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Old Posted Jan 22, 2022, 12:11 AM
Skintreesnail Skintreesnail is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
The region with the most progress underway right now is Toronto. This is not me being a homer - for decades we severely underbuilt what we needed given our growth rate, and now we're playing 40 years of catch-up.

I'm not counting sunbelt cities with less than 5% transit mode share in my "least progress" category, since rail lines in those cities don't move the needle at all in terms of regional transportation dynamics.

So, I'd say that the worst performer right now is either Philly or Chicago. Actually, Philly doesn't have to do any construction, they just need a shift in operations mentality. I can't believe the embarrassment of riches that Philly just sleeps on. In terms of fixed capital, they basically have what a German city has: they have fully-electrified regional rail, a quad-track tunnel running under downtown enabling the regional rail system to form a cross at 30th St. station, and a parallel subway and streetcar subway system running in a pair of tunnels. Cities like London and NY are spending tens of billions of dollars to get what Philly already has.
I can kind of agree with the Philly point in terms of unrealized potential. SEPTA has recently been upgrading old infrastructure though and have plans to turn the trolleys into something more like Boston's green line or the streetcars in Toronto. during the pandemic there was a lot of talk about finally using regional rail like an s-bahn. They're installing raised platforms at many stations that didn't have them, which I assume is in support of this.

Last edited by Skintreesnail; Jan 22, 2022 at 12:24 AM.
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