Route 23 Derailed

by MICHAEL MISHAK

Activists say SEPTA is deliberately placing trolley restoration out of reach. The transit agency says it's honoring its agreement with the city.

Black topped rail on 10th Street in North Philadelphia could signal the end of the line for the Route 23 trolley. (Photo by James Sturdivant)

As the bus passed Cumberland Avenue on 10th Street, William Faltermayer felt something was wrong. Route 23, which the retired Wyndmoor resident had enjoyed religiously most of his adult life, was somehow different that morning. Then, one block later, it hit him. The tracks were gone, paved over with asphalt.

He hadn’t noticed the 40-foot stretch of blacktopped rail when the bus veered off Germantown Avenue, but the six solid blocks of paved track between York Street and Susquehanna Avenue was hard to miss.

For Faltermayer, the paving is a harbinger of what many Northwest residents have feared for more than a decade: the end of the line, literally, for trolleys on the historic Route 23, believed to be the longest light rail line in the world, stretching 12.5 miles from Chestnut Hill to South Philadelphia.

“The asphalt on that street is a clear, unequivocal statement,” he said. “It’s a foretaste of what may happen. When I see that I see other things coming.”

What Chestnut Hill may see is more diesel buses, a form of public transportation despised by transit activists like Janet Potter. Potter has been a leading figure in the fight to restore streetcars to the last three trolley routes in the city — routes 15, 23 and 56 — since 1992 when SEPTA cut regular rail service on the lines.

At the time, the transit agency called the trolley removal temporary, vowing to return streetcars to the three routes by 1997 as part of an agreement with the city. Then-Mayor Rendell brokered the deal that allowed SEPTA to run buses on the streetcar routes in return for the transit agency’s promise to design and order new trolley cars.

In the meantime, the Route 23 saw limited weekend trolley service, from the Chestnut Hill loop to Gorgas Lane in West Mt. Airy, until June 15, 1996, the date of the streetcar’s last official run.

One year later, SEPTA drew Rendell’s ire when it attempted to pass its 1998-2009 capital budget without adequate funding for even one of the three trolley projects it committed to in 1992. The mayor threatened to veto the transit agency’s budget and won a concession: SEPTA allocated funds to restore trolleys to Route 15.

Still, the transit agency was mum on the two remaining streetcar lines. Potter testified at a special City Council hearing that year, urging the city to compel SEPTA to honor its agreement in full. Announcing the hearing, then-City Councilwoman Happy Fernandez, who chaired council’s transportation committee, said, “SEPTA made a promise in 1992 to restore the trolleys. Now is the time to hear from them publicly. They need to make good on their promise and we intend to hold them to it.”

The budget passed without provisions for routes 23 and 56.

But, Potter kept hope alive, chartering one of SEPTA’s few restored antique trolleys for streetcar tours of Northwest Philadelphia on and off for the next six years. In addition to showcasing the history-rich Northwest, Potter had another motivation: ensuring the rail infrastructure was maintained.

At the same time, knowing the future of Route 23 was tied to Route 15, Potter and other members of Philadelphia’s Historic Northwest Coalition descended on Girard Avenue, rallying community leaders around the trolley cause. The effort gained momentum and in turn birthed the Girard Avenue Coalition, a nonprofit organization comprised of about 50 civic and business groups dedicated to the main street’s revitalization.

Five years after committing funds to the Route 15 project, SEPTA sent a small fleet of its World War II-era streetcars, dubbed PCC trolleys, to upstate Pennsylvania in 2002 where they were gutted and rebuilt from top to bottom, replete with air conditioning and electronic transponders to extend green lights at intersections. Including infrastructure upgrades, total investment in the Route 15 was placed at about $85 million.

Then, last year, the project was killed days before its inaugural run when one of the city’s most powerful ward leaders, representing residents along a half block stretch of the line in West Philadelphia, objected over losing parking spots on the street.

With the trolley as its centerpiece, the redevelopment effort stalled.

But after a scathing series of columns in the Philadelphia Daily News this month, the issue commanded new attention.

The political pressure reached a crescendo last Thursday when Mayor Street weighed in publicly on the Route 15 fiasco during a press conference, saying he was willing to consider towing cars that are illegally parked on a small stretch of the historic route. “You can’t satisfy everybody. It’s just not possible,” he said. “But the needs of a few can’t be allowed to stand in the way of the greater public good.”

But Street’s use of the bully pulpit may stop there. Earlier in the week, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Deborah Bolling, called trolley restoration a “district issue,” and referred a reporter’s call to Councilman Michael Nutter and Lance Haver, the city’s chief consumer advocate. “The mayor doesn’t want to touch that one,” Bolling said of the Route 15 situation.

While SEPTA may roll out the Girard Avenue trolleys soon, current conditions do not bode well for the Route 23. The transit agency’s recent actions add up to what Potter calls “a pattern of dismantlement” that could ultimately render the trolley project “so far gone that it can’t be put back together again.”

Asked about the paving of two portions of Route 23 track in North Philadelphia, SEPTA spokesman Jim Whitaker said the rails, parts of which were sticking up from the roadway, created “an unsafe condition” for neighborhood traffic and local residents. He called the measure “a temporary fix.”

The transit agency also removed the overhead wire at Wayne Junction, a move Whitaker said was prompted by trucks that routinely tore it down.

Perhaps most damaging to trolley enthusiasts is the loss of SEPTA’s remaining antique streetcars. With the exception of the 18 refurbished PCC trolley cars earmarked for Route 15, Whitaker said SEPTA had six antique cars in its inventory, all of which are currently for sale because of their “extremely deteriorated” condition. The transit agency recently sold four others, he said. “They cannot be effectively restored. We’re looking to sell them,” he said. “Should we resume trolley service on either of the two trolley routes we would go out and purchase new cars.”

Asked if the recent measures had effectively struck Route 23, let alone Route 56, from the restoration list, Whitaker said, “No. Should we decide to resume service we’d have to put back the infrastructure that we took down. The agreement for us to reassess the viability of running service on the three lines still exists.”

Transit activists say SEPTA’s current take on its 1992 agreement with the city is revisionist at best. Potter and others would like the transit agency to finally make Route 23 a priority and include the line in its next budget. While Potter is hopeful the recent Route 15 controversy will reenergize the push for returning trolleys to Route 23, she said the effort will gain little ground without some political muscle.

“We need political leadership,” she said. “If people want it to happen they have to expose SEPTA and find the political will to force the issue.” But, she said, calls have fallen on deaf ears. “No one will take ownership of this.”

Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, whose district includes much of Northwest Philadelphia, said that while City Council had discussed restoring the Route 23 trolley in the late 1990s, constituents have not raised the issue in recent years.

In a brief interview on Tuesday, Miller said she recalled a prior plan that would end the trolley line at Wayne Junction. Also, she raised a concern over how double parking on Germantown Avenue would impede streetcars. She said she had no personal preference regarding the Route 23 trolley but would listen to her constituency. “There are so many other problems in the neighborhoods that overwhelm you and take up so much time,” Miller said. But, she added, “If people really wanted it, we would have to pursue it.”

While Councilman Frank Rizzo, a Chestnut Hill resident, waxes nostalgic about the trolley (he rode it daily from Germantown Avenue and Tulpehocken Street to the Chestnut Hill loop while a student at Norwood-Fontbonne Academy), he said the effort to restore service to Route 23 may be a lost cause.

“Being a realistic guy and knowing SEPTA, I think we’ve seen the last of the trolley cars on the Route 23 line,” Rizzo said in a phone interview last Friday.

According to Rizzo, City Council has little power to force the transit agency’s hand. “I think we could have hearings and bring SEPTA in but they really don’t listen to us,” he said. “Their relationship with the city is not a good one.” Moreover, he said, the slanted composition of the SEPTA board — two out of 15 members represent Philadelphia — renders the city’s voice mute. “We don’t get our fair shake down there,” Rizzo said. “The people we do have [on the board] fight like hell, but it’s just not enough to overcome when you have to vote.”

In a phone interview last Friday, Councilman Michael Nutter, chair of council’s transportation and public utilities committee, referred the issue to the city’s representatives on the SEPTA board and to those of his colleagues whose districts include Route 23. Calls to two of those City Council representatives — Darrell Clarke and Frank DiCicco — went unreturned at press time.

Asked if the city could somehow enforce its 1992 agreement with SEPTA, Nutter said, “I would need to know a lot more about what happened and what commitments were made more than a dozen years ago before making any big comment.”

He added: “I’d be glad to be part of a larger discussion about trolleys and where they’re going to go, but I’m also going to respect my colleagues, who have to deal with these issues directly.”

That discussion, he said, would have to take place in the context of SEPTA’s current operational and financial status.

Massive public outrage could tip the balance of power, said Lance Haver, director of the city’s Office of Consumer Affairs. “What the city would like is if the Chestnut Hill, Mt. Airy and Germantown communities would come to the SEPTA board with me and say, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’” he said. “[SEPTA] can’t promise us something and then renege and then say, ‘We’ll do an assessment as to whether we should honor our promise.’”

Without public protest, Haver said, SEPTA will not honor its promise to restore trolleys. Such a display, he said, is the only way to counter a board comprised of suburban interests that disproportionately control the operations of SEPTA in the city.