DRPA opts for E. Market Street surface line

With the blessing yesterday of Mayor Nutter and members of the city's Washington delegation, a proposed trolley line for east Market Street and the Delaware River waterfront moved a step closer to reality.

The Delaware River Port Authority selected the Market Street link to the waterfront over two alternatives. The route selection allows the DRPA to begin environmental reviews and preliminary engineering.

If the DRPA can find the estimated $500 million for the project, trolleys could be operating by 2016.

After attending the DRPA briefing yesterday, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) said he would seek federal funding for the project.

The waterfront line would operate on tracks in the middle of Columbus Boulevard from Pier 70 at the south end to Girard Avenue at the north. The route would provide service between the two casinos planned for the waterfront, Foxwoods in the south and SugarHouse in the north.

A Market Street light rail line would run from City Hall to the waterfront.

Daily ridership is projected to be 12,000 to 14,600 passengers by 2030.

Many questions remain, including what agency - SEPTA or PATCO - would operate the lines, how the lines would get over or under I-95, and how the waterfront and Market Street lines would connect.

Nonetheless, the decision to proceed with a Market Street route "is very exciting," said Rina Cutler, deputy mayor for transportation. "This has the ability to be transformational. . . . I'm interested less in running trains along the river for tourists and more in connecting the waterfront to the main transit systems."

Some planners have objected that a Market Street trolley line would snarl Center City traffic and duplicate service already offered by the Market-Frankford subway.

"There is some duplication," Cutler said yesterday. "But my instinct is there is not as much duplication as you might think." She said a Market Street trolley line "is certainly our preference."

U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), who also attended yesterday's briefing, said she was concerned that the light rail lines provide a seamless link with existing transit lines and not duplicate existing service.

"It may be a better use of public dollars to spend the money to link light rail along the waterfront with the Market-Frankford line, at either Second Street or Fourth Street," Schwartz said. "This cannot be solely a casino-to-casino line along Delaware Avenue. It has to help people who live here and work here."

DRPA chief executive John Matheussen said the agency would examine the possibility of using the subway instead of an aboveground trolley for Market Street. He said the two-year environmental-impact study period would give DRPA time to "take a more detailed look at the obstacles, some of which may be formidable."

One of those is money. Under current guidelines, the Philadelphia project likely would not qualify for federal "New Starts" transit funding because of relatively low ridership and relatively high cost.

Matheussen said "we're anticipating there will be federal funding. . . . Sen. Specter gave us encouraging words, and the fact that we have a regional team that wants this to succeed gives us a competitive advantage" over other cities' proposals.

Matheussen said he hoped the federal guidelines would be changed by the Obama administration and Congress to make projects like the waterfront proposal more likely to qualify.

The proposed Market Street trolleys probably would run at 10- to 15-minute intervals during peak times and at 30-minute intervals during off-peak times, according to preliminary estimates.

Yesterday's route selection was the latest step in a years-long process by the bistate DRPA on a Philadelphia waterfront transit proposal.

The plan is the Pennsylvania adjunct to a proposal for expanded commuter rail service in South Jersey.

Since the DRPA raises most of its revenue from bridge tolls from commuters in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and is governed by commissioners from the two states, the agency seeks to balance projects in both states.

The current price tag for the proposed 18-mile light-rail line from Camden to Glassboro is $1.3 billion.