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SEPTA: Budget Crimps R7 Plans
By PATRICK COBBS
Staff Writer
The Germantown Community Connection last week hosted SEPTA representatives at First Presbyterian Church in Germantown for an update on maintenance and repair work scheduled to begin on the R7 train stations in May, but the update quickly became a debate about how best to fix up those stations once and for all, with a focus on Wister and Germantown stations.
“I think there needs to be a little vision of how to put the stations together to be more safe,” said Saadiq Jabbar Garner.
Most at the meeting seemed to agree, and they added other specific requests for the R7. These included better SEPTA police presence, security cameras at the stations, more efficient electronic communication for train announcements, better cleanup or prevention of trash dumping, better landscaping, and better lighting in and around the stations, especially at Wister.
In all, SEPTA will be directing $1.76 million in stimulus dollars to the R7 for maintenance and cleanup work. About $870,000 of that will go to Germantown and Wister stations because they are in the most need of repair, and $897,000 will go to the rest of the R7 stations.
Senior Project Manager Thomas Carl of SEPTA didn’t oppose any of the residents’ requests but he did say that while some suggested improvements, like lighting upgrades, could be done with relative ease by SEPTA, others, like cameras, require larger systemic efforts that are not likely to occur anytime soon. Most big picture items will not fall in the scope of the current job, according to Carl. Those kinds of things will have to come sometime in the future.
“We look at this as baby steps progressing toward the final goal of what SEPTA and the community wants,” Carl said of the upcoming R7 work.
This is because, with the exception of the $191 million SEPTA was awarded in Federal Stimulus funds, the authority is financially over a barrel. And those funds for the most part cannot go toward capital improvements. Instead they are meant for addressing deferred maintenance and repairs.
Most of the discussion at the meeting focused on Wister Station, which is physically in a very isolated location. Several at the meeting wanted to see a total security and safety oriented overhaul at that station, which they hoped would include increased lighting not only on the station grounds, but on the long approach to the station as well.
Last year, in a community meeting held at LaSalle University, SEPTA discussed a total renovation for Wister Station. LaSalle expressed interest in remaking the station as its gateway to the rest of the city. In addition, the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corporation last year completed a development plan for the neighborhoods surrounding Wister Station.
But even at that 2009 meeting the big improvements planned for Wister were set on the far horizon. Now SEPTA seems to be in even worse financial shape and so anything beyond the needed maintenance and repairs that will start in May with this contract is a much bigger “if.”
“We would like to see that station totally redone but at this time the money’s not there to do it,” said Carl.
SEPTA’s financial straits is rooted in political problems at the federal and state level, according to Robert Lund, SEPTA’s senior director of capital construction. Because of the battle over healthcare reform in Washington, the U.S. Congress has not passed a new federal transportation bill so there are no federal funds available for capital improvement. And at the state level, thanks to a political impasse over Act 44, which calls for a permanent increase in state funding to SEPTA and other transit authorities, and road and bridge maintenance, there is no state money for capital improvement either.
This combination has delayed the long-planned $30 million total renovation of Wayne Junction Station into the not-yet-defined future.
So, for community requests that go beyond the scope of the R7 spruce-up, Lund said, the best bet is for local residents to organize a bottom-up base of solid and focused community support – essentially to help SEPTA deal with all the challenges and headaches of development.
“It’s something that we would love to implement but we can’t do it alone,” said Lund of the larger conceptual plan for Wister. “We have to work with the city and work with the community.”
The model that works, Lund and Carl said, is to organize, get local politicians fully on board, get other local institutions on board, and stay focused on the station you want to improve.
Representatives from the offices of City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller (D., 8th) and State Representative John Myers (D., 201st) pledged their support for moving any wider projects forward on the R7 stations, and for help with smaller scale improvements like SEPTA’s plan to install new station signs for Wister on Belfield Avenue.
