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Originally Posted by tw
Because they must lay all new tracks for that route. Tracks you refer to are the Main Line. Roads are lousy for moving good. Rail must do that. Existing tracks must get freight from Chicago to NYC (actually Newark), Philadelphia, and Baltimore in two days. That means no train stops until it arrives. That means no passenger trains must be on that line.
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Tracks I refer to are not the Main Line but a freight line going up to Reading. I did further reading and the line is owned by Norfolk-Southern. N-S is, for the most part, fine with passenger use on those tracks.
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To provide mass transit on the 422 corridor, new tracks must be built. And suburban towns must provide 500 and 1000 car parking lots. Everybody wants. Nobody wants to give.
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This is true; on the R5 Paoli, which is on the Main Line, the parking lots are 150-250 spots and they are all rated at 99% capacity every day.
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Another example of myopic thinking; why your mass Route 422 plan will never happen.
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I think it will. The current plan is to toll 422 with EZ-Pass, to pay for the
strategic long-term "master plan" that they have come up with, which includes creating the R6 Norristown extension, improving Rt 422, improving the roads people will take to avoid 422 so they don't get tolled, revitalizing some downtowns, etc. and whatever else the hell they wanted to put in there. They paid real engineering firms real money to create real fancy multi-colored maps and stuff. It looks all scientriffic.
They figure Route 422 drivers will cough up enough money on a routine basis to pay for a $500 million bond, and they think the R6 line can be done for that, including $50M in Rt 422 bridge re-do at the Schuylkill river crossing.
The question of why did it cost $2B when the feds wanted to do it, and now costs $500M when the locals want to do it, is moot, since the federal project was shot down. It's just one of those things that makes you go Hmmmmmmmm. Senator Spector never did have the pull to make his $2B project go, but you know, I like the local people more. They're local and somehow they saved $1.5 billion dollars.