we decided to do the Roosevelt Boulevard subway and for the project I asked GM Leslie Richards could you get me the 1999 to 2003 study, the final draft report? And it was something that at the time wasn't available on the Internet. So she was able to get me the report and when I looked at the report and saw the numbers in there, saw the daily ridership numbers and saw the benefits of the project, I was very confused. I was just like for with projects, a project with numbers like this and daily ridership over a hundred you know, a hundred, uh, thousand people daily, that's pretty insane. Like why wasn't this built? So I started to ask questions and I started to wonder you know, it may not be 100,000 daily writers today. But what would it be? And nobody could seem to answer that question what, what would the daily ridership for the Roosevelt Boulevard subway be today? And that was like. That was like my research question for the next few years.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, I started writing op-eds in the Philadelphia Inquirer and our local PBS NPR affiliate, whhy, and you know I started talking to people about it. Like you know, why isn't this project, you know, in the forefront? Policymakers started to reach out to me and ask like, hey, if you know, we've seen your op-eds, let's have a town hall engage, if the community actually wants to do this. Because we want, of course, we want this to be a community-centered project.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, I partnered with a state representative from Northeast named Jared Solomon and we threw a town hall and we didn't know who was going to come. We didn't know it was a Saturday morning, it could have been five people, it could have been 10 people, we just wanted to gauge community input and ultimately we had over 100, 150 people in this room really engaged on the projects and just trying to figure out why hasn't this been built, why do we feel like we're trapped up here in Northeast and why does Philadelphia feel like it's two cities in one. It's the rest of Philadelphia and then it's Northeast Philadelphia where people essentially feel trapped because you have two regional rail lines but they skirt Northeast. They don't really serve the center of the region, where the majority of people are. So they wanted to know why wasn't the city moving on this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to give folks some context too, if you haven't seen our Philadelphia using only public transit episode, we took one of the buses that goes down the boulevard and it was like, first off, the corridor is so wide, it's the, it's like one of the widest right of ways I've seen in my entire life, huge road, and it's it's. Yeah, it is an area that like there's this huge swath that you, you know you can connect to the subways kind of on either end on the Market Frankfurt line it runs. It cuts a little bit short but yeah, I mean it. Just we'll make sure there's some footage in here for folks to be able to see it. But I just wanted to get across the point of like how huge of a thoroughfare this really is.
Speaker 2:Yes, roosevelt Boulevard in some places is as wide as a football field. It is 12 lanes wide. It's a strode on steroids foot median and about, you know, through half of Roosevelt Boulevard. It doesn't go all the way up to the end or the city line, but that 80 foot median creates a situation where subway construction could be much easier than the average street, because we're not necessarily going to have to construct it on areas where there are lanes of traffic. But it's extremely dangerous.
Speaker 2:Roosevelt Boulevard itself and the car traffic, especially during the rush hours, is chaotic and it's not helped by the fact that there are these infamous slip lanes on Roosevelt Boulevard that cause accidents and even just a few weeks ago two people were killed in an accident. It is it's one of the most dangerous roads in the country and it's it's it's it's time for it to be mitigated. It's something needs to be done and luckily the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has slowly been building at it through multiple grants. They got their first grant from the Obama administration's Tiger discretionary grants, then they got a mega grant from the Biden administration I think that was nearly $79 million to push the Route for Change program, which is a three-pronged program to help the boulevard today, do medium-term work and also to look at the boulevard toward 2040 and how much it can be changed, and that part of it, the 2040 plan, is where we're working on with the Roosevelt Boulevard subway and the other alternatives that PennDOT is looking at.
Speaker 3:I am curious with this being such a wide road, with the median being so wide and all this traffic. What about other solutions? Have you explored options like a light rail or even a fully dedicated BRT that could be used to substitute a subway in this corridor?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so.
Speaker 2:To be very clear, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, through its Route for Change program, is studying six alternatives and basically they have two roadway types.
Speaker 2:One is a ca expressway, where at where, at the main stations, it would be capped, it would be park like, and the other is neighborhood boulevard which is essentially like a, what you know, like the benjamin franklin parkway here in philadelphia, that's, you know, a little bit more picturesque, park like-like and it would include a linear park. But in all of those alternatives they have bus rapid transit alternative with the two different roadway types, they have a light rail transit with the two different roadway types and of course they have a subway with the two different roadway types. What they essentially found was that the light rail would have about 35,000 daily riders, which for light rail isn't that bad. But they found that the subway would have 62,000 daily riders, so not the 100,000 that they predicted back in 2003,. But 62 is pretty good and within the same ballpark as the CTA Redline Extension, but we argue would be a lot less expensive than both of those projects you have the opportunity like this to dig down and build the subway I.
Speaker 1:I feel like this is a unique situation, given the width that you know. If you spend the money now and do it the right way the first time, like the, the payoff in the long term will be really good, both in terms of having more reliable, faster service for folks as well as, like along this corridor I even just like I'm literally looking on google maps as I'm as I'm talking right now, and even just from going through there there are a lot of like strip malls with huge parking lots and things like that, where you can do some focused transit oriented development, where you're doing it in the right way, where you're not, you know, displacing folks, you're not having to really tear down much when you have a lot of situations where you have these huge surface parking lots in so many sections along the way and that 60,000 number could become much higher as you start to kind of work on the transit oriented development in the right areas.
Speaker 2:No, you're absolutely correct, and that's one of the things that we've been trying to communicate to community members about this project is the economic development potential, but also fully utilizing that median on Roosevelt Boulevard. One of the things that we were able to do was, off of surveys taken from our first town hall, we were able to work with an architect that did pro bono work for us a very well regarded transportation architect and we were able to create renderings years before PennDOT did it, and create renderings that were so real that people thought we were PennDOT and we had to explain to people that's not the case. We are an independent advocacy group fighting for the subway alternative, but what we did was we showed people what could happen. You know, based on the data that you gave us, this is what we could do. This is the subway we could create, and what we did was we created a rendering of a very simple subway station, one that didn't include a mezzanine, one that just had a station house and was simple and was easily constructible, and we wanted to look at best practices.
Speaker 2:So we started sharing information about prefabricated metro technology that's being done in Madrid and being done in China, and the fact that it hasn't been done in the United States yet, and Roosevelt Boulevard with the 80 foot median would be a good test drive. So we've been pushing to be as innovative and follow as many best practices as possible so that we can bring the cost down and finally see this over 100 year proposal get completed. The buck stops with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I love to hear that too, because there's so many articles out right now about how, in America, we overbuild everything. Every station has to be customized, every. Every city thinks that their transit solution has to be unique, and it really doesn't. I mean, there's a lot of efficiency gains you can get by looking at other systems and the prefab Metro elements. Things like that could definitely go a long way, I think, in helping us here in the US Currently. Where does this project stand? If you are talking to somebody on the street today, what is the update you would give them on where we are on this?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. The last meetings that PennDOT had were back in December of 2024. Which they estimated, at least for the subway alternatives, would be between $11 to $16 billion, which threw people off immediately. And of course they explained that there is a 40% contingency attached to that. But the general public is just going to be confused by that and we had to do our work behind that to make sure that people understand that, with the project being further refined, that the contingency goes down and that the project is not necessarily going to cost that much.
Speaker 2:In terms of transit costs. The Roosevelt Boulevard subway would be about at four to five billion dollars, the entire thing from to North Broad Street to Neshaminy Mall. But what we've also discovered through for one NYU Marin's transit costs project, they did their own study of the corridor and found that 90% of the ridership is between North Broad and Ron Street. And through our own studies we found that 93.2% of the ridership would be between North Broad and the Welsh Grant Station. So you know there's, there's there's, you know, a chance that the project might be phased out. There's a chance that the project could end, you know, at Welsh and grants, which is not necessarily a bad thing either.
Speaker 2:But the project is still very healthy. It is very much unaffected by the current situation with SEPTA, which is extremely hard to explain Because people are like wait, like if SEPTA is doing so bad, there's no way this project could happen. And then we have to explain to people that it's a PennDOT project because Route US-1 or Roosevelt Boulevard is owned by PennDOT, so PennDOT is the main group running this. Septa is a part of the project, which is amazing, but they're a minor player and they already have money for the draft environmental impact statement. So, literally, once they choose the locally preferred alternative sometime in 2026, they'll be able to move that directly into the draft environmental impact statement to keep this project moving, to look for congressional directed spending to put toward the preliminary engineering and design that will need to happen. Under the current conditions, without expediting the project, it should be shovel ready by 2029, 2030.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So you said in 2026, they'll be selecting some sort of locally preferred alternative, like that's kind of the next big announcement. If you will, it'll be coming at that time.
Speaker 2:Yes, but they're going to be having meetings soon. They were supposed to have meetings in September, but with the current SEPTA crisis, it looked very inappropriate. But now the SEPTA's crisis is over, over, over for now yeah that they stuck a Band-Aid on it. They will probably be having meetings either later this month or October and they'll have more information for us.
Speaker 2:And I think that what's the next step for PennDOT is getting more data out there, talking more about the economic development potential, because, alongside talking about the transit modes and how Roosevelt Boulevard could change, they speak a lot about economic development. And this goes back to what you were talking about about economic development adjacent to stations and onvelt boulevard, because it was built so car centric. Um, there's, there's. There's an opportunity to develop completely new neighborhoods without having to demolish anything else, and it's just a massive opportunities because it's just acres upon acres of lots in different parts of the corridor, and even just getting the subway up to Welsh and Grant, that would mean that, at least on the Philadelphia end of things, some of the largest parking lots in the city would be attached to a subway line, and you know what that means, fellas.
Speaker 1:Right, no, absolutely, where you see parking lots, I see potential. That was a lot. Oh yeah, yep yep. Where?
Speaker 2:you see parking lots, I see potential.
Speaker 1:That was a lot. Oh yeah, Yep, yep, Awesome. Well, Jay, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us. This has been really informative and also to give us the update on SEPTA. Definitely stay in touch with us as the plans for the Roosevelt Boulevard subway continue to develop. Chris, is there anything else you wanted to add?
Speaker 3:The only thing I was going to ask is if people are interested in following along on developments, where can they find the most up-to-date information about this project?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Chris. Well, on Twitter, it is Boulevard Subway. You know, we've been there since July of 2022. We're on Facebook as well, battling NIMBYs every day.
Speaker 1:Somebody's got to do it.
Speaker 2:Someone has to do the hard work. Someone has to do the hard work. We're on Blue Sky. If you don't want to be on Twitter, we're on Threads. We're even on Threads. We're on Threads. It's slower but there's some people on there, so we're on Threads. So if you want to jump on there, we're on there. You know we're always here to engage. So if you have questions, you know, just send us a message. And we also have a website, boulevardsubwaycom. You know there's plenty of information on that. If you have any questions on the project, it's, you know it can help you. You know, answer those. So please feel free to reach out and we're here to do the good work until the Boulevard Subway is completed. It's time to put this 100 year odyssey to a rest.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. With all that being said, thanks everybody so much for watching. We really appreciate it. If you have any questions for Jay thoughts on the episode, please leave a comment down below. If you haven't done so already, you can also like the video or subscribe to make sure that you always catch the next episode.
Speaker 2:It's your boy, jay, and enjoy the rest of your transit tangents Tuesday.