I won!!

Had the opportunity to tour 5 SEPTA Chestnut Hill stations which were sold to local developer Ken Weinstein for adaptive reuse to retail + housing. Starting with the Furness' iconic Gravers station, with a fully intact 1880s waiting room + agent office

If PennDOT wants to pretend we have a ten-lane highway instead of a 6-lane highway, then just finish the deed and sink the local lanes so at least we can prevent needless deaths

"The community preferred that Vine Street become one lane eastbound. PennDOT would not approve the change. Vine Street is an alternate route for the expressway, and PennDOT says it needs to stay at least two lanes." PennDOT puts Philly's highways over Philly itself. www.phila.gov/2025-10-17-c...

Unfortunately DVRPC just approved its long range plan with I-95 widening fully in scope

spooky

One cool thing about cities with great public transit to stadiums is fewer people leave playoff games early to get a jump on traffic.

The full new Philadelphia Art Museum branding is out. I have mixed feelings, which is normal for rebrandings. Directionally there's some good (I really like the griffin), but I think it also invites an identity crisis. A thread with some thoughts:

The maps featured in this post were all taken from this map: www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/... It shows the location of springs, guard houses, trails, landscaped gardens, footbridges, creeks, and public toilets most of which are now removed or no longer maintained.

SEPTA released some info about their Reimagining Regional Rail reform proposal on a TRB webinar. Some details on the Build Philly Now Substack buildphillynow.substack.com/p/sneak-peek...

Fairmount should be accessible to all, and it’s extra disappointing that we had better pedestrian access but the city hasn’t maintained it. Thank you for compiling this historical evidence. Please consider signing Philly Bike Action‘s petition for a safer park. bikeaction.org/campaigns/de...

Someone on the @5thsq.org Slack asked about urbanist museums. I've been to a lot! I consider a museum "urbanist" if it tells the story of urban society or culture. Typically architecture, transit, and city museums meet that requirement. Here are the ones I've been to and recommend!

Kelly Drive in Fairmount Park has been engineered to remove most pedestrian crossings and amenities, to speed up traffic. A thread with 8 examples of things that have been lost, with historical images. South to north. 1. A staircase from the river trail to the Girard Ave Bridge, and Brewerytown:

Fairmount Park in Philadelphia has tremendous potential to be a world class park like it once was, but it's held back by far too many high speed roads and extremely deteriorated paths for people walking and biking. Advocates seek to finally change that: whyy.org/articles/phi...

This is exactly why raiding SEPTA's capital funds is such a terrible idea. Service cuts may be briefly delayed only for disaster to force cuts anyways. SEPTA has been underfunded for decades. Republicans, like Picozzi, proposed an unserious worse-than-nothing deal.

SEPTA tries this every year to get funding in the PA state budget and it hasn't worked!

Look say what you will about Lance Haver, but he does have hilarious timing, publishing his insistence that SEPTA just had $400 million in walkin' around money not doing anything the day the NTSB causes a panic about the Silverliner IVs www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is teasing a rebrand to be fully revealed 10/8. I'm a fan so far. Embracing the griffin is funky and memorable. "Putting Philly front and center" is also a great direction. The logo seems to aspire to be the go-to non-sports merch someone buys to rep Philly.

We had a mostly gray afternoon in Philadelphia, but we get a hot pink evening :)

Passed this today (and baseball was being played)

West Fairmount Park has too many large roads that discourage its use as a park. Here's an AI-assisted reimagining of Avenue of the Republic turned back over to people, instead of cars. Before, early intervention, and permanent upgrade:

It is fantastic that the Ben Franklin Parkway vision is still moving forward despite Mayoral change, but any time someone has to convince you that you won't feel the "irrelevant" cars anymore, it's a major red flag that road dieting hasn't gone far enough!

Yes that's correct! Here are 2 comparison aerial images. The first from 1959 and the latter from 2024. The first two rows of buildings along Delaware Ave were removed for I-95. Penn's Landing was built out into the water where the ferry terminal and other piers used to be.

My secret AI shame is asking Google Gemini to make a photograph out of the late 19th century engraving of a building on my street that was demolished for I-95, and being excited at what it did with one simple prompt. The third photo is what it looked like in 1966. (Recolored in Gemini, oomf)

I gave an AI a historic image of Philadelphia's Delaware Ave waterfront and asked it to imagine what it would be like if it weren't replaced with I-95. A bit of a gut punch.

Sloppin' William Birch's "South East Corner of Third and Market Streets" circa 1799. Google Gemini rendering of the same. And Google Maps Street View of the Philadelphia location today.

Reimagining (with AI) a South Philly street to have a curbless design that creates space for more trees.

Are we finally going to save transit funding by actually funding state police through proper methods (not PennDOT)? Very unlikely, but one can dream

Presently in Pennsylvania ~25% of the population receives $641 million of free policing annually, funded by other regions. This scheme uses state police for local police work, which may actually be against state law. A new law seeks to make that approach for fiscally responsible:

If you've designed a "park" and you include so much asphalt that every intersection ends up looking like this, you've messed up:

Fairmount Park is one Philadelphia's most underused assets, because it's not designed to be safe or usable as a park. Since 2019 41 people have been killed by crashes in the park. @bikeaction.org is trying to fix that. Sign their petition to call for a safer park: bikeaction.org/campaigns/de...

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission publishes a tool that shows where sidewalks are missing: www.dvrpc.org/webmaps/side... Embarrassingly Philadelphia's worst area is Fairmount Park which has many roads without any sidewalks.

The biggest issue with Philadelphia's Fairmount Park is that it's far too difficult to walk or bike to from nearby neighborhoods, and hard to get around once you're there. It was much better in the past! A thread with a few examples from Google Maps:

SEPTA GM Scott Sauer has a message for riders, employees, and our region: full service is secured for 2 years—but it’s only a short-term fix. We still need a long-term funding solution. Watch his update. #ISEPTAPHILLY #HowWeRoll #FundSEPTA

Thought-provoking commentary from Inga Saffron. A delightful new space on a road that's meant to be a place of great civic pride, and yet Philadelphia has often seemed unsure of what it wants to be proud of. Saffron praises the new space and rightfully asks: where does the Parkway go next?

I honestly don’t have enough luminous, magical spirit caves in my life.

It's great to see the Philadelphia Cycling Classic returning! Big events like this that show off uniquely Philly places like Fairmount Park, Manayunk, and the Art Museum are great for the city. www.inquirer.com/sports/phila...

Visiting Seattle and I’m very jealous of their abundant downtown protected bike lanes… Not so much the weather.

Harry Fenton, himself an advocate for bike safety in Philadelphia, was killed by a speeding hit & run driver while biking through Fairmount Park: www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia... Fairmount Park is tragically decades overdue for safety improvements for people biking and walking.

WE DID IT!!! 82 hours. 201,701 steps. Countless stories and supporters along the way. I’m proud, I’m sore, and I’m more certain than ever: Pennsylvanians won’t stop until we #FundTransit.

Today's Acela launch will drive Amtrak NEC profitability, even as the 27% capacity boost cuts dynamically priced fares At first it seems they'll use the faster trains to "pad" existing schedules, boosting on-time performance After observation they should be speeding up the official schedules!

First Frank Farry went on a conservative talk show to complain he's getting personally criticized for supporting SEPTA's defunding, now the Republicans are complaining when constituents contact them. If you're a politician and you don't want to hear from constituents you're doing something wrong.

This is why public transit across Pennsylvania will start collapsing tomorrow. Unclear what can be done—Dems already passed bills with all of GOP's demands—other than for Dems to retaliate against rural funding and services until the GOP stops attacking urban areas. humantransit.org/2025/08/the-...

I don't agree with this take because I believe Musk wants to use Twitter to addict people to an endless stream of slop and anger and then manipulate the algorithms to guide public opinion at key moments.

Joe Picozzi: "I think people are sick of political theater ... and most reasonable people recognize I am a freshman senator. I can't bring anything to the floor. I can't force them to vote on anything." Actually he can! If Picozzi and the 2 other SE PA Republicans chose to they can force a vote.

One of the arguments I often see conservatives make is that public transit should be privatized. That might work, but only if roads, highways, and parking were privatized as well! In Japan many transit companies are private but so are expressways and so is parking.

Joe Picozzi published an Op-Ed that makes it very difficult to believe he's operating in good faith about transit funding. He pretends Democrats have not proposed new revenue, but it was Republicans who shot down a 'skill games' tax and marijuana legalization. southphillyreview.com/2025/08/19/o...

Protestors occupied Joe Picozzi's office today to ask him to represent his own constituents instead of rural Republicans: www.inquirer.com/transportati... Picozzi's transit funding plan would destroy SEPTA and he has yet to acknowledge that it's an unworkable plan.