Quote:
Originally Posted by allovertown
The tracks under rittenhouse are used as train storage to prepare for faster eastbound headways in the evening rush hour. It's not as simple as just putting a station at Rittenhouse. Even something like that, it would be an enormous undertaking and nowhere near worthwhile for putting in a single new stop, a 5 min walk away from the nearest existing stop. There are roughly a million things that could be done to improve Philly's transit system that would be more effective and more efficient.
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Obviously, building a new station at Rittenhouse Square would not be cheap. At present, the tracks form a loop that reaches only around a third of the way under the square. In order to construct a station at 19th & Walnut, the tracks would have to be straightened, reconfigured, and extended slightly. That could mean tearing up a section of the square.
But whether or not the cost would be "worthwhile" is another question. For example, if the Ridge Avenue Spur were reconnected to the Locust St. Subway, it would enable people to travel from North Philadelphia to Rittenhouse Square in a snap. And even more elaborate things could be done (at additional cost, of course)! For example, constructing a direct train connection onto the Market-Frankford line with a switch at 8th & Market would give MFL riders the alternative of taking a train directly to 19th & Walnut, which would be closer to many central business destinations than the 15th & Market Station is.
Subway systems are the most efficient means of public transportation in dense urban centers, like Philadelphia. Before the pandemic, the crowded and slow-moving bus system in Philadelphia (you could often walk faster than the buses carried you!) cried out for an alternative. Cities like Washington, D.C., built an entire subway system in recent decades using federal money, but it has been a great many years since Philadelphia has made any progress in fulfilling plans to extend our own system. Once federal funding becomes available again, we should move fast on the more significant measures, such as building the Northeast Extension of the BSL, etc. And a far less costly, but still significant step, in my opinion, would involve reconnecting the Locust Street Subway and a new station at Rittenhouse Sq.