Fortunately for Portland, much of their growth came several decades after the rest of us learned about suburban sprawl the hard way. Still, many of Portland's innovations could easily be retrofit into older cities like Philadelphia. If you've ever been to Portland, it's obvious that it really is a national model of how cities should work. I know I've raved about the time I lived there on this site a number of times. However the focus of their genius often lands on transportation and urban design, whereas most of Portland's ability to apply these successful models is because they have an efficiently administered and minimally corrupt government. They also don't have the historic poverty and institutionalized crime that older East Coast cities have inherited. And a huge benefit Portland has with regard to urban development is the absence of an intimidating and counterproductive union presence looming over every project.

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The idealistic are no longer concerned with influencing public opinion and creating a free world of responsible and ethical social choices, but rather imposing opinion through legislation, mandating these ethics, and outlawing choice in what the loudest sample finds offensive.

Ban the Bans. It's a slippery slope between Idealism and Fascism.

The Pennsylvania Railroad bridge is between the Columbia Railroad bridge and the Girard Avenue bridge. All three cross the Schuylkill River.

how woudl PATCO use the PRR bridge?

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"You down wit OPM?"
Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"

The zoo doesn't by itself, but the tens-of-thousands of us on the West side of North Philly sure would appreciate it! Fairmount, Brewerytown, Strawberry Mansion, up to Wayne Junction in later phases, perhaps. Buses could be rerouted to feed it from Parkside, etc.

New tunnels beyond the City Branch wouldn't be necessary if you want to serve the zoo and the park...the line could go up along the freight tracks to Girard, where a station existed long ago...then people could just WALK across the bridge and be right there.

Fairmount, Brewerytown, Strawberry Mansion and Wayne Junction are all located east of the river.

We agree. Big ups for strong land use controls and sensible zoning!

Not saying it can't work independently, but when we have such few subway systems as it is, it seems like a waste of resources to have such overlap. NY doesn't have the lack of subways that Philly does.

It was just one of those cooky ideas to throw out that seem neat on paper but probably never seriously looked at.

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I'd make sense but this is the big difference between the west and the east.

To many kings around here. NJ and PA.. heck look at the dredging fiasco.

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Well yeah that is part of it. You have too may ego and power issues. You tend to not have anyone that says "sure, I will give up some influence to make a project better".

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I don't know what the rules are about commuter rail and subway sharing the same ROW, or if they even have the same gage, but either PATCO can use subway cars to service the zoo, or they can use commuter rail cars to service the zoo, or maybe they can use a hybrid with retractable apparati for the third rail / catenary. I believe that at the zoo there is unused right of way which would allow for dedicated tracks for the zoo station. Maybe, since light rail is so sexy nowadays, there could be enough track to allow for dedicated light rail right of way. I believe that because subway cars and commuter rail cars are considered to be heavy rail, they can share tracks with both each other and also freight.

I recently attended a forum on Urban Design at a YIP event, where Harris Steinberg presented, and one of his slides was a cartoon of a snake showing each of the many overlapping and overreaching entities that have a say on the waterfront development process. There are definitely too many kings/princes/pricks in this city and region.

As to the original topic of this post, I'd like to see corporate/residential/institutional development along the waterfront alongside development of a light-rail or subway, and I'm not altogether opposed to 1 or 2 casinos, just not the behemoth projects that the idiots in state government are trying to impose on Philly's waterfront. I disagree with an earlier poster who thought the course of the light-rail line was to extract money from the casinos; rather it's to make their investment's more valuable and to try to appease the nearby neighborhoods. It won't be that useful for commuters unless it actually improves connectivity to the rest of the system via the SSL under Market, rather than taking a circuitous route to the edge of the highway/bridge at Franklin Sq. for an awkward transfer.