The problem is that people like Gov. Rendell, Mayor Nutter and Sen. Arlen Specter can't bear to leave the planning to the planners. They've already endorsed a route for a new Market Street trolley to the waterfront without bothering to wait for the paid experts to study the matter.
Don't get me wrong.
Some sort of new transit line would do the Delaware good. PennPraxis, which conducted an initial waterfront study in 2007, envisioned a north-south trolley along Columbus Boulevard. The problem is the proposed Market Street link. Who's to say the master planner won't find a better way to tie the river line into Center City's transit network?
Given Rendell's obsession with riverfront gambling, it should come as no surprise that the proposed route is essentially a Streetcar to the Slots - a door-to-door connection between the Convention Center and the two planned casinos that is largely geared to tourists. The trolley would run down the middle of Market Street before turning onto Columbus Boulevard to serve the waterfront.
The $500 million project is still a gleam in the governor's eye, unfunded and unengineered. It's hard to believe the route could ever qualify for federal funding because the Market Street portion cannibalizes from two perfectly good underground services, the Market-Frankford and Subway-Surface lines. The feds hate wasting scarce transit dollars on duplication.
If you accept the notion that transportation is the key determinant of urban form, the mere act of drawing a trolley line on a map can't help but shape the master plan's conclusions, undermining the whole exercise. The city's own transportation planner, Anthony Santaniello, testified against the half-baked scheme.
