North Philadelphia : Development News

In science fiction novels and books about the future, a few technologies are boilerplate: flying cars, meals in pill form and the ability to teleport instantly from place to place. National commuter rail company Amtrak took another step toward teleportation on Tuesday with its announcement of a high-speed rail vision plan. In Tuesday's news conference from University City's 30th Street Station, with Governor Ed Rendell on hand, Amtrak officials laid out their goal to create a line with average speeds well over 130 mph, saving passengers between one and two hours on average.

"Amtrak is putting forward a bold vision of a realistic and attainable future that can revolutionize transportation, travel patterns and economic development in the Northeast for generations," says Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman.

The plan, entitled A Vision for High-Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor, proposes a full build-out to be completed by 2040. Its construction, Amtrak says, would create more than 40,000 full-time jobs annually over a 25-year period, building new track, tunnels, bridges, stations, and other infrastructure. Predictably, the cost for such a project is high, $4.7 billion annually over 25 years. But Amtrak's feasibility studies peg the Northeast as a "mega-region" capable of drawing the type of rail traffic to make such an investment profitable. And with some premier legislative voices like New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg and Massachusetts' John Kerry already voicing their support, we may be teleporting out of 30th Street Station sooner than we think.

"Amtrak's High Speed Rail plan will create jobs, cut pollution and help us move towards a modern and reliable transportation system network in the Northeast," said Kerry in a recent statement. "As countries around the world continue to build out their transportation systems, we
cannot afford to fall further behind. This is an important down payment on the massive commitment necessary to bridge our infrastructure gap." 

Source: Joseph Boardman, Amtrak
Writer: John Steele

Philadelphia's Francisville neighborhood has a history of best-laid-plans gone awry. The neighborhood was originally called Vineyard after William Penn attempted and failed to start a wine vineyard there in 1699. As the settlement was designed to run along the early Indian trail Ridge Road (now Ridge Avenue) its streets run diagonally, creating an odd kink in Philadelphia's street grid. But as local activists prep Francisville for new development, they hope to rebuild its legacy as well as its infrastructure.

Their first order of business is The Vineyards, a 4,380-sq-ft, certified LEED Platinum housing development beginning construction this week. A clever play on that old William Penn story, The Vineyards brings three-family residences in the form of pre-fabricated housing units, each with 500-sq-ft, tenant-accessible green roofs. Officials hope housing will anchor the 20,000-sq-ft Francis Village Marketplace, a mixed-use development project at the center of Francisville's redevelopment plan.

"As a part of the Francisville community plan, the neighborhood set a series of priorities and at the top of that list of priorities was to bring back the Ridge Avenue Corridor," says 16th and Ridge Avenue Property Owners Association President Anthony Miles. "The number two priority was to bring back that corridor back green."

The project broke ground in June but was put on hold when officials learned that a documentary team was interested in producing a feature-length film based on the housing project. The documentary will follow construction officials and development teams as they prepare for the Vineyards, putting a green stamp on the Francisville legacy.

"We are actually shopping it around to PBS, Planet Green, NBC, CBS, and we'll be releasing webisodes of the documentary in January to get people excited," says Miles. "We are excited to show off what we believe is Pennsylvania's greenest and most technologically advanced homes."

Source: Anthony Miles, 16th and Ridge Avenue Property Owners Association
Writer: John Steele