Quote:
Originally Posted by SFBruin
I feel like Philadelphia needs a new tunnel through downtown. I am not an expert on Philadelphia, so I don't know where to put it, but the existing, geographically-to-scale map of the commuter rail looks a little convoluted.
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Yeah, the commuter rail gets meandering after getting out of the city limits, but it does go through some densly-populated areas of North Philly that aren't served by subway. Problem is there are only a couple of stations since it focuses on serving the suburbs. It's a 4-track Trunk though, and tunnels through center City to university city, which would make it convenient for some service that is more subway-like or at least greater frequency.
There are already 4 actively used tunnels through center City, but another tunnel would be nice in South Philly. I think that's a weak point for the system as it only has the broad Street line and it's very populated. Also the navy yard is becoming a big office center and isn't served by anything. There's a 3-track elevated track that runs down 25th to the navy yard, but csx owns it. Then there are plans to do light rail down along the Delaware river, but it feels like that project is not going anywhere.
The broad-ridge spur tunnel (diagonal orange line on Google maps) was supposed to go all the way to northwest Philly but the great depression hit sit it just connects to broad. There's an unused 6-track tunnel that goes from broad, past the art museum that would be nice to put to some use. Septa owns it but just sits on it. Then there's the patco tunnel (red line on Google maps) that just ends at Rittenhouse square. It was supposed to loop around the city, but again the depression. I think there are a couple blocks of tunnel under arch from the loop plan but unused. There were a couple other lines I think that never happened and plans for something to northeast Philly down Rosselvelt Blvd.