It’s not much like the high-speed rail lines in Europe, Japan, and China, but locals still refer to it as the “PATCO Speedline” and have done so for the past 50 years. It travels its 14.2-mile route in 27 minutes, which averages slightly less than 32 miles per hour—not bad for local rail transit.
The Federal Transit Administration has declined to sanction an environmental study of a proposed $1.6 billion rail transit line linking Glassboro and Camden, both in New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, the latest setback to a service in flux for at least 18 years.
As I write this, it’s been just a week since I returned from the recent annual Rail Transit Conference sponsored the first week of June by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) in Philadelphia. It was an interesting event, with a lot I could report about, including my own presentation at the “Current Technology and Trends” session. But by far my most memorable experience was completing (or should I say “surviving”?) another of Tom Hickey’s legendary multimode, multi-system rail-hopping tours — this one sampling 14 different transit modes or lines in the Philadelphia region, operated by three different agencies, in the course of 10 hours.
Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm of its type to hit the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area in generations, had a devastating impact upon the region’s passenger rail systems, the busiest in the nation.
