Philadelphia's Painful Trolley Problem

I forgot to mention Roz actually talked about one of the routes in particular before if you want more info on what Philly has lost. https://youtu.be/zcxezjtw1Ak

The way to solve "cars in the way of trolleys" is to tow them away and make people pay fines to get them back. After people understand that's what happens when you block them they'll get the message pretty fast.

I remember when SEPTA trolleys cost 5 cents to ride on. Favorite SEPTA story from those days: A man got on the trolley and gave the driver a $20 bill, saying “I’m sorry, I don’t have a nickel.” The driver answered; “That’s fine; in a minute you’re going to have 399 of them!”

It does really break my heart seeing trolly lines being paved over slowly with time, especially in south philly

Well, as a philosophy student I‘ve heard of worse trolley problems

alan as a south philly resident and someone who rides the trolleys everyday, you really hit the nail on the head with this video. its incredibly frustrating to see other cities swoon over light rail and streetcars and race to build them, while septa just lets our unused tracks rot away, ESPECIALLY when the tracks are grade separated (like the 56). what i wish septa would look into and that no one talks about is converting more west philly bus lines to trolley...the tunnel definitely has the capacity because they did this in the past and this would legitimately speed people's rides to center city vs all surface streets

In before Europeans saying "Why don't you call them TRAMS?!?" 😆 To reactivate a disused trolley line in the US, they'd probably have to do a 30-year long EIS and economic-impact study after which NIMBYs would scuttle it anyway after they found out they'd lose a few parking spaces here or there.

Trolleybusses are so great! They are environmentally friendly as they don't require batteries or a combustion engine. recently I was filming at the largest trolleybus network of west europe which is in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Great video Alan!

Philadelphia: Switches to trolleybuses to get around parked cars that are in the way. Amsterdam: Removes the parking spaces that are in the way.

It would be interesting to see SEPTA run the old K-car trolleys up in Chestnut Hill once they complete (if they complete) the modernization project. My dad thinks that those are the original trolley tracks, would probably throw and old man fit if he found out they were renovated and never used.

As someone who uses the trolley in west philly everyday to get to work, I’m so excited for the renovations soon! The trolley cars are not great and we need so much more space. I don’t want to deal with 3 trolleys passing by my stop because they were too full 😭

In Romania, if you park on any tram tracks, you get a ticket from the police and a lot of meat in your fridge from the travelers. And if the police gets to lift your car, depending on how important that line is, you can also make it to the local news in a negative way. The worst problem we have in Bucharest are drivers that go on the tram line (something which is also forbidden at a national level, but largely ignored) which is why we started separating the tram tracks with fences to the rest of the road. This is really useful on large boulevards as it turns the tram lines into an effective emergency lane for ambulances to go through as well. They even added some bus lanes through, though this feels weird and is quite problematic when two buses going opposite direction meet in a fenced area. Unfortunately, tram systems in Romania have been quite neglected in the last 30 years, with 2 cities (Brașov and Constanța) getting rid of them completely, and another one (Botoșani) having it in tatters. There are cities, however, such as Cluj or Ploiești which have rebuilt their system from scratch, with Reșița doing the same at the time I post this comment. In Bucharest the system is both old, massive and complex, and attracts a lot of riders, despite the bad press caused by the old rolling stock (long story-short: the most widely used tram model is the V3A series, which was designed as a cheap communist copycat of a west-german tram and improved upon until today; the tram does not have an inch of low floor, except the models produced after 2000s, they are noisy, swing sideways a lot and do not offer too much to the travelers). Many important lines were completely rebuilt in the last 2 decades, but there are still 1/3 of the lines that need urgent replacement. Despite that, however, and the pressure from some politicians to do away with it, one cannot imagine Bucharest without the tram system. The bus&trolleys do not have dedicated lanes, and although we have a metro system, it does not reach every point of the city, is expensive to build and takes a lot of time and nerves of the residents, as they are usually built underground (see the M5 line which took 9 years to build a chunk of it, although they promised to build it in 3 years). So there is definitely a use-case for the tram here, even in the most "American" country in Europe (sorry, no offense).

We rebuilt the Pyongyang streetcar system as the original system got significant destruction during the war, with the first line opening in 1991 as the result of overcrowding on trolleybuses. There are currently four lines, operating on both sides of the Taedong but only one actually crosses it, Line 3. Line 1 uses to cross it but it was shortened to Pyongyang railway station with points east replaced with a trolleybus. Three of the lines uses trams either made in the former Czechslovakia by Tatra or in-house, while the Kumsusan shuttle line which goes to the Kumsusan mausoleum of my father and grandpa from Samhung on the Pyongyang Metro (this service has replaced the Kwangmyong metro station that's been closed since 1995 due to the site being home to the mausoleum), uses a VBZ Be 4/4 from Zurich.

I could be wrong but when I moved to Philly in 1975 there were trolleys running up and down many of the north-south numbered streets all throughout Center City. I recall at the time being told that Philly had the distinction of having the most still-operating trolley routes of any city in America. Then I saw as, one by one, they were either paved over, tracks ripped up, or left partially in place not used anymore. At some point there was talk of removing the asphalt to expose the tracks again, or rehab existing rail, or lay new ones, which I believe did happen in places. I left in 2011 and, as you mentioned, cities all over are building trolleys where none existed. What a missed opportunity.

Be glad Philly's tracks and wires still exist. Quite alot of places arn't as lucky to only have them abandoned....

Philadelphia "at least it ain't Columbus", Pennsylvania

This just reminded me of the fact that when I lived in Jersey City, there's this North Hudson Health Center right across from the Supremo supermarket and I always hated going in there because it was always packed and had a long wait eating out of my day. Later on, I learned that the building where the doctor's office is now was once a trolley house as part of the North Hudson County Railway/Public Service streetcar system, and streetcars went from Palisade Ave to either go down an elevated trestle or take a funicular wagon lift to get to Hoboken. And that made me hate it more for using the space for a doctor's office instead of trolleys. Sure, Hudson County learned from getting rid of its trolleys by building the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, but it's not the same.

My Landscape Architecture studio at Temple did a project on Temple's Main Campus and someone from OLIN told us that there are old streetcar tracks under 12th street that are unused and there are no plans to use them. Because of laws and codes changing, if they were to be removed, they could never be put back in, so the city insists they be left there, JUST in case. I'd hope to see these surface again.

Trams in Berlin or Prague are awesome, fast, cheap and everywhere, non of my friends even has a car anymore .... it just has to be maintained like everything ...

Very interresting, yet very frustrating video. I really appreciate all the work you put into you videos. All are really high quality. Thank you.