James Sturdivant

Opinion:
Councilman Nutter and the trolley folly

Rebuilt “PCC II” trolley cars sit waiting in sheds for the green light to run on the restored Route 15 line. The project, watched closely by transit advocates nationwide, has been derailed by Philadelphia ward politics.
(Photo by Bill Monaghan.)

Nearly $100 million taxpayer dollars spent on a carefully studied and planned transportation project has apparently created a non-productive monument to another example of Philadelphia politics triumphing over public need and just good common sense. Trolley rails sit unused, and 18 state-of-the-art streetcars costing $1.3 million apiece gather cobwebs in two Philadelphia car barns, while an influential ward leader caters to a few neighbors and holds a city councilman hostage.

Ironically this councilman, Michael Nutter, purports to be leading the reform charge in the flurry of city political scandals, and has mayoral aspirations. He is author of an ethics bill that passed last week on its second try before City Council. How “ethical” is it to allow the most petty of political power plays to render a project of this magnitude stalled for nearly a year when all work has been completed and the people’s money spent? How effective can a leader become, if elected, when he allows ward-level squabbles to overpower the public good? Can Michael Nutter be an effective mayor in a city that badly needs a fresh start at decision-making when he is so easily manipulated?

Several years ago, the three remaining surface streetcar lines that ran completely above ground (five others in West Philadelphia are part subway) were “temporarily” converted to bus operation as the streetcars were aging and SEPTA apparently had a surplus of air-conditioned buses. After mayoral approval and that of the SEPTA board, the plan announced was to use substitute buses, while upgrading the three systems with new streetcars and infrastructure as required.

These routes were #15 Girard Avenue, #23 Germantown Avenue, and #56 Erie-Torresdale Avenues. Only the Route 15 project has been completed. Route 56 has been largely repaved, with its wires dismantled; and Route 23 hangs in limbo, despite the fact that capital funding is available for these projects. The entire project now has the earmarks of mishandling as Route 15 has been paved over with politics (pun intended). The current SEPTA management has reneged on previous commitments to Routes 23 and 56 and has adopted a policy of deception and disinformation about Route 15.

What ratchets the outrage up even more is that this project was completed and ready for operation nearly a year ago, with a July 1, 2004, service inauguration date. Just a few days before, after all shakedowns and testing had been completed, that ever-present serpent known as Philadelphia machine politics crawled out of a sewer and laid across the tracks — and not a Route 15 streetcar has moved since.

Despite the multi-million dollar investment and planning, it seems that SEPTA and the city did not take the necessary steps to convert parking on a small section of 59th Street back to what it was before the trolleys stopped running. This could be accomplished by repainting the street’s center line and posting a few “NO PARKING” signs. In a power-grab, a local ward leader reportedly says constituents like the street arrangement this way and that is all there is to it — $100 million or no $100 million.

Their councilman seems to agree. In this city, district councilpersons are all-powerful, running personal fiefdoms that are in essence mini-cities in themselves. Nutter, with a phone call, could end the impasse that arose from the need to reverse a temporary parking modification on two city blocks, but he has not the conviction.

It is important to understand the effort and planning that brought about the revitalized Route 15, an 8.5-mile line that runs from West Philadelphia to Port Richmond. A well-researched article in Rail magazine called “Route 15 Returns” documents that process in detail and can be found on the Internet at www.phillytrolley.org/15. This is no impractical “Toonerville Trolley” added more for effect than function. We are talking about a modern surface-rail system resulting from traffic and engineering studies, research and community input, and including long-range planning for expansion and connection with other area transit facilities. After infrastructure upgrades costing $48 million, the original concept was to buy new cars at the cost of $2 million each. When that figure almost doubled, it was replaced by a plan to rebuild 18 of the existing PCC cars into state-of-the-art vehicles, reducing the cost to $1.3 million per car. Related expenses bring the total investment to near $100 million.

Beginning in 2002, the old streetcars were shipped to central Pennsylvania, where the remanufacturing process resulted in restored original shells with everything else new, including air conditioning and propulsion systems. Electronic transponders allow the streetcars to extend green lights at intersections when long loadings might delay main street traffic. The outsides of the cars are painted in the original PTC (Philadelphia Transportation Company) scheme. New islands, separate trolley lanes and waiting shelters at the Philadelphia Zoo characterize this well thought-out system of effective surface transportation.

Transportation engineers have long understood that nothing comes close in efficiency for moving people than a steel wheel on a steel rail. Environmentally and practically, electrically powered vehicles are recognized the world over as the most efficient and cleanest form of mass transportation. The rush to remove streetcar systems in the 1950s and ‘60s is now seen as very short-sighted, and many American cities have rebuilt these lines in the last 10 years (several with trolleys bought from SEPTA). Diesel buses are heavy polluters, wear out prematurely and consume tires and maintenance at rates that far outpace those of electric streetcars that last five times longer. (Most city buses are worn out in 10 years.) A streetcar system makes sense in so many ways, and Route 15 has been completed and the money spent since last May. This is not a new issue and there is no excuse for not having it resolved at this point. I hold our shameless city political machine, SEPTA and Councilman Nutter culpable for letting this languish.

Whether we are talking about pay-to-play, channeling money to favored nonprofits, crafting special zoning deals for contributors or wasting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars by looking the other way, our politicians have a public-be-damned attitude. It is difficult to understand why the usually farsighted Councilman Nutter has walked away from this issue.

One might reflect on how those in Washington and Harrisburg perceive Philadelphia, given that large sums of tax dollars funded this project; not to mention the city dollars expended through the Streets Department. Governor Rendell as mayor made the commitment to rebuild the three lines, and his administration initiated the process. Oh well, I guess it is just too inconsequential to deal with for those preoccupied with a city in political chaos; but in my view, $50 million here, $50 million there — soon we are talking about real money!

Opinion: Why Neighborhood Networks?

by MARC STIER

On Saturday June 4, at 9 a.m., a few hundred people will gather at the University of Pennsylvania Law School to launch Neighborhood Networks, a progressive / liberal political organization that aims to change the way we do politics in Philadelphia. We will come with many different goals and will resolve our differences through democratic debate and decision-making. So I speak only for myself in this effort to explain why I have been working to create this organization and why I hope you can join us.

Politics in Philadelphia is broken. We do one thing right: we turn out a lot of Democratic voters in statewide and national elections. But, in many other ways, we are in trouble.

The problems begin, but do not end, with the pay-to-play scandals. We all suffer from the graft tax that we pay when city contractors pad their bills to support the campaign contributions or gifts they make to do business with the city.

This mid-level of corruption sits on top of a lower level, our ward politics. Most wards in this city are very different from the 9th Ward in Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy. Too many of our ward leaders make unilateral decisions about who their organization of committee people will support. This support is too often given in exchange for substantial sums of money. And committee people reluctant to go along with their ward leader are too often threatened with the loss of the city jobs held by them or their relatives. By these means, the formally democratic ward structure, in which committee people are elected by their neighbors, is transformed into a top-down system that raises the costs of campaigns and insulates political officials from the voters who elect them.

And then there is the top level of corruption, the benefits that major developers and corporations receive from the city or state in exchange for large campaign contributions.

Our corrupt political culture is bad because it sets a terrible moral tone for the whole city. It is also bad because it undermines our prospects for economic growth and because it makes real progress impossible in so many other areas. Energetic and experienced people who want to do good are reluctant to get involved in politics. As a result, too many of our political officials do very little to help their constituents or the city. They show some energy only when their patronage and perks are in question. Thus it is no wonder that, to take one example, there is so little leadership to improve our woeful transportation system. We have a transit infrastructure that other cities envy and that could provide fast, frequent, and efficient service. Instead we have slow, infrequent, and costly service. As a result, we have less economic growth then we should have and our work force suffers from long commutes, high costs and the inability to get to jobs in the suburbs.

We need progressive, good government reforms to deal with problems of corruption, inadequate government and slow economic growth. But we also need liberal, social justice reforms to deal with problems of inequity in our city. Too often, as in the case of transit, our politics does not equally serve rich and poor or black and white. Our education system is not what it should be, particularly in poor and working class neighborhoods. We need new community-based efforts to address our horrible crime situation in those neighborhoods. We need much more effort to help residents restore their older homes and to insure that as gentrification occurs, people who have lived through difficult times in their neighborhoods are not forced to leave them in good times. We need community based efforts to create new businesses in commercial centers in many neighborhoods. And we need to insure that every community gets its fair share of the city services it needs — from L&I inspections to fire stations to libraries.

We won’t get one kind of reform without the other. Political reform won’t come about if, because they lack other opportunities, too many of our citizens remain reliant on political patronage. Economic growth won’t pick up if workers can’t get a good education or if our transit system does not serve the working poor in the city. Economic growth will come if people move into the city. They won’t come, however, if we don’t improve our schools, reduce crime, restore our housing stock, and improve our commercial districts.

On the other hand, social justice is impossible if our political system continues to serve the well off and the connected so much better than it serves our citizens and small business owners.

Many of our politicians are good people who recognize the systemic problems with our politics. But they are too embedded in that system to change it. But we don’t have to live with the kind of politics we have today. A few hundred active citizens can change our politics in dramatic ways. Be one of those citizens and join us on June 4.

For more information about Neighborhood Networks, go to www.phillyneighborhoodnetworks.org or call 215-247-9169.

Mt. Airy resident Marc Stier is one of the organizers of Neighborhood Networks.