SEPTA has announced the latest round of public hearings on the proposed NHSL / P&W extension to King of Prussia. The hearings are in conjunction with release of the Draft Environmental Impact Study, available in all its detail here.
The DEIS has more pages than the 7th Harry Potter book but I managed to skim the first several sections. Most is what we're already familiar with, but there are a few minor route modifications:
- The trestle will cross the Turnpike near the rest stop in order to reduce effects on nearby residences, principally the Valley Forge Homes neighborhood.*
- There's also a little "bump" to increase the ROW's distance from the 9/11 Memorial next to the firehouse on Allendale Road.
and two surprises:
- They're proposing the purchase of six additional cars to supplement the existing N-5 fleet. **
- An additional track and loading platform will be added at 69th Street, tentatively where there's an existing pocket track on the north side.
* Rant - I still can't understand why early on someone didn't see that running a 17-foot trestle right behind residents' back yards would generate volcanic opposition. It seems to me SEPTA could have scored all sorts of points by making the Turnpike flyover part of the initial routing, along with reaching out to that area to show how they'd proactively considered negative impacts.
** That surprises me for two reasons - all along they've been saying the existing fleet is more than adequate to meet expected demand, so does it mean projected demand will be higher than originally anticipated (a good thing!), do they expect some of the N-5s to be out of service by 2023 (age 30), or both? Also the per-cost of such a small order would generally be higher than for a larger purchase, so I wonder whether they'll do an add-on to the N-5s or look at a joint purchase, either with some other operator or as part of replacing the 101/102 K-cars (age 40+ by 2023). Hmm....
The DEIS has more pages than the 7th Harry Potter book but I managed to skim the first several sections. Most is what we're already familiar with, but there are a few minor route modifications:
- The trestle will cross the Turnpike near the rest stop in order to reduce effects on nearby residences, principally the Valley Forge Homes neighborhood.*
- There's also a little "bump" to increase the ROW's distance from the 9/11 Memorial next to the firehouse on Allendale Road.
and two surprises:
- They're proposing the purchase of six additional cars to supplement the existing N-5 fleet. **
- An additional track and loading platform will be added at 69th Street, tentatively where there's an existing pocket track on the north side.
* Rant - I still can't understand why early on someone didn't see that running a 17-foot trestle right behind residents' back yards would generate volcanic opposition. It seems to me SEPTA could have scored all sorts of points by making the Turnpike flyover part of the initial routing, along with reaching out to that area to show how they'd proactively considered negative impacts.
** That surprises me for two reasons - all along they've been saying the existing fleet is more than adequate to meet expected demand, so does it mean projected demand will be higher than originally anticipated (a good thing!), do they expect some of the N-5s to be out of service by 2023 (age 30), or both? Also the per-cost of such a small order would generally be higher than for a larger purchase, so I wonder whether they'll do an add-on to the N-5s or look at a joint purchase, either with some other operator or as part of replacing the 101/102 K-cars (age 40+ by 2023). Hmm....
Requiem for it's/its, your/you're, than/then, less/fewer. They were once such nice words with such different meanings...