Cynically yours: What’s with the mysterious 52nd Street station in West Philly?
Hayley Richardson | Fri, Oct 19th, 2007 | Category: Commentary | Tags: hayley richardson, transportation, west philly, septa, 52nd st., anacostia, columbia heights, the white dog
I just knew that working at the White Dog would pay off.
Granted, eight hours in the kitchen is sweaty, unglamorous work, but the monotony is often interrupted by vibrant anecdotes and rabble-rousing by my fellow scullery maids. And what’s more, when they learned I moonlighted at a magazine, many jumped at the opportunity to share their dissatisfaction with/undying love for Philadelphia. DING, inside scoops. After hearing the dishwasher talk bitterly about the “promised subway stop” in West Philly that never came, I started thinking about the connection between public transportation, violence/crime, and that postmodern urban malady: mass isolation.
I’m slightly cynical about urban public transportation, and with good reason. I just moved from Washington DC, where it took 25 years (PDF) from the time the Metro was conceived to the point where it began to service the city’s poorer neighborhoods, including Anacostia and Columbia Heights. While the rest of the city was experiencing an economic renaissance, these, and other neighborhoods, continued to languish in poverty. It was only after the gentrification process commenced that Metro considered the possibility of adding extra stops.
Back to Philly. My SEPTA research concluded that a new subway stop is not in the works for the western region of the city. What I did find out, however, is that a five-year construction project along the Market El in West Philly has detrimentally affected the neighborhood, stranding many of its residents and creating an ideal situation for drug-dealing and crime.
In May, the Philadelphia Daily News suggested that “SEPTA owes something extra to a neighborhood where local commerce has been devastated by a five-year shutdown for its Market-Frankford El reconstruction. SEPTA is spending a half-billion dollars along Market Street, virtually none of it going to local people. Meanwhile, their streets grow darker and more dangerous as stores close, street lights get moved and auto traffic gets diverted”. Christopher Ahearn also chronicled the construction-related crime in the 34th St. magazine. He writes that “the area has become a local hotbed for drug dealers [and with] SEPTA’s construction has come shuttered storefronts and heavy pedestrian traffic - both combining to create the perfect conditions for narcotics trafficking.” How’s that for “improvement”?
The 52nd St. station has reopened since both articles were published, but the 46th St. stop will be closed until next June. At a time when the city is experiencing near-record levels of violence, it seems strange to cut residents off from transportation without taking responsibility for/addressing their needs. What do people do when they’re physically and economically stuck? Oh, I can think of a few things…
Also, it’s important to keep it mind that “improvements” along the Market El must be seen as a symptom of, if not a reaction to, the gentrification that is currently engulfing West Philadelphia. And furthermore, we should ask ourselves what it means to live in a city that’s so dysfunctional, long-term residents don’t even know to which project gone awry they should trace the dysfunction.
![Revise [UPDATED]](http://americancity.org/images/uploads/revise_updated.png)
Matt'
Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 3:29pm
I understand your frustration with transit planners’ seeming inability to adequately serve poorer neighborhoods. I have long been an advocate of social justice, and I see decent transit as one of the more important steps in the process.
I recently moved to Washington from Atlanta, and I must say that I am pleased with the quality of transit here. There is a marked difference between these two cities of mine, especially in regards to transit. Atlanta’s MARTA subway system was mainly designed to funnel commuters into the central city. Unfortunately, most of these commuters didn’t materialize. Racial conflict and white flight conspired to keep MARTA inside the Perimeter (Beltway) and the good jobs outside.
In 1985, when the Georgia Department of Transportation decided to move forward with the North Atlanta Tollway, a six lane highway through some of Atlanta’s wealthiest neighborhoods, they asked MARTA if they still wanted space in the median for the busway proposed since 1971. MARTA decided that the chance to serve mostly-white affluent communities on the posh north side of town was too good to pass up. So they axed a rail line slated for the poor Bankhead and Perry Homes neighborhoods in favor of building a rail line to Perimeter Center. In the end, a short spur was built to Bankhead, but the even poorer Perry Homes remained without service.
Washington’s story is quite different. A recently published book, “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro,” (Zachary Schrag, Johns Hopkins Press) chronicles the history of America’s swankiest subway. A chapter is devoted to the Mid City Subway (Green Line, Gallery Place to Fort Totten). You are correct in stating that the Green Line, which serves the poorest of DC’s neighborhoods, was the last to be completed, but it was by no means intentional. Several factors played into the delays which plagued Green Line construction:
1) It was the last to be proposed. This is perhaps the best case during which to argue racism. In the 1950s and early 1960s, planners did not include the Green Line on their maps, although a spur to Columbia Heights from the Connecticut Avenue side of the Red Line was included. However, by the late 1960s, the Mid City subway was shown on maps. Since it was the last to be included, it was the furthest behind in planning.
2) It was responsive to neighborhood demands. That’s right, the subway serving these communities was delayed by the neighborhoods themselves. Of course, the result is probably a better one, because the neighborhoods got what they wanted, but it took longer. For instance, originally the Green Line would have had a straight shot up 7th Street/Georgia Avenue from Shaw to Petworth. The 1968 riots, however, destroyed much of the area along 13th Street NW, and the line was rerouted in order to help rebuild the neighborhoods. Of course, re-engineering the right-of-way wasn’t easy. Another instance of delay occured in the Petworth neighborhood. Residents were afraid that the subway would disrupt their lives and as a result WMATA rerouted the propsed line under Kansas Ave, to a more expensive alignment under New Hampshire Ave. This was a treatment that even the residents along Yuma Street NW didn’t get when they opposed the Red Line.
3) Legal challenges slowed construction. The alignment of the Green Line in Southeast suffered litigation due to alignment changes made at the behest of the community. Eventually a compromise route was made, but the delay left Anacostia the southern terminus for a long time.
4) Nixon resigned. Nixon was the last true transit-supporting president we had. Under Ford, support for Metro waned severely, and especially after Reagan’s election, transit funding was more limited than ever. Politics in DC is never a fun thing, and delays due to politicking put Metro down to the wire. The citizens of DC are lucky they got what they were promised. In other cities, federal cutbacks in transportation spending meant that most rail systems got nipped in the bud. Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Miami are all cities whose metro’s weren’t completed. That fate could have happened to Metro too. Instead, Metro suffered a longer wait until completion, but as they say, it’s better late than never.
Still, during all of these delays, Metro kept the Green Line on their maps. For many years, there were dashed lines marked as “future extensions,” and each of these came to fruition. WMATA might not have gotten the subway done as quickly as anyone liked, but they never forgot about the low-income communities in DC.
A more appropriate question to ask, however, is whether the Metro was actually good for the poor people living in the Mid City and in Southeast. In Atlanta, it seems that most people don’t know that there’s a MARTA station in their neighborhood. Here, you can’t find a cheap place within walking distance, because everyone wants to live near the Metro. As a result, the lower income residents of places like U Street and Columbia Heights are being forced out of their homes. Metro has brought with it the rehabilitation long promised these neighborhoods, but it has also brought higher taxes and higher land values.
As Metro reminds us, they “Open Doors” to many things, and overall I think that DC has benefited greatly from the presence of Metro. That prosperity includes the low-income neighborhoods, and that has always been the intention.
-----