The 34th Street Station and the area in between the Station and HUP (34th Street of course) is actually quite safe. The most dangerous part would be the construction of those expensive condos....lotsa street crossings to contend with.

You could take the Regional Rail from University City if you wanted to transfer at Market East or from a RR station by you.

The 37th Street subway-surface station is just a pain. Weird layout and one of the entrances is closed. Also doesn't see the same amount of foot traffic. Although still safe. For comparison I think the first "sketchy" station is 46th and that's because of the surroundings. 33rd Street Subway Surface station is safe and is almost as close as 34th (as the crow flies along the nice brick path across Hill Field)

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Thank you for the info!

Tonight as I sat in my living room around 8:30pm, a couple, mid-forties, knocked furiously at my front door. When I answered, they told me they wanted to pretend they lived here so as to avoid an ugly situation. Apparently their car had broken down around 46th and Pine. They were walking home to around 48th and Baltimore, when they noticed two black men in hooded sweat shirts following them. As they turned here and there through the neighborhood to try and shake the two, they noticed some "scouts", younger boys also in black hoodies, on bikes riding past them and presumably updating the ground crew of the location of the "targets". I called the police and gave my address while the couple remained on my porch.

To the credit of PPD, the block was awash with speeding cruisers within 5 minutes. After watching them circle a couple of times, and also witnessing one of the bike scouts swing by again, we flagged a cruiser down. He informed us of a robbery at gun point at 46th & larchwood (2 blocks away) about 5 - 10 minutes earlier (hence the prompt response to my call). He collected a few detailes from us, and the two strangers (now neighbors, nice folks!) and gave them a lift home. I continue to hear sirens and see cruisers rushing around the neighborhood tonight as I write this. Mind you this is f---ing 8:45 on a sunday night.

So, aside from the update, my questions is this: In light of the article in this mornings Inky, does anybody fear that an increased security and police presence on and around the campus will simply drive these f---ing thugs further west, into our quiet, residential neighborhood?

My fear is yes, that these bastard gangsters, now kicked out of college-land, will continue their exploits, only now on the regular neighborhood folks who live beyond the blanket of Penn police. My personal feeling is that these hoods do not rob for money, but because they are border, misdirected, unparented, and otherwise not much more evolved than pond scum. So, they don't really care who the target is. All the better if its a wealthy Ivy kid, but if the heat is on, they are just as satisfied to stalk and terrify a middle aged couple who have lived in this neighborhood for 20 years. Pisses me off.

Anyway, I am interested to know, from those of you out here in the 45th through 50th section of Spruce Hill / Cedar Park, if you think the "uptick" in crime could be forced into our front yards due to increased attention being paid to our immediate East?

In any case, sorry for the extremely long post, had to get it all in there. Watch out after dark everyone.
- pjm49th

Sorry to inform you, but there's already been an uptick in crime in your area. I got robbed near 46th & Baltimore a couple months ago and have heard of numerous other robberies in that general area. If anything, the crime wave was spreading from Spruce Hill into the Penn campus area, so you have the university to thank for the crime wave being stopped (assuming that happens, which I hope it does) rather than for one being started.

I wish I knew what was causing all this all of a sudden. Seems like the crime wave in Fairmount subsided somewhat, only to have this area get targetted. Curiously, if you look at phillycrime.org, most of the robberies appear to have an epicenter, of sorts, at 46th and Baltimore. You can almost draw a fairly small circle around that intersection and have most of the crimes fall inside it.

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I'm not saying its new, my question was more about compression. We haven't been here that long, but talking with other neighbors on my extremely friendly and quiet block, there hasn't been trouble here in a long time. So I guess when they (of the 20+ year vintage) tell me they notice things swinging up i tend to take them at their word.

My concern, and the difference, is that around the edge of campus, Penn police can interceed. Out here...?

- pjm49th

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I'll say it again - the upswing in crime is a citywide phenomenon, not just limited to one neighborhood. It matters the most when it's your own neighborhood, sure, but I think we all collectively need to be asking some hard questions about why things have gotten worse. What is the Philly PD doing - or not doing - that might help to account for the change? Or is it a result of other factors? I haven't got any answers, but the pattern has been abundantly clear all year, and not just in the murder rate, which is higher than it's been in years.

Those of us who have invested our money & energy here really need to be asking these questions, though, because a perception that Philadelphia is sliding back into the bad old days of '80s is likely to kill our much-vaunted "renaissance."

I think at least part of the answer is the people our mayor has surrounded himself with. Many of them appear to have been selected more for their political standing than any skill or experience that might make them good candidates for the position in question.

The Philly PD, in general, is basically doing nothing other than responding to 911 calls and chasing robbers... at least as far as I can tell.

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Your representatives on Philadelphia's City Council are at odds with our new mayor over whether many reforms he has proposed should become law. Please write to them and tell them what your priorities are.

Indict State Senator Vince Fumo into The Crooked Pol Hall of Fame.

PPD is ok. I do wish they'd arrest more people though... I remember reading an article about Johnson and him saying he'd like their arrest numbers to go down because the processing and such takes the officers off the street and clogs the jails. That wasn't his point but that was what I got from the point he was trying to make.

And the 911 system for this city is sheer lunacy. We need another number for non-emergencies to free cops from responding to things like me having to call 911 for PPD to write someone a ticket for parking in my driveway.

Stepped up traffic enforcement wouldn't hurt either. They could pick up a lot of people they are looking for on outstanding warrants for traffic violations and such.

I have to call the cops often for nuisance crap (in the summer) and end up talking with them and I know they are aware of these problems but there is not much they can do.

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Elbow Room
----James Alan McPherson

Honestly Niel, I kinda expected an uptick soon as I found out PGW was seeking the ability to shut off people in the winter. Then you figure the high cost of heating oil (over 2 bucks a gallon) and it makes for some very desperate folk who will do a lot not to be cold this winter.

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I went to the territory to renew my supply of stories.

Elbow Room
----James Alan McPherson

But at least around Penn the crime perp description is depressingly
the same... over and over and over again: young black male.

I seriously don't think PGW cut-offs or gas prices are the reason
for it.