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been winning friends lately. The new Silver- liner commuter rail cars for SEPTA are be- ing delivered, but have been late. An order of commuter cars for the MBTA in the Boston region was supposed to have been delivered in 2010, but the order is still not fully deliv- ered to Beantown. Worse yet, the cars have not been very good and the management of Hundai-Rotem has been unresponsive to the concerns of MBTA. The MBTA is threaten- ing to cancel the order, but that will further delay the delivery of badly needed rolling stock. Financial problems have made it very difficult to keep up MBTA’s physical plant and its cars and buses. Charlie Bogart sup- plied the sad news. Somebody, particularly SEPTA, needs to come up with $80 million to pay for a new rail and bus station to be built near the old Paoli train station in the Philadelphia re- gion. The design of the facility will take about three years and, if funds are found, a three-year construction period will be need- ed. About 1300 passengers per day use the station at present and it services SEPTA’s Paoli/Thorndale regional rail/commuter rail service and Amtrak’s Philadelphia-Harris- burg line. The new facility is to have 600 parking spaces and places for bus service to come close for interchange of passengers. The new station is expected to cost $60 mil- lion and take about three years to build. Thanks to David Harris and Fred Cole for the good news.
One must break eggs to make an omelet. Similarly, one must close stations and parts of a rail line in order to carry out heavy maintenance and modernize facilities. The WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA
TRANSIT AUTHORITY shut down seven stations for a short time to do track work, during the President’s Day holiday time in the nation’s capital. This news from David Harris is more evidence that the rail servic- es, such as Washington and San Francisco, are old enough to require significant mainte- nance and rebuilding.
The Blue Line rail service in LOS ANGE-
LES moves 26 million riders each year and has a history of accidents and fatalities. Eight persons died along the line in 2012, about half of which were suicides. Thanks to John A. Lew for the information. My opinion on architecture doesn’t
count, but I have never liked the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Headquarters building in downtown WASHINGTON, D.C. Many others apparently have the same feeling. The General Services Administration is un- happy with the building, not just because of its ugly concrete Brutalism structure, but because it is rapidly deteriorating. Now, David Harris sends news that General Services is looking closely at a large plot of land owned by the Washington Metrorail system at the Greenbelt station. There has been competition between the several juris- dictions served by Metrorail for the new FBI structure. Leaders in Fairfax County, Va, had high hopes for the FBI to build there. Clearly, a site served by the subway directly would be a choice that would be at- tractive for many people. However, Metro is faced with the threat of funding cuts from the jurisdictions that do not get chosen for the FBI headquarters. This is apt to become open warfare. Thanks to David Harris and Dan Little for the news.
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