Germantown Shortchanged in

Rail Station Restoration Work 

by Jim Foster

Editor/Publisher

In some ways Northwest Philadelphia is fortunate when it comes to public transit. There are two commuter rail lines that leave from the same center city terminals and arrive only one block from each other in Chestnut Hill. In fact, they cross each other twice getting there. The lines are reminders of the era when two railroads competed for the Northwest’s rail  business and they exist today as the Chestnut Hill East and the Chestnut Hill West lines.

All three on the east lines have been under continuous upgrade since late 2009 or have had significant federal dollars committed to a major rebuild in the case of the just-announced Wayne Junction revitalization project. Germantown and Wister stations have seen major improvements in platforms, lighting parking and signage.  SEPTA is currently rebuilding the track system on the east line as well.

A combination of community effort and a commitment on SEPTA’s part have begun a major effort to rebuild the infrastructure at Tulpehocken, long ago closed and neglected.

Major public dollars were committed to two stations on the West Line (formerly R8) and are dramatically apparent on the restoration and  reconstruction of two Victorian stations at Queen Lane and Allen Lane. SEPTA reported that total investment between state, federal, and general maintenance dollars at these two will likely exceed $15 million dollars. 80 percent came as federal, 15 percent State and five percent, as claimed by SEPTA officials.

All the other stations in Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill never fell into the disrepair evident at the ones in Germantown, and even Queen Lane and Allen Lane did not need all that much work, but they were restored to their antique splendor “as long as the money was there anyway,” Germantown Newspapers was told.

Then there is the Chelten Avenue station. There is some evidence of fairly recent superficial paint work, but this uninviting subterranean tomb of a station has not had work of any consequence since 1958  and that was only the construction of the rudimentary shoe-box ticket office on the inbound side that was erected when the original free-standing ground level station on the corner of Chelten and Pulaski was torn down.

The “ticket office” is miniscule, has no benches and the bathroom is marked “out of order.”  Crumbling concrete and obvious temporary patchwork are all too obvious under newer paint and what seem to be low-cost replacement light fixtures that hardly remedy the dungeon feeling Chelten Avenue provides.

There is the matter of handicapped access. While a significant portion of the money just spent at Allen Lane went to make this station — with far less use completely handicapped accessible, — neither station on the lines serving central Germantown can be used by a person with a handicap. The East Station (built in 1933) is high above ground level and the West (built 1918) way below with neither having had any capital improvements to the structure themselves since construction, only maintenance.

While $6 million has been spent on the next station down the line at Queen Lane and $9 million a few stops up at Allen Lane, there were no expenditures spent on capital improvements in Germantown for 50 years or more.

Queen Lane serves adjacent East Falls, an upscale neighborhood. Allen Lane is in West Mt. Airy, another like neighborhood.

Chelten Avenue is in Germantown, a community politicians and profiteers have been raiding for years, leaving only scraps.  The community’s most recent experience is when  the politically-subsidized supermarket developer in the area reneged on a 2006 commitment to build a quality grocery complex right next to this train station. When the community turned out in force recently and asked the developer to consider working with the city and SEPTA to make this site a combination 21st Century transit and commercial center, the answer was an emphatic “no consideration will be given to anything except incremental modifications”

The ridership statistics for the Chestnut Hill West line bear noting.  Of the eight stations between the terminals on this line, Chelten Avenue is the third busiest in the number of boardings and departures, and is only third after Carpenter Lane. Queen Lane is the busiest. But Chelten Avenue gets nothing despite heavy usage.

It’s who uses it that counts. If Chelten Avenue was as inviting as Queen Lane or Allen Lane, it would be the busiest station on that line. Population density around the location is very high and, with new development, is increasing. City planners and developers apparently cannot see what is right before their eyes. Maybe they won’t look because all those campaign contributions from the benefactors of the public money and cheap construction are blurring their vision.

 

The mayor and many politicians up the ladder to Harrisburg and Washington are silent on the matter, despite overwhelming demand from the community that it be treated with balance and fairness when planning takes place and public money is being spent.

 

Orwell said it best: “All of the animals on the farm are equal, but some of the animals are more equal.”