Wayne Junction-Scope, Cost and Necessity of Project

[R5Dailyrider]

I understand the need to maintain safe, accessible and ADA compliant stations. My questions center on the number of riders and the realistic useage of public funds to provide the most services to the riding public. How many passengers use wayne, will they increase as a result of the project or will they declineas has been the case. Might not linking the passengers at Wayne through the transit fleet to another station have been a more cost savings approach. Ihe ridership is not there why spend millions to erect a monument when SEPTA has needs for many other projects?

[Clearfield]

The ONLY reason this project was advanced is because there were big grant dollars for this specific project only. No substations, no bridges, no replacement of the Shady Lane fill.

Dollars for Wayne Junction Station ONLY.

If we have any real substation issues in the next 5 or 10 years, Wayne Junction station will make a splendid rest stop on the widest rail-to-trail on the east coast...........

[John Scott, PA-TEC]

...big grant dollars for this specific project only.

Big grant dollars are still big taxpayer dollars. The fact that things get funded by grants doesn't change who gets to pay for it, so let's not continue to act like grants are free money and have no bearing on the rest of the budget. Directly or indirectly, every dollar counts.

Funny that only SEPTA can repeatedly find grant money that is conditional on it not being used for life-safety SOGR projects or anything of any usefulness. Funny that we can spend so much in grant money without demonstrating that the rail lines we are enhancing stations on will be safe and reliable for the service life of the improvements. We just keep making the same mistakes, chalking it up to those crazy feds that only want to give us money for unnecessary things. The feds that would prefer that we waste "big grant dollars" on things that are, or soon will be, out of service or obsolete, right?

Ivy Ridge HLPs
New Britain HLPs
Grade crossings on the Newtown line in the 90s!
Wawa
Silverliner Vs
Signals on the Warminster line in the 2000s
etc.

[Matthew Mitchell]

Take your complaints about terms of grants and other funding programs to Congress, FTA, and the state legislature.
Ditto for all the unfunded mandates put on SEPTA by Washington that are forcing scarce capital to be spent on priorities that you don't agree with.

[hammersklavier]

Nor is this just a railroad problem...Roads (believe it or not) have it just as bad too, with excessive minimum width standards...The same can be said of water and sewage systems and so on and so forth...

The basic problem here is that there is no unified infrastructure (much less transportation) policy in the U.S., no clear national or state-level or even metro-level goal-setting, and hence money is disbursed in a largely piecemeal fashion and usually much more conditionally than we'd like it to be.

[R5Dailyrider]

Mr. Mitchell forgive me if I disagree with your sentiments. The wasting of tax payer dollars no matter what the directives is still misguided at best and at times borders on absurd. SEPTA has a fully paid lobbist and I am sure that the efforts to drum up $31,000,000 dollars for Wayne improvements were coupled with some "favors" for friends of the politicians involved.
It borders on criminality when the expenditure of our taxpayer dollars does not result in meaningful improvements without exorbinant costs.

[Matthew Mitchell]

I am sure that the efforts to drum up $31,000,000 dollars for Wayne improvements were coupled with some "favors" for friends of the politicians involved.

You are accusing unnamed SEPTA managers of a crime. What evidence do you have?

There are plenty of times where we all disagree with how SEPTA does stuff and how SEPTA prioritizes stuff. That doesn't make SEPTA's actions wrong or illegal. Throwing those kind of accusations around(*) when what you really have is a disagreement over ideas merely gives fuel to the opponents of public agencies in general and public transit in particular.

*--DVARP has on a few occasions accused SEPTA or NJ Transit of doing something (or planning to do something) in violation of the law. The most recent instance (three or four years ago) had to do with changes in public hearing thresholds and procedures: we backed up our accusations with specifics, made the arguments quietly but forcefully, and ultimately won changes in the procedures that protected the riders' interests while letting SEPTA streamline procedures.

[Matthew Mitchell]

Nor is this just a railroad problem...Roads (believe it or not) have it just as bad too, with excessive minimum width standards...The same can be said of water and sewage systems and so on and so forth...

Hammer is right, which is why you see transit and highway (and other modal) interests working together this time to try and get elected officials in both Harrisburg and Washington to stop putting off legislative action on reauthorizing and funding transportation programs.

[bikentransit]

Its funny to see Matthew Mitchell rushing to SEPTA's aid when they get attacked. Do you work for SEPTA Mr. Mitchell? Or have they provided you with financial or other incentive past or present to be their rescue dog?

[ChrisinAbington]

Here we go again...
Everybody attack each other on the count of three.

I'm not sure this is necessarily the best place to post this, but has anybody else noticed how ACT 44 has been politely brushed under the rug for the past few years since I-80's tolls fell through?
Based on some research by interested parties, I believe the PA Turnpike has been paying most of their obligation to the state based on debt financing. Even with increasing fares each year, they are steadily becoming underwater. I would not be surprised in the least if ACT 44 is repealed in the next several years, and SEPTA is back in the financial hole we've come to expect.
If Corbett and the state legislature don't come to an agreement to greatly change the landscape, all of SEPTAland could be in a world of hurt.. (with or without PTC legislation)
It really isn't that far in the future.. (hint, hint - contact those legislators)

[rdgrailfan]

ACT 44 may come up as a revision item very soon. Change is change and SEPTA needs to prepare, it is on the warming table, some people care others don't. What will replace it, who knows.
The act never developed the intended benefits, so not much internal support for it within the base of legislators. SEPTA needs to get on the stick with some plan to replace / modify / change funding.

[Matthew Mitchell]

ACT 44 may come up as a revision item very soon. Change is change and SEPTA needs to prepare, it is on the warming table, some people care others don't. What will replace it, who knows.
The act never developed the intended benefits, so not much internal support for it within the base of legislators. SEPTA needs to get on the stick with some plan to replace / modify / change funding.

Huh? Are you implying there's some plan afoot to impose a restructuring on SEPTA? I haven't heard of anything like that, and I doubt the legislature is going to try and tackle that while they have school choice, the LCB, and other thorny issues on the agenda.

Chris is right though, the funding shortfall is starting to hurt the highways too because neither the legislature nor the governor want to be blamed for raising taxes to pay for transportation needs. They're not going to take action until the heat they get for doing nothing gets more bothersome than the heat they would get for a tax increase. It's up to all of us to try and generate that heat.

There's already a plan to replace/augment funding--it was put out by the governor's hand-picked commission and centers on shifting the State Police out of the transportation budget into the general budget, and indexing some taxes and fees to inflation.

And Bike, I can think of two million reasons SEPTA would disagree with your characterization that DVARP is somehow under their control. However, our relationship(*) is much less adversarial than it was under the previous management (Joe Casey and Kim Heinle deserve all the credit for that). That's good for everyone, since we're in the business of improving things for passengers, not in the business of attacking people for the sake of attacking people.

*--it's not just DVARP, SEPTA has a much less adversarial relationship now with the counties and with other stakeholders too.

[John Scott, PA-TEC]

It borders on criminality when the expenditure of our taxpayer dollars does not result in meaningful improvements without exorbinant costs.

It does seem to border criminality, but since it seems all of the meaningless improvements that landed these highly restrictive grants occurred in Chaka Fattah's district, I think it's above board, just wasteful.

Here's a short list of both attempted and completed projects:

Wayne Junction station - 31 million
Garages at Jenkintown, Glenside, Fern Rock - 120 million?
Bus loops at Cheltenham/Ogontz, Parkside, and 33rd and Dauphin - 12 million
etc.

I think it's more important that we get to the bottom of these grants and put pressure on 1) the feds for offering grants that don't help us, 2) SEPTA for applying for these grants while others are getting network expansion grants, 3) start asking hard questions. For example:

"Why did we pay $2.4 million to move a bus loop from Parkside Avenue to a field behind a Lowe's, that's not near ANY houses, and not connected by any sidewalks to the shopping center?"
http://www.septa.org/construction/parkside-loop.html

"Why do we pay $400,000 for restrooms, with rusting stainless fixtures?"
http://www.septa.org/stimulus/projects/ ... ndex.shtml

We need to stop beating the "more funding" drum until we can show better results.

As far as I can tell, the only remaining way to come up with long-term, reliable funding formula is to build/rebuild a larger ridership base. That means some degree of expansion, even in lean times. That means, for example, finishing Wawa instead of NPT or Wayne Junction. Wawa will generate new riders, NPT will probably chase some away, and Wayne Junction will probably have no impact. So why was Wawa abandoned?

Politicians count noses, and right now those noses are riding in cars. Painting stations won't change that.

[Choo Choo]

What's NPT?

[Patrick Boylan]

Newtown Permanently Terminated. Haha, I can never resist. Seriously it's New Payment Technology
Although it's supposed to apply to all of SEPTA, the contrahvesy I see in these fabled fora is particular to Railroad Fare Collection http://railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=81101