Trail Criticism
Noted transit expert John Pawson, author of Delaware Valley Rails: The Railroads and Rail Transit Lines of the Philadelphia Area, questioned why SEPTA is heavily involved with rail trails instead of public transit. Pawson, who was head of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission Regional Citizens Committee until February 2011, stated that the creation of the Pennypack Trail on the Fox Chase/Newtown line is a "relatively cheap and quick process" but that "cheapness is its only advantage." Pawson added that "the trail as built essentially runs from nowhere to nowhere. A relatively high-grade piece of infrastructure has been diverted (temporarirly, one would hope) to a relatively low-grade purpose. It's like taking over an expressway to use for someone's driveway."
Pawson concluded by saying "there is no need to pull up any more track. This real creek-side Pennypack Trail through Montgomery County and the restoration of the rail line in that county and beyond could be considered as a single valid political issue. Various groups including rail and trail proponents and others should work together for a joint project."
Read more about this topic: Walnut Hill (SEPTA Station)
Famous quotes containing the words trail and/or criticism:
“We sank a foot deep in water and mud at every step, and sometimes up to our knees, and the trail was almost obliterated, being no more than that a musquash leaves in similar places, where he parts the floating sedge. In fact, it probably was a musquash trail in some places.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
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