Margaret-Orthodox: The Reconstruction Will take 3 Years.

[mixiboi]

Jeezbus. The last eastbound station to NOT get a ADA Makeover will be getting that in 2011.*


Margaret-Orthodox station rehabilitation project community meeting recap Community Meetings Events NEast Philly

The details of an estimated $25 million, three-year rehabilitation of the Margaret-Orthodox elevated-train SEPTA station began to emerge last night at the first community meeting held by the project management team.

The project, which focuses on bringing the second-to-last eastbound stop into American’s with Disabilities Act compliance, isn’t scheduled to begin until early 2011 and remains in the design phase. The funding for the project has not yet been secured.


The project will add three new elevators, new train and bus platforms and new sidewalks. The station, which will be generally repainted and repaired, will also get new lighting, a new communications system with security cameras and a new transformers enclosure to support the added power needed. Silva said $150,000 is being planned for an artistic element, which he said would be chosen with the help of neighborhood representatives.


The station will remain in service throughout the construction phase — though Silva warned of some temporary closures, delays, one-track usage or rerouting during nights and weekends — which will be accomplished by building a secondary entrance in the vacant lot at the southwest corner of Frankford Avenue and Arrott Street


The project would be completed before fall 2013.

So yeah, for those of us who live on the other side of that, time for planning alternative routing....















*Outside of Spring Garden. Which will be the last station to be ADA elevator lifted...

[desolate]

it's new.

It was the last station built before the ADA was passed to my knowledge.

[MarketStEl]

it's new.

It was the last station built before the ADA was passed to my knowledge.

Rebuilt in 1987 -- the first station on the Market-Frankford Line's elevated portion to get a total rebuild.

(By that time, all the stations in the original 1907 subway had gotten facelifts.)

[desolate]

Rebuilt in 1987 -- the first station on the Market-Frankford Line's elevated portion to get a total rebuild.

(By that time, all the stations in the original 1907 subway had gotten facelifts.)

23 year old stations need complete overhaul?

Septa wonders why the funding cries fall on deaf ears in Harrisburg.

[NE19149]

23 year old stations need complete overhaul?

Septa wonders why the funding cries fall on deaf ears in Harrisburg.

See, it's apparent that the 1987 "overhaul" was a waste of money.
It cost millions, only to be redone?

Odd, how the original structure lasted for SO many decades with minimal repairs though the years.
I guess back then, the pride and craftsmanship was worth much more, considering the length of time it held up.

Todays work and its results make me laugh.
SEPTA, you should be ashamed of yourself.

[MarketStEl]

First: I agree that it does seem odd that SEPTA would choose to rebuild a station that it rebuilt only 23 years ago. But there is a reason for it. Two of them, in fact.

One is called the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1991, four years after SEPTA rebuilt Margaret-Orthodox station. The other is a lawsuit filed in the early 1980s called Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. The lawsuit -- which SEPTA settled right around the time it rebuilt Margaret-Orthodox -- is one of the events that contributed to the writing and passage of the ADA.

All those curb cuts and wheelchair ramps you now see wherever you go are the fruits of the ADA. Advocates for the disabled had agitated for many years for the removal of barriers to mobility for those without full use of their arms or legs -- and the design of the Washington Metro, whose first segment opened in 1976, reflects the success these advocates had in raising the consciousness of engineers, architects and designers to ways in which the built environment needlessly prevents disabled individuals from being able to participate -- and support themselves -- fully in American life.

Somehow, news of this social advance never made it to SEPTA's engineering department. As the agency remodeled stations through the 1970s and 1980s, it did not make changes that would improve access for the disabled, even though representatives of groups serving them pointed out how SEPTA could do this without much difficulty. This is what triggered the lawsuit that became EPVA v. SEPTA. This settlement, BTW, not the ADA, governs what SEPTA is supposed to do regarding making the system accessible.

With the completion of the Market Street El rebuild, every elevated station on the Market-Frankford Line is now fully accessible -- except for Margaret-Orthodox. And M-O (Arrott Terminal) is a "major transfer facility", which both the lawsuit and the ADA stipulate must be fully accessible. This, not the station's physical condition -- it's still in very good shape -- is what's triggering the reconstruction project.

As it stands now, every Market-Frankford Line station outside the subway save two -- Spring Garden and the aforementioned M-O -- is accessible, as are four of the nine subway stations. Unfortunately, one of the five that are not is 15th Street/City Hall -- which is one of those "major transfer facilities" the ADA says must be fully accessible. Making the MFL 15th Street station itself accessible is easy. What's not is making City Hall, and the transfer passages between the two stations, accessible. The problem with City Hall -- as I explained in this Examiner article last summer -- is that there's this enormous, heavy pile of masonry sitting on top of the station, and that pile of masonry must continue to be supported while SEPTA engineers try to drop four elevators under it onto platforms that -- thanks to those thick walls that hold up City Hall -- are too narrow for the traffic they handle as it is.

Waste of money? Relative to some other perhaps more pressing projects, yes. In terms of what SEPTA agreed to do when it settled that lawsuit, though, no.

BTW, NE19149: By the time the Frankford Elevated Reconstruction Project began in 1992 or thereabouts, many of the stations on the Frankford El had deteriorated badly, for they received almost no preventive maintenance for much of the 20-30 years prior to that. You saw broken windows in headhouses, platform canopies with huge holes in them, and other very visible signs of decay all up and down the line. I'd say the quality of construction on SEPTA today is no worse than it was when the City built the El in 1915-22 -- the problem with those expansion joints notwithstanding. It's the quality of maintenance that makes the difference.

[ArcticSplash]

Margaret has to be one of the oddest EL stations... kinda like the old 56th street station was a strange design where you felt like you were in a cage and had the odd escalator configuration for the crossovers.

That big yet very narrow up-only escalator on the fare-control side is strange, in that it only goes one direction and there's no escalator to its side offering the other direction.

[mixiboi]

Because old people can go down fine, its the up that they have issue with.

[mixiboi]

I haven't been over to M-O in years...did this even start?

[MarketStEl]

Nope. Haven't even heard of an RFP going out.

And since SEPTA's capital budget has been stripped down to only the need-to-do-this-or-things-fall-apart stuff (save for NPT, which they're implementing on the installment plan), I doubt we will see any work on this station soon.

Looking back through this thread, I see someone wondering why there is only an up escalator at this station. I challenge everyone here to find me a SEPTA station not on the Regional Rail network that has a down escalator.

--Sandy, now a regular user of this station

[Jtom]

Nope. Haven't even heard of an RFP going out.

And since SEPTA's capital budget has been stripped down to only the need-to-do-this-or-things-fall-apart stuff (save for NPT, which they're implementing on the installment plan), I doubt we will see any work on this station soon.

Looking back through this thread, I see someone wondering why there is only an up escalator at this station. I challenge everyone here to find me a SEPTA station not on the Regional Rail network that has a down escalator.

--Sandy, now a regular user of this station

The up escalator at Margaret-Orthodox doesn't work half the time. There are guys fixing that escalator like every other day.

Overall, the station is in fine condition, unless you are disabled.