Pursuing BRT in the City Branch

The Planning Commission has decided to pursue BRT in the City Branch. The importance of this route as a transit linkage was identified in the Philadelphia2035 Comprehensive Plan; its implementation is a natural element of the Center City regional plan.

The decision to pursue BRT is being said to be due to cost: the claim is that light rail would cost some 3x more than the BRT (which is being priced at $75 million). That this is debatable is already well-known here, especially since the BRT proposal being floated in this plan involves buying special equipment, one of the primary cost drivers of the light rail proposal.

Remember, the engineering and the subroadbed are already sunk costs in the City Branch. This means that the primary costs for light rail are (a) rails, (b) trains, and (c) electrification (if desired). (See update below.) If the City Branch LRT purchase were to be rolled into SEPTA's inevitable replacement of the Subway-Surface Kawasakis in the near future, cost (b) would be eliminated from the current proposal, but at the price of needing to wait until the new equipment order for the, well, equipment. The costs for BRT, by contrast, are (a) pavement, and (in the City's proposal) (b) buses. This means that the primary cost difference is the cost of electrification, and that, therefore, the City's implied claim that light rail would cost $225 million is fallacious.

That said, BRT has two clear advantages, at least in the near term, over any rail proposal.

The first is obvious. Both the light rail and the light metro proposal were greatly handicapped by length. The "natural" light rail alignment is from 40th and Girard to 11th and Bainbridge via Girard, the City Branch, and 11th/12th; the light metro ran in the branch from Girard to 13th, where it segued into a new cutoff tunnel linking it with the existing Ridge Spur at Noble. Neither would have been longer than three or four miles--nowhere near enough to develop a full line's worth of ridership.

The second is a little less intuitive, particularly with the masking effects the specialized equipment provides: this is that the City Branch can act as a funnel for routes to the north and northwest, much as Woodland Ave. and the trolley tunnel that subsequently replaced it act as a funnel for routes to the south and southwest; the Branch's outlet is also such that routes can subsequently fan out to cover a broader swath of Center City destinations than any rail proposal.

To that end, I propose a 2.5 route system maximized for frequency, and thus ridership.

The first route is the 32, routed into the City Branch instead of the circuitous alignment it has through Fairmount, improving travel time by 5 or 10 minutes. It would run on a 15 (preferably) or 20 minute headway throughout the day, and degrade to 30 minutes after 9:00 or so.

The second route, which I am calling the x40, is a heavy modification of the current Cultural Corridor BRT proposal: Where the current proposal is merely planned to pass by cultural destinations, to the detriment of ridership, I extend it to St. Joe's to tap the Main Line's ridership potential, and twist it down to a Chestnut/Walnut alignment to Penn's Landing to hit eastern Center City's main employment centers: Penn and Jeff Hospitals and the offices around Independence Mall. (Penn's Landing, by the way, is little more than a convenient bus terminus.) Like the 32, this route would run 15- or 20-minute frequencies.

This ensures that a bus passes along the Branch every 7.5-10 minutes, frequent enough to say one will be along shortly.

Finally, the half-route would be the 27, which would be routed off the Schuylkill at Girard and onto this route at peak periods, when the Vine is a zoo. It would run express through this alignment, the shaved minutes more than enough to pay off waiting at the lights as it traverses Girard between the Branch's terminus and the Schuylkill Expressway.

A last element: at my table somebody suggested moving the Phlash to the Branch, which was echoed and supported by the planner at the table--indeed, it appears to be a major reason the City is pursuing the project. The way I understand it, the Cultural Corridor proposal (my emended x40) is proposed to supplant the Phlash, not supplement it; part of the idea is that the City Branch offers a convenient replacement to Parkway bus routes. This presents a problem w/r/t the 38, whose Mantua coverage element would be eliminated by a Branch move, but not for the other routes. It may be better to pursue a surface Pennsylvania Ave. alignment instead for this route instead, as its main ridership base resides in Mantua.

UPDATE: Since several people seem confused by my line of reasoning involving equipment procurement, let me explain it this way. (1) The City's current City Branch proposal involves procuring equipment specific to it. (2) Costs for buses and light railcars in this situation are relatively equivalent (buses cost less, but for the type being proposed, not by an order of magnitude). (3) The City claims the BRT proposal is 1/3 the cost of light rail. (4) (Assuming the light rail would be electrified) this implies the primary cost difference between the two is electrification. (5) The City's BRT price quote is $75 million. (6) That implies the cost of electrification, according to the City, is $150 million. (7) I find that doubtful; the needed electrification would be able to piggyback off of the (active) 15 and (dormant) 23 networks, largely, if not completely, already in place.

So the problem I'm having is that the City is trying to have its cake and eat it too. For the City to believably claim that BRT is 1/3 less than light rail, the BRT cost would have to be limited to just the busway. In the current proposal, it's not.

I think I attempted the original (and yes, tortured) line of reasoning to approach this issue another way--by finding a way to equivocate equipment purchases--in that attempt, by tying equipment purchases for this project to SEPTA's impending trolleycar replacement.

By the way, if it's not already obvious, my major reasons for support of the BRT proposal here are because of the brevity of the ROW being discussed, and because BRT does offer superior alignment and routing options per x unit of capital (not operating) cost.

What To Do With The City Branch: Return It To Transit

(Author's note: Ed. put the "...As Light Rail" at the end of Hidden City title.)

Reading Crusader model from Reading Terminal Market display | Photo: website Found Connections

The ViaductGreene proposal being entertained is for a sunken linear park between the Rodin Museum and 13^th Street, where it would meet the Reading Viaduct (at Noble). This proposal has proved controversial. In fact, the majority of readers who commented on the Hidden City report announcing a planning grant for the linear park were strongly opposed to the idea.

What are its problems?

First off, it doesn’t fill an immediate need for parkland, the way the Reading Viaduct does. The Callowhill neighborhood doesn’t have any parks. By contrast, the small Matthias Baldwin Park at 19th and Hamilton ... Read more at Hidden City Philadelphia.

Responding to Paul van Meter

Last week, Hidden City posted a short news item that Paul van Meter's ViaductGREENE is getting funding for a preliminary study for greenspace conversion of the City Branch--the sunken former freight line linking the Reading Viaduct with CSX's Philadelphia Subdivision.
Comments got heated. This is a controversial topic, not least because of a broad consensus that (a) Philadelphia needs more transportation options and (b) sunken parks are unsafe. That's why we're redoing Dilworth Plaza, isn't it? In due course, Paul van Meter, leading proponent of the ViaductGREENE idea--the website is his--chimed in. I rebutted, and Mr. van Meter replied back. His points, unfortunately, are so flawed that he needs a point-by-point rebuttal.
Mr. van Meter first said:

Perfectly viable for light (or heavy)-rail when you convince CSX to relinquish the Philadelphia Subdivision? You call it “obsolescent,” CSX, who owns it, does not.

Reply:  The Philadelphia Subdivision has been de-emphasized as a main. CSX now treats the High Line as its main, as it has double-stack clearance. The Fairmount Tunnel does not. Thus, this section of the Philadelphia Subdivision has become more of an extended yard lead/interchange track. The ROW is ~70 ft. wide; CSX actively uses ~25 ft.
Granted, getting CSX to part with its property has proven problematic elsewhere, but given the facts that (a) the vast majority of the original ROW was given over to the City Branch's industrial leads--which obviously aren't coming back again--(b) that the line will NEVER have double-stack clearance--due to the Pennsylvania Ave. roof and the water table right underneath the floor--and an alternate route exists right nearby, and (c) the line's environs are enveloped by general urban development, which eliminates any potential freight-rail-based development, the space needed for any sort of mass transit is utterly obsolescent, at least from CSX's point of view. The Fairmount Tunnel can only be single-tracked, and the lead to it past the Schuylkill Banks double-tracked--there is not enough room to extend the yard proper past South St. and so the Pennsylvania Subdivision, north of there, must remain a yard lead.
This is the nature of CSX operations in the area, and this is why I think acquisition (or leasing) of part of the ROW for restored passenger service is worthwhile.
He followed with:

Should this happen before or after the $750M+ Broad Street Subway extension to the Navy Yard is completed?
And tell us more about the tunnel connecting the Ridge Avenue Spur (or PATCO) to the City Branch Cut and how “very very little” it would cost. Tell us more about “a new Callowhill station between 11th and 12th Sts. and a short stretch of 4% grade.”

Reply: (1) Before. This is that a rail project (of any sort) is small, but with big impact. It is the polar opposite to the bloated Schuylkill Valley Metro white elephant of a decade ago, which bundled just about everything on SEPTA's wish list (including a variant of this idea) into a single project, so unwieldy it collapsed in on itself to the point where even normally SEPTA-cheerleading Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers lambasted it, to say nothing of the Federal Transit Administration! Unfortunately, SEPTA management has been unable to promote an ambitious proposal since, and even its relatively unambitious proposals have (as the Pennsylvania Transit Expansion Coalition notes) been excessively larded--and that is why such small projects are needed, to show that even modest capital expenditures can have impressive returns, and help pave the way for realizing much more ambitious proposals, such as the Navy Yard extension.
(2) Your critique is against my light metro idea; suffice it to say that the merits of that idea would be more fully analyzed in a proper Alternatives Analysis (including how, if a light metro is pursued, 13th St. would be addressed. There are other options than the duckunder.)
About cost: this is a budgetary vision with draconian value engineering, enough to force the budget for any transportation project down to Small Starts qualification. Indeed, this was the point; a fairer budget would likely be double, and the capital budget can be multiplied some 500% before we begin to see diminishing returns on investment. The point I am making is, again, this would be a small project with big impact.
By the way, the El east of 30th St. has a 4% grade. It cannot be steeper because otherwise the trains couldn't make it up; it cannot be any less steep because otherwise it wouldn't be able to clear under what was, at the time it was built, a navigable waterway. Lightweight mass transit equipment is generally built to take such gradients for short periods. And, again, the 12th-13th stop would be part of a light metro system, centrally located in Callowhill, along an easy stretch of Noble to work, and offering incredible redevelopment opportunity.
Next, he says:

SEPTA and the City’s “52nd Street/Center City (City Branch) Corridor Alternatives Analysis” throughly identified and evaluated alternative modes and alignments to improve transit service and access in this corridor; the analysis resulted in SEPTA’s conclusion that none of the alternatives would be federally competitive for funding due to high costs and low projected ridership. It’s not about SEPTA, it’s wants or desires.
Tell us about who’s going to pay for your “viable ROW.”

Reply: This is, again, firstly conflation, and secondly, tunnel vision. SEPTA never built the Market St. El or Regional Rail. Private companies did. SEPTA never built the Broad Street Line or Frankford El. The City did. SEPTA's original mandate was operation of the region's existing rail assets. It has both succeeded and failed in upholding this mandate.
The Alternatives Analysis Mr. van Meter is referring to was written a decade ago. It was written in a local climate of tying everything to the Schuylkill Valley Metro proposal, and in a Federal climate that emphasized cost über alles. This Alternatives Analysis was (again) bloated, due to the forced extension to 52nd St., coupled with an ignoring of potential Center City gateways, built on a ridership model that subsequent studies have shown to be fatally flawed*, and part of a package that, as mentioned, was lambasted by the DVARP for its generally overengineered design and technical impossibilities. The FTA, unsurprisingly, gave the package a "Not Recommended" rating, but even so, we need not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Montgomery County is still pursuing a (PDF warning) stripped-down plan for commuter rail to Reading, because that element is feasible. We, too, need to recognize that rail on the City Branch is still a good idea, still feasible, and has two potential Center City gateways to work with.
Finally, we return to cost. I must reiterate, this is the point of my draconian budget, to sink the cost low enough ($100 million) to qualify for Small Starts. Follow the lead of past transit investment--bring the City, the state, and private players on board. Consider unusual financing mechanisms, particularly those that can leverage transit-oriented development along the route. Bring Blatstein on board. It's not as easy as a greenway, sure, but where there's a will there's a way.

Denver, Salt Lake, LA, “in Portland or Seattle-in Dallas,even” have all developed pedestrian and bicycle-friendly corridors in addition to reactivating dormant rail rights-of-way.

Sure--but not in corridors where rail is the optimal answer! Not a duplicate bike path two blocks from the planned Spring Garden Street greenway! You are presenting this as an either-or problem; it's both-and. The solution that you're ignoring is that it's entirely possible to do both here as well: Spring Garden planning's well under way, and the City Branch Cut offers a compelling case for a rail branch reactivation.

From a planning standpoint, VIADUCTgreene’s post-industrial corridor has tremendous potential to become an attraction in and of itself. An attraction that adds layers to Philadelphia’s place in founding the country, to its building of the country.
Tunnel-vision for sure.

That's what they said about Dilworth Plaza when they first built it. It failed. Soaring rhetoric is not enough. What was the definition of insanity again?
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* Among projects realized under the ca. 2002 FTA ridership model, shorter, more urban projects tended to realize 200% of projected ridership, and longer, more suburban ones 50%. Or: the average urban project had double the projected ridership, while the average suburban one had half.

Costing the City Branch Line

Long ago, I suggested the possibility of a long-term subway line running from 8th/Oregon (Pennsport) to Ridge/Henry (Andorra), the first phase of which would run between 8th/Market and Girard via the City Branch cut and part of the Ridge Avenue Spur. It looks like this.

A very old map. For one thing, my station naming principles have changed since.

The next obvious question is, how much does it cost? Actually, answering this question is substantially more advantageous than other potential heavy rail lines (or even Phase Is of lines), as the routing proposed runs along a former (abandoned?) freight right-of-way in heavily redeveloped (or redeveloping) areas where industrial uses are obsolescent: Franklin Town* and Callowhill. People live--not work--in these areas today.

This routing has four key components:
-The Philadelphia Branch from Girard to Noble. This follows the last mile or so of what was once the B&O's Philadelphia mainline, and is parallel to the single-track CSX main on what is at least a four-track (possibly six-track) right-of-way. It also includes a 1/3-mile section in the Fairmount tunnel, between Noble and Park portals.
-The City Branch, along the former course of Noble St. between Broad and the Noble portal, just west of 22nd. Like the ex-B&O ROW, this is a very wide route that is in disuse due to the postindustrial evaporation of its customer base. East of Broad, the City Branch continues on an elevated structure to connect into the 9th St. Branch and the approach to the former Reading Terminal. This elevated structure network (extant from Vine to Fairmount, and from 9th to 13th) is now known as the Reading Viaduct.
-A new tunnel from Broad, along Noble, to an at-grade (no flyunder) junction with the Ridge Avenue spur between 10th and 11th Sts. This tunnel would include a new Callowhill station between 11th and 12th Sts. and a short stretch of 4% grade in order to clear under 13th and between Broad and the existing subway tunnel and portal onto the City Branch's former elevation.
-The Ridge Spur from Noble south to 8th and Market.

Acquisition of the existing parts of this right-of-way is the initial hurdle: CSX is infamously recalcitrant when it comes to giving away parts of its right-of-way. However, there is little economic justification for holding onto this stretch, as the Fairmount Tunnel has been single-tracked to maximize clearance**, particularly due to the ancient (and constraining) south portal, just under the proposed Paine Park site, the duplication with the double-stack clearing ex-PRR High Line trestle across the river, and the single-track bottleneck of a concrete-lined cut by Wayne Jct.; the lack of any active customer in the immediate area; and finally the slow speed limit of this stretch caused not by engineering so much as the sheer congestion encountered in an urban area--particularly the approaches to the Schuylkill Banks. However, as the Banks themselves have proven, CSX is willing to let go of obsolescent stretches of its right-of-way***, and a good deal of the right-of-way width between Fairmount Tunnel and Fairmount Jct. is nothing if not obsolescent.

Procurement of (portions of) the existing railroad easement, wherever not already in the public realm, is thus the first major expense this project encounters. Mercifully, however, it is short: one mile along an obsolescent section of an active right-of-way, and two-thirds of one along an inactive one. $30 million for acquisition costs seems like a reasonable estimate.

Since the meat of the project is basically the linking two separate railroad rights-of-way together, the greatest cost would be expected to be in the actual interlinking itself, especially one that (a) is underground and (b) requires engineering with finesse. While tunnel construction should be (for the most part) cheaply done via cut-and-cover, due in part to the lack of major commercial or residential uses along the vast majority of the 3.5-block-long section, it would also have to be built under 13th, into the Branch between Broad's street grade and its subway grade, and with a gallery area for the Callowhill subway stop between 11th and 12th^, would be done for close to the minimum possible cost of a true subway under U.S. labor conditions--but it is still a subway, and may well breach the water table when it passes under 13th, and thus will be expensive. $50 million sounds like a reasonable cost estimate^^.

The final major expense is what could be best called "installation of railroad technology", namely, the rails and ties, equipment, third rail, platforms, platform access, and turnstiles. Since I'm attempting to utilize the most cost-effective possible alignment, most further savings (howsoever incremental on an individual basis) can be made in this arena. For instance, the cars currently in use on the Broad-Ridge Spur would be re-assigned for this line. No new equipment = $40 million cost savings. Platforms would be 100 feet long, or just about the length of two BSL subway cars (why would they need to be longer?) and built out of wood, wherever feasible (Broad, Franklin Town Park, Rodin Museum, Lemon Hill, Girard), offering a cost savings of a few million. Instead of needing to install an expensive new ventilation system in the Fairmount tunnel in order to deal with the diesel fumes, the CSX section would be simply walled off from the rapid transit section, and the two tunnel sections would alternate between the existing ventilation shafts (which were originally engineered for the significantly greater emissions of steam traction). Few barriers are as effective as physical barriers, anyway. Cost savings: Quite a lot.

While an elevator (or two) would have to be installed at Callowhill, Fairmount, and Art Museum each--due to these stations' being underground--at all of the other stations, a pedestrian ramp (also made of wood) would be able to satisfy ADA requirements.

So there are essentially three elements that spending actually has to be done on to finish this project: (1) extending the track down our fresh new ROW, along with the third rail needed to power our equipment, (2) building a cinder block wall down the middle of Fairmount Tunnel to divide diesel and metro ventilation districts (and the masons would be used to build the Fairmount and Art Museum station platforms too)--the tunnel being shallow enough that approximately 1/2 of the current ventilation shafts should allow acceptable air exchange--and (3) installing wood platforms at all of the other stations. Where the ROW parallels the CSX line, a chain-link fence is also a must-install, but that should frankly be about the same as what an exurban homeowner would expect to spend at the Home Depot to completely fence a two-acre lot in. Perimeters rake up mileage real quick. I recall that laying track costs about a million per mile, so we'll cost this at about $10 million and give the masons and carpenters $4.5 million each to play with.

The final cost is a contingency fund, a hedge or allotment set aside to deal with unexpected expenses. This is usually about 10% of the project's total projected cost, which at this point would be $9 million ((50+30+10)/10); since we are already costing out with a tight cost ceiling, we'll give this contingency fund an extra mil, and make the total cost projection $100 million even.

$100 million is borderline for Small Starts (unusual for heavy rail projects; Small Starts as a grant mechanism favors light rail and commuter rail), and since we're aiming for about 10,000 daily riders (~1,111 riders/station)--not too bad considering that the combined population of the Census tracts immediately abutting this proposed line is 27,344, and thus fully in line with relative ridership on heavy rail lines in similarly dense areas in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. At these (optimistic) projections, the cost per mile is $33 million, and per passenger, $10,000. Even if half the proposed ridership is actually attained, the cost per rider would be $20,000, still extremely low by heavy rail standards and well in line with light rail standards.

Sometime in the near future I hope to dwell on non-financial justifications for this line's existence and programs that SEPTA can run in concert with lineside destinations to increase usage.
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* Fun fact: The Baldwin Locomotive Works, the biggest American steam locomotive builder, was once located in Franklin Town, running between Callowhill and Spring Garden and Broad and ca. 20th. This helps explain the paucity of historical rowhomes in the area.
** Like the Howard Street Tunnel in Baltimore.
*** To my knowledge, the B&O easement originally extended to the river. Part of the Banks is, for example, built over 24th St. Sta.'s coach yard.
^ With the expectation of, if not a wholesale plan for, redevelopment of what is currently a transformer array in the station's immediate area--an array that is supposedly being replaced by a new one along the former Viaduct; such station-side development tends to greatly improve ridership.
^^ Based on the assumption that a mile of subway costs $100 million (a number I've heard thrown around for the Navy Yard extension) and considering that the actual tunnel length will be just shy of half a mile, with a bit extra thrown in for a cost cushion; an electrical substation, for example, may need to be built out by Girard somewhere.

Reading Viaduct, Pt. II

See it right there? It's even been highlighted.

The publicly-accessible embankment along the 1200 block of Noble? The one that's all skuzzy and filled with broken glass? Do something with it. Go ahead, Reading Viaduct Project. Go ahead, Viaduct Greene. There's your pilot. Make that a livable park and then you might see more money for your ultimate mission.

I would love to see the Viaduct turned into a park. But it won't magically appear out of nowhere. The High Line took years of blood, sweat, and tears; years of the incessant dedication of the Friends of the High Line, to happen. The Friends continue to fund a sizable chunk of the park. So, for me to believe the RVP and V. Greene are adult enough, capable enough, to handle a park of this complexity, I'll need to see more than pretty renderings. I'll need to see examples. I'll need to see them actually maintain some small chunk of this Viaduct they want to be entrusted with. There's one available. Go ahead. I'm waiting.

What it looks like on the ground.

The Reading Viaduct

At top: the Reading Viaduct, and at bottom, highlighted,

the City Branch Cut

From time to time, the Reading Viaduct Project makes the blogosphere rounds. It's a beautiful-sounding idea: turn an abandoned old embankment-and-trestle system, the former station lead for the Reading Terminal, into a park-in-the-sky à la James Corner's High Line. New kids on the block Viaduct Greene even suggest extending this park into the attached City Branch Cut.

For the most part, I like this idea. Both of the Viaduct sites are on my blogroll, after all. Callowhill has a lack of usable parkland, and the trestle section, while obsolete for railroad purposes, is still usable for other forms of transportation--bike networks, say. While Viaduct Greene's sunken section is definitely overkill, in large part because Philadelphia2050 (which, remember, this blog is dedicated to) suggests that the northern side of the Center City loop should be routed through it, the historic nature of this cut as the former right-of-way of Noble Street suggests that its continued use as a transportation artery--a bikeway connecting with the Viaduct--is still a viable idea.

But there are all sorts of other givens and druthers (as the Viaduct Greene folks are keen on saying). Callowhill is still largely un-redeveloped and still feels "unsafe". There is little money for new park investment, and funding priorities should be pumped into the underfunded existing system first, especially when the site is Superfund; and finally, the Chinatown CDC is dead set on bulldozing at least a part of it (something I'm against).

All I'm saying is that it's a good idea, but I would want to see funds raised privately first, and to see a CDC or two support it. It would still take at least a decade to happen, but Callowhill needs a decade to further grow.

EDIT 5/24: Landbank it!