During my last little sojourn up north, I embarked upon an experiment. When the meetings were over, instead of staying the last night in small town New Jersey ( home of the roads with no left turns), I set off back to the Philadelphia airport and stayed the night at a hotel near there. In this objective, I saved my company money(this was on my nickle)-and I undertook to explore another facet to the city of brotherly love.
Arriving at the hotel-I took care of personal business and phone calls, took a nap, had a few beers at the hotel bar. Fed and beered-I set out on a my little experiment to understand the state of America’s city transportation infrastructure. Being an accomplished train rider from Japan, and the Burgh- I knew that I could easily navigate the short ride from the airport to center city Philadelphia.
Boy was I wrong.
If you ever want to understand why America needs investment in its infrastructure-ride the train from the Airport in Philly-a fairly modern and reasonably nice airport-to 30th street station or Suburban Street station.
It will depress you.
Now truth in advertising my frame of reference is Japan or Hong Kong-or even Singapore-where I can depart the plane, step on a train and in 30 minutes or so be in the middle of one of the fine metropolis’ of the world. In the 1700’s-or even the 1950’s Philadelphia was considered a fine city. No longer, it grieves me to say.
Start with the train’s schedule. 1 train every half hour-at a very unpredictable time. (8:09 or 8:39 from terminal B). Where is the value in that? Miss the train and you have to wait-as I did- in 28 degree weather on platform with some scary people on it.
Then look at the fare-$7.00. More if it is peak time. What is up with that? I could take a cab for $18 dollars and at least they were numerous. ( I checked the fare on the cab when I stumbled home). Time has value too. Now contrast that to Hong Kong where the station is right at the airport, bright and clean, and runs every 6 minutes-at twice the speed of SEPTA’s engineering AMTRAK marvel. The distance from PHL airport to 30th street is the same as that from HKG to Kowlwoon.
The train arrives. I embark. Four cars in all-no ticket box available prior to the platform. A scruffy, ne-er do well “conductor” takes my hard earned money. He takes his sweet time dispensing change-and then has to hole punch a paper ticket. Again, contrast that with Asia, where one would swipe a card, board a clean train, and have wi-fi all the way in side. ( Or even a little TV in the seat just like on a plane). The passengers were not travelers as it appeared to me-but a collection of various and sundry airport employees-tired after a hard day of catering to the needs of the nations jet set.
30 minutes later, said train arrives at 30th street station-home of AMTRAC and America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, the Acela. I cross through the historic and beautiful station, remarking to myself, ” I wonder what this place was like in the 40’s or 50’s?”
I’ll bet it was something.
Now, its still pretty impressive, until you walk out side. You see-you have to walk outside to make the connection to the Subway. Which was, a whole another adventure in and of itself.
Crossing the street, fighting my way past homeless people, (who I have a new found appreciation for-I might be one myself someday)-and pushy taxi drivers, I set down the stairs to the Philly Metro. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
My destination was simple. Get to a street adjoining Walnut street, and near Rittenhouse Square. Had been told there was some night life there, including a couple of Irish pubs. The getting there was the adventure however.
No subway pass in my pocket, no token upon me, I have to pull $2 to hand to a non-descript, non -communicative representative of diversity hiring at work-simply so I could walk through a turnstile. Tell me again why I could not swipe a card and invest the man’s salary in transit police? Who were sorely needed when I descended the steps to the transit platform-where I quickly discovered what it was like to be a minority of one. The trolley comes-who said this was a subway? I board, keeping my head on the swivel and figuring out possible escape routes.
Two stations later I depart. Two blocks over I am on Walnut street.
At least this part of the journey turned out as advertised-there was some night life. However, walking down the streets gave me the creeps. And this from a man who has braved “The Gut” from the Via Roma southward to the Maritime Terminal in Naples at 2:30 AM-or climbed the hill from AFSOUTH to NSA Naples in the dark. I was not quite as nervous as I was walking around Philadelphia at 10 pm at night. Street lamps? Dimmer than they should have been. Homeless people? Too many. Bars? Not enough.
However my ardous journey was rewarded when I arrived at my destination, just cold enough ( it was FREEZING) to have gone in any warm door. I was just in time to join the crowd for QUIZ NIGHT! Sitting at the bar, I re-discovered why I enjoy , what I affectionately refer to as prowling. Sitting next to me was one of Philadelphia’s finest and his rather well endowed girlfriend. We struck up a conversation-and as he discovered that I was r.easonable fluent in useless historical trivia-we agreed to team up our efforts. Since I admire policeman deep down- I think they have a very hard job- I bought him beers. He in turn, allowed me the privilege of talking to his girlfriend with out hitting me when my eyes strayed, once or twice, down south on her sweater. A fair trade if you ask me.
The moral of the story? Philly has things to offer-but not if it can’t get people to them. Six cities in Asia that I know of, have automated train systems-high speed ones too. Why would it be a crime to invest in that? Why do we still have people collecting tickets, when technology exists to pay with the swipe of card. And why not brightly light the stations like they do in Japan? The extra electricity costs could be offset by less people on the “Surekill”. With a modern train system and an interconnecting system of trains and busses I could have been in Philly every night of my trip-instead of Jay’s Sports Bar.
If I were the President-I would take 100 billion to invest in railroads. Not roads-but railroads as a part of moving energy consumption heavily towards electricity and away from oil. Screw the tax cuts-the country has an opportunity to fix itself, and in this area, if the government does not lead the way-no one will.
One final note-don’t try to save money going home by walking briskly down Broad Street southward in 27 degree weather. I folded after 8 blocks and hailed a cab. Scary too. Thank God he sent lots of them along. Abdul got me home ok.
It could have been worse though-I could have ended up like this guy:
I live in Philly, but work in China & HK. I’m forever depressed when I return to the archaic transport system in use in the US. Now granted, though I live in the Philly region, I try to never fly out of the PHL airport because it’s union controlled, and horribly mismanaged. I’ve heard people take the train, but you have to take the Philly subway – which isn’t the safest.
It’s hard to think that I feel safer in Shenzhen then I do in parts of the US, and this isn’t anything new…..add on my other constant disappointment, HK has has had cell/mobile phone use in the trains/subways for 10+ years. New York City, supposedly “the” place can’t even manage to get signal, let alone cleanliness, or properly scheduled departures.
The reason that your $ are wasted in US transportation infrastructure projects is simple. They are not viewed as transportation infrastructure projects. They are viewed as jobs programs for scumbags who cannot get and do not deserve jobs in the private sector.
The contrast between Inchon or Narita and LAX or Philly is only astonishing if one considers who is working the airports. You can only get so much out of TCNs when you hire TCNs as supervisors.
Still trying to wrap my mind around having to exit the train station to enter the subway system…
Why do we still have people collecting tickets, when technology exists to pay with the swipe of card?
Unions, as Curtis alludes to. That also explains every other question you ask.
After having spent time on DC and NY Subways (my only significant experience with public transportation), I was astonished at how bad Philly’s ways was when I visited a couple years ago. The train station WAS awfully nice, though…
A year of so ago we thought would be fun to take the grandkids on train ride from The Holy City (AKA Charleston, SC) to Washington and NY. After some checking realized not a good idea. Schedules were terrible, cost extremely high, and, at that time, no sleeper cars. Could drive just as quick as train and fly just as cheap.
We were very disappointed but since I have listened to Skippy on this issue was not surprised.
Another example. Used to live is SW GA. ATL very crowded. Parking the pits. Opportuity to do good thing has been discussed. Train service from Chattanooga and Macon direct into ATL. Lot of interest and support from the flying public. None from thoses who could make it happen. So sad.
http://www.tonymcnicol.com..scroll down to the pics of rush hour in Japan on the rails.
I live an hour from Philly. Never go there,,what a cesspool.
Why is this a revelation that the US has a poor public transit system?
Richard,
The reason we have such shitty public transit is because nobody views “public transportation” as the goal of any effort to build “mass transit” systems in America and because none of us really believes that we deserve to pay $100 million/mile of track. Every single mass transit and light rail program launched in the US over the last 40 years has been an earmark and pork program which means they were never about providing public transportation, they existed solely to provide jobs.
Most US airports get train or subway service as an afterthought. At Newark you have to take the monorail to the NE Corridor (Amtrak, NJT) which works OK once you finally get there but costs $5 just to walk through the gate to the station, not counting train fare. The train service at PHL was added recently and appears to be the afterthought that it is.
Compare and contrast, not just with Asia, but also Europe (e.g. Schipol, Zurich, pick your favorite). A big part of it is having a rational policy to include trains in the overall national transportation policy. The US either can’t or won’t do this.
And Curtis, blame it on the unions if you want to, but somehow I don’t think the reason the trains are better in Europe is because they have weaker unions.
JRandom,
You miss my point so I will restate it.
Nobody in US government at any level regards transportation infrastructure programs as anything other than “jobs/pork” earmarked programs. That is not some kind of slam against the worthless public employee unions. It simply states the facts.
You could make my day by citing ONE or TWO mass transit PUBLIC funded solutions that took light rail to the train station or to the Airport. It would help if you could cite one that wasn’t operating at a dead loss.
Curtis – you’re right, I missed your point – I was really reacting to FbL’s comment (which she attributed to you) without reading your original comment carefully. My bad.
I don’t know if this will really make your day, but the following transit connections to US airports work pretty well:
1) Washington Metro to Reagan National (Dulles connection is coming)
2) Chicago EL to both O’Hare and Midway
3) Atlanta – MARTA
With regard to operating at a loss, that comes with the territory in public transit – the only question is how much of a subsidy you’ll have to pay. The Europeans and Asian have made a conscious decision to pay enough of a subsidy to get outstanding service. Public highways and airports are subsidized, too.
Having said all that, I think your point that nobody in the US govt regards infrastructure as anything other than pork is somewhat valid. The Europeans may spend money into trains & transit, but they expect the stuff to work well and it generally does.