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Originally Posted by eldondre
are we? we're in a better position than 1992 in some ways, but we're right back there. Some areas improved but neighborhoods I used to visit friends in in the early 90's have gone from stable to wasteland. Jobs are down, the population is down...is this what a rennaisance looks like?
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Well, the slope of the population loss curve has steadily gotten shallower census by census, and year after year in the estimates, since 1970. I haven't looked at the immigration figures from abroad, but we're certainly getting more of them now than we had in years past, and most of the other older cities that have gained population have done so largely through immigration from abroad. I suspect we may even find that the loss curve flattens out and turns upward by the end of the decade. (I thought it did so from 2007 to 2008, but see no Census Bureau estimates for last year at the city level, contrary to statements I have made on these forums recently.) From 2006 to 2007, and since the 2000 census, Pittsburgh also lost residents at a greater rate than Philadelphia had.
I'm sure that some neighborhoods you're familiar with have gone downhill. In the meantime, the stretch of the Italian Market below Washington Avenue, which was all but dead five years ago, has come back to life thanks to the Mexican immigrants who have settled in the vicinity. Washington Avenue, which was pretty desolate a decade ago, is anything but that now, and the Asian and Mexican businesses along that street that cater to new Philadelphians have been among the major contributors to the street's improvement. The area now called "Southwest Center City" looks better now than it did in 2000, and it looked better in 2000 than it did a decade earlier. I think we could plausibly refer to the state of Philadelphia today as a Tale of Two Cities -- and others have. I see no evidence of the second city in Pittsburgh: is any part of that city gaining residents? That's why I call the press about Pittsburgh hype: there are at least parts of this city that have indeed grown and improved of late.
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maybe so, which makes our inability to move ahead on projects inexcusable.
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The Convention Center expansion is IIRC the biggest public works project currently under way in the state. My guess is that the Gov and the local officials shot their wad on getting that under way and need to recharge their batteries before attempting any other similarly sized project here.
Were you referring to my entire previous point or just the small piece of it you quoted?
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Originally Posted by desolate
So you need to make sure you can get people to this new line who live withing driving range of the destination and the line and that the line IS faster than driving there.
Where this happens you have the highest use like the Main Line and areas along the El or the the RRs or Patco.
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A rail line need not be faster than a comparable drive for people to ride it, but it must be time-competitive. The drive from Yardley to Center City via I-95 even at rush hour is less than the 55 minutes the train takes to get from Yardley to Market East, yet the parking lot at Yardley fills with cars every weekday morning. My guess is that all those riders opt for the train after factoring in total trip time plus expense of parking in the city plus the possibility of delays or slowdowns.