ABSTRACT

Figure 1: Market East Station. Photo courtesy of Kyriakodis (2014)

PHILADELPHIAS CENTER CITY

COMMUTER CONNECTION
An Examination of the Political and Technical Forces Behind an
American Transportation Project

The tunnel that links the two sides of

SEPTAs Regional Rail system
underneath Center City Philadelphia is
one of the nations most advanced
pieces of public transit infrastructure,
but it has a long and conflicted history.
This paper examines the political
aspects of that history and attempts to
assess the factors that brought the
tunnel to completion, arguing that
while the tunnels origins lie in
economic and land-use planning, it
was ultimately built because of
political ambition and patronage, and
that throughout its history, the
tunnels transportation benefits in fact
went unrecognized by proponents and
critics alike.

Sandy Johnston
APLN 543

Contents
Table of Figures ............................................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction: Philadelphias Center City Commuter Connection, a Political Creature................................. 2
Center City Before the Tunnel ...................................................................................................................... 3
Origins of the Tunnel Idea............................................................................................................................. 4
Federal Legislative Background .................................................................................................................... 9
Regional Transit: The History of SEPTA ....................................................................................................... 14
The Transformative Reactionary: the Mayoralty of Frank Rizzo ................................................................ 18
Triumph of the Tunnel: Rizzo, Ford, and Coleman ..................................................................................... 24
Opposition to the Project and the Breakdown of the Philadelphia Transit System ................................... 28
The Tunnel and the Potential for a Transformative Rapid-Transit System ................................................ 30
Conclusion, Evaluations, and Lessons Learned ........................................................................................... 33
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................... 36

Table of Figures
Figure 1: Market East Station. Photo courtesy of Kyriakodis (2014) ............................................................ 0
Figure 2: The "Chinese Wall", from hiddencityphila.org .............................................................................. 4
Figure 3: Center City Philadelphia in 1949, via USGS.................................................................................... 5
Figure 4: Route of the Tunnel, from Kozel (n.d.) .......................................................................................... 8
Figure 5: SEPTA Regional Rail and Rapid-Transit Lines, 1980. (From DeGraw 1994) ................................. 17
Figure 6: Mayor Wilson Goode and Other Dignitaries at the Opening Ceremony for the Tunnel, via
Kyriakodis 2014 ........................................................................................................................................... 30

Introduction: Philadelphias Center City Commuter Connection, a

Political Creature
Philadelphias Center City Commuter Connection project is a fascinating example of
American planning and infrastructure systems and the political, economic, and social processes
behind them. Opened in 1984, the projecta tunnel linking two historically separate sections of
Philadelphias commuter rail systemwas remarkable both for being opened more or less ontime and under-budget (a rarity in American infrastructure projects) and for being an unusual
showcase for a city and transit system grappling with decline and disinvestment. How did
Philadelphia, known for being historically a conservative, slow-moving, old-fashioned city,
manage to bring about a successful, and even innovative and industry-leading, project during a
hostile climate of increasing inflation and extended transportation project delays? (Gaudet 1985,
p. 1)
This paper will examine the political and planning processes that brought the Commuter
Tunnel to fruition, focusing on three separate, but interacting elements: the local planning and
politics of Philadelphia, the dynamics of the federal funding processes that made the tunnel
possible, and the creation of SEPTA, the Philadelphia regions transit operator. Though since its
opening transit advocates and developers have valorized the tunnel and held it responsible for the
revival of Center City (as the core of Philadelphia is known), the commuter tunnel was at many
points during conception and execution not so much beholden to high principles of planning as
to the down-and-dirty patronage- and pork-laden local and federal politics of the day. Like many
planning projects, then, the Center City Commuter Connection as currently composed stands as a
product of both high-minded, principled planning and messy political horse-tradinga testament
to long-term thinking, dreams deferred, and unintended consequences negative and positive.
2

Center City Before the Tunnel

Downtown Philadelphia was, for much of the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries,
served by two separate, and often competing, commuter rail systems owned by private
companies. The famed Pennsylvania Railroad (or, to the public, the Pennsy) operated a system
fanning out mainly to the citys south, west, and northwest, while the Philadelphia & Reading
(popularly known, and commemorated on the Monopoly board, as the Reading) owned lines
radiating to the citys north and northeast. Though the two systems competed in some areas (both
had lines to the city neighborhood of Chestnut Hill and both had lines to Atlantic City and the
New Jersey shoreline), they terminated in separate downtown terminals at opposite ends of
Market Street, the Pennsylvania on the western end and the Reading on the east. Both roads built
imposing terminals, with the Pennsy erecting first the Broad Street Station and later the imposing
Art Deco edifice known today as Suburban Station, and the Reading putting up the remarkable
Reading Terminal, which survives today as an enclosed, tourist-oriented market. Philadelphias
suburban routes are of some vintage, having been opened as far back as the 1830s, when Pennsy
predecessor Philadelphia & Columbia opened a route along the states former Main Line of
Public Works, a moniker that has stuck to Philadelphias wealthy northwest suburbs to this day.
(DeGraw 1994, p. 107) Both the Pennsy and the Reading had electrified most of their suburban
lines by the 1930s, making Philadelphias commuter system one of the most technologically
advanced in the country. (ibid)

Technologically advanced the suburban systems might have been, but they still had a
grinding impact on Center City. Both systems entered the downtown area on elevated viaducts
that disrupted Philadelphias fine-grained grid and brought noise, soot, darkness, and pollution to
the streets. The Pennsylvanias entrance to Center City from the west was known as the Chinese
Wall for its size and magnificence (though the latter might not be the right word). Running
along Philadelphias central east-west artery, Market Street, the
Chinese Wall cut the two sides of Center City off from each
other in dramatic fashion. Its counterpart, the viaduct that carried
Reading trains into their terminal on the east side of Center City,
had somewhat less impact, as it ran north-south into the southfacing Reading Terminal, but what it lacked in impression it made
Figure 2: The "Chinese Wall", from
hiddencityphila.org

up for in durability. The Chinese Wall was torn down as part of a

city beautification project only in 1952, while the Reading Viaduct

still exists today, shorn of its original function and the subject of hot debates over its unclear
future.

Origins of the Tunnel Idea

For all of the disruption that the Center City rail structures caused to Philadelphia, by the
1930s the two terminals, Suburban Station for the Pennsy and Reading Terminal, were just a few
blocks apart, on opposite sides of Philadelphias landmark City Hall; the relationship may be
observed in Figure 2. With the demolition of the Chinese Wall by 1952, the Pennsys terminal

operations had been brought underground,

and both suburban networks were already
electrified, meaning that running commuter
trains through a tunnel was a real
possibility. And with the demolition of the
Figure 3: Center City Philadelphia in 1949, via USGS

Chinese Wall came as well the possibility

of a physical and economic renewal for Center City, a transformation from the gritty, dirty
central city of the past to a clean, upscale commercial and office center for the futurea vision
that would prove the animating force behind the Commuter Tunnel.
The origins of the idea for the tunnel are somewhat obscure. Ujifusa (2008) reports that
famed Philadelphia planner Edmund Bacon may have thought it up in 1947. The tunnel was
definitely on the agenda in 1958-59, when it was included in a redevelopment plan for the
Market East district ordered by Mayor Richardson Dilworth and executed by Bacons City
Planning Commission (CPC) (Rottenberg 1993, Kozel n.d.) Kobrick (2010, p. 241) reports that
The Commuter Connection was first proposed by the Urban Traffic and Transportation Board
in 1958, was endorsed by the City Planning Commission in 1959, and was included in the citys
comprehensive plan in 1960.
Most likely, though, the tunnel was the idea of a young junior city land-use planner
named R. Damon Childs. Kyriakodis (2014) writes that
The CCCC was initially proposed in 1958 by R. Damon Childs, a planner with the
Philadelphia City Planning Commission. It was seen as a way to bring more people into
Center Citywhich was losing population and business activity at the timeand would
offer improved access from Philadelphias western suburbs to the struggling department
stores on East Market Street. Besides reinforcing Center City as the regions
transportation hub, the tunnel would greatly improve the Regional Rail systems
performance by allowing Philadelphias two original rail networks to work together.

When Childs died in 1998, after a fascinating career in Philadelphia public service that included
briefly succeeding Edmund Bacon as the citys planning director before running afoul of one of
Mayor Frank Rizzos cronies, the Philadelphia Inquirers obituary gave him credit for the tunnel
idea. A 1984 article in the Daily News noted that Childs came up with the idea while working
for the city Planning Commission. He was asked to brainstorm mass-transit ideas for a
comprehensive plan for the city. The goal year was 1980. (Kasper 1984) Bacon, in fact, appears
to have initially been quite skeptical of the plan, but both the Inquirers obituary and the Daily
News piece report that Childs was able to convince the legendary planner of the ideas merit.
The tunnel landed in the citys 1960 comprehensive plan, though it would, of course, not
be carried out until well closer toin fact, after--the originally envisioned completion date of
1980. The plan described the tunnel concept this way:
The major proposal is to connect the two commuter railroads by a subway under Filbert
Street. Thus, the entire network of commuter lines in the metropolitan area would serve
two Center City stations, one in Penn Center west of Broad Street and one east of Broad
Street in the vicinity of 9th Street. The Reading Terminal would be eliminated. Only
minor terminal use would be made of Suburban Station. In addition to making Center
City destinations more accessible to almost all of the growing metropolitan area,
operating efficiency and economy would be improved. Execution of this proposal is of
critical importance to the planned development of Center City. (City of Philadelphia
1960, pp. 99-100)
This is, more or less, the way that the project would evolve 20 years later. There would be minor
differences (Suburban Station was renovated to be the western tunnel station), but all of the basic
elements of the commuter tunnel plan were already present in the city plan in 1960. It was the
execution, not the conceptual planning, that would be delayed.
By 1970, though the project had still not gotten off the ground, plans had become
somewhat clearer, with officials laying out the outlines of an operational framework even though
they had yet to secure federal funding. A report published in that year for the Redevelopment
Authority of Philadelphia noted that the unions and management of both the former Reading and
6

former Pennsylvania lines, at this point all operated by the disastrous and short-lived Penn
Central, (but, notably, with labor still represented by different unions) had agreed to share
infrastructure and facilities once the tunnel was complete. (Economic Research Associates 1970,
p. 4) The report anticipated the continued growth of office employment in Center City, and
argued that the tunnel was a necessary part of that continued growth, since the areas parking and
street system was congested and rail facilities were close to reaching their maximum capacities.
For suburb-to-city movements, the physical layout of the two Center City terminal
stations themselves limited the systems ability to move passengers. Stub-end terminals such as
Suburban Station (as it existed then) and Reading Terminal are inherently inefficient, with trains
needing to navigate huge numbers of switches and crossings (and thus blocking the paths of
other trains) to enter and exit. The inefficiency of the stub-end terminals was, and still is,
aggravated by regulatory practices required by the Federal Railroad Administration that are not
standard practice in countries with more advanced rail systems, such as the requirement that
every train conduct a full brake test between runs. The brake test and crew changes resulted in
15-20 minute times between a trains arrival at a stub-end terminal and its departure, a hugely
inefficient process by international standards, or compared to the possibilities of a run-through
station. (ibid, p. 32) Indeed, by 1970, train congestion was so bad at the Center City terminals
that some trains were being stored out-of-service on the main tracks, further reducing
throughput. (ibid)
As a result of the crowded downtown terminals, the commuter rail system was operating
very close to full capacity at peak hours in 1970. At those times, many trains arrived with
standees, and while planners anticipated that some improvements in capacity could be achieved
with new equipment (the government-funded Silverliner cars had started to arrive, but did not yet

comprise the entire fleet), it was clear that there was significant demand for more physical
capacity. And since economists expected the Center City office market to keep growing (and the
city fathers definitely desired that it would), planners considered additional capacity a necessity,
not a luxury. And the improvements that the tunnel plan offered in that regard were dramatic. In
1970, peak-hour capacity on the commuter lines into
Center City was around 27,000 passengers per hour; the
consultants estimated that that number could exceed
85,000 per hour if the tunnel and associated improvements
were completed. (ibid, p. 33) While the tunnel would
(eventually) be built, passenger numbers have never
approached that level; indeed, immediately after the
opening of the tunnel, SEPTA Regional Rail ridership per

Figure 4: Route of the Tunnel, from Kozel

(n.d.)

day totaled around 85,000.

The key to understanding the origins of the idea for the Center City Commuter
Connection is that, despite its clear operational benefits, the tunnels roots lie not so much with
transportation professionals as with land-use and economic-development planners obsessed with
the revitalization of Center City Philadelphia. R. Damon Childs, when he first proposed the idea,
was not a professional transportation planner, but a junior land-use planner. When the concept
joined the formal canon of planning projects intended for Philadelphia, it was pushed not by the
railroads which owned (at that time) the affected infrastructure, but by Bacon and his affiliates in
downtown business circles. As Carolyn Teich Adams writes, As clearly as any other American
city, Philadelphia in the 1950s was run by a business/government partnership that determined the
direction of urban renewal.even when during periods when Philadelphia business elites were

alienated from city government, the emphasis in the capital budget remained on projects
favorable to their interests. (Adams 1988, p. 25) Philadelphias business elite supported a pair
of reformist postwar mayors, Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth, whose came from patrician
backgrounds but whose inclinations were strongly those of the Progressive movement of
previous decades. And in return, Clark and Dilworth supported downtown development as a
mode of reform and progress, believing it would benefit the city as a whole as well as the elite.
Those origins, integrating transportation, land use, and economic development favorable to the
citys business elite, would be seen as a taint by some and a credit by others. They would,
regardless, decisively shape the destiny of the commuter tunnel project.

Federal Legislative Background

The Center City Commuter Connection was not, and was never intended to be, a project
funded by the city of Philadelphia, by the region, or even by the state of Pennsylvania, alone.
Planners and boosters anticipated federal involvement in funding the project from the very
beginning, perhaps not an unreasonable expectation in an environment where the federal
government seemed to be throwing cash right and left at highway projects. When the tunnel was
included in the citys 1960 comprehensive plan, however, the role of the federal government in
funding transit projects was (in distinct contrast to its involvement in highway funding) quite
unclear. Though the relationship between Philadelphia city and metropolitan politicians and the
federal government was quite often contentious, Philadelphia politicians would provide key
political support to the federal legislation that made transit assistance possible, and the federal
government would, eventually, repay that assistance in the form of funds for the prized tunnel
project.

The key moment for the possibility of federal funding for the tunnelindeed, for all
transit fundingwould be the passage of the Urban Mass Transportation Act in 1964. The
UMTA (as both the bill and the Urban Mass Transit Administration it authorized were known)
was not, strictly speaking, the first formal federal aid to transit in the postwar period; as Smerk
(1985, p. 53) notes, A program of aid for transit demonstrations and low interest rate loans for
capital improvements was put in place by the Housing Act of 1961. The UMTA was, however,
the decisive legislative moment in the federal movement towards a more balanced transportation
funding scheme. President Kennedy had begun to move the country towards that balanced
approach before his assassination, and it fell to Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society supporting
cast to implement this part (and many others) of Kennedys extensive legacy. Specifically, the
UMTA authorized the Housing and Home Finance Agency to provide funds to both public and
private mass transportation companies through state and local governments. (Kobrick 2010, pp.
229-230)
Philadelphia politicians had been a key constituency lobbying in support of the UMTA.
Mayor James Tate, in particular, had been an enthusiastic supporter. Managing a city confronting
declining population and economic vitality due to suburban flight, the machine Democrat
(successor to the somewhat reformist, and definitely patrician, Richardson Dilworth) followed
the standard mayoral mode of trying to support downtown development as a way to win over the
citys business community. And Tates support for the UMTA brought him benefits as well; like
most mayors of Philadelphia, Tate was a master of the patronage machine (Siddiqi 1995, p. 446),
and bringing home the federal pork burnished him image as a patron of the city. Not that Tates
capacity for self-promotion needed much burnishing:
The initial outlay [of the UMTA] was $375 million, and it was hoped that Philadelphia
would receive $36 million of those funds. In fact, Mayor Tate announced the day before
10

the bill was signed that Philadelphia had already applied for its first grant under the new
law. A press release from the mayors office trumpeted Tate as a prime mover of the
bill, as he had testified before both the House and Senate about the need for federal urban
mass transit legislation. Tate was ecstatic about the legislation and proud of the role he
played in lobbying for it. He attended the signing ceremony and afterwards planned to
frame a photo of the president signing the bill along with one of the pens Johnson had
used. (Kobrick 2010, p. 230)
Tates involvement with the UMTA would prove to be just the first of a series of episodes in
which Philadelphia politicians effectively leveraged federal transportation funding promises to
promote themselves and their administrations. Nevertheless, Tates promotion of the UMTA and
his glee at its passage would not assure Philadelphia of a federal funding commitment for the
cherished tunnel project; far from it.
From the beginning, Kobrick (2010, p. 243) write, Philadelphia planners
envisioned that the bulk of the money for the tunnel would come from the federal government
with additional funding to come from the city and the railroads. Indeed, the aforementioned
request for a grant that Philadelphia filed the day before the signing of the UMTA was for the
tunnel project. Despite Tates support of the bill, however, the newly created UMTA (the
agency) was skeptical of the tunnel project.
In many ways, Philadelphia officials themselves were responsible for federal skepticism
of the project. Among other things, UMTA required that metropolitan areas write a
comprehensive plan for regional transportation and create an agency to administer it before
transportation projects could be funded by federal dollars. Rather hilariously, the Philadelphia
region managed to botch even this seemingly simple project, as Kobrick (2010, pp. 244-245)
recounts:
In early 1966, the Evening Bulletin reported that the city stood to lose as much as $6
million in federal funds because it lacked a comprehensive regional plan for mass
transportation meeting the requirements of the Urban Mass Transportation Act. Without
such a plan, the tunnel would be eligible for only one-half federal financing rather than
11

two-thirds. A year later, in March 1967, Philadelphia still lacked a plan that complied
with the requirements of the Act and was projected to be $7 million short of what it
would need to construct the tunnel. Walter Johnson, the executive director of the
Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which was responsible for publishing a
regional transportation plan, expressed certainty that the federal government would come
through with the full amount of the requested grant. Unfortunately, Johnsons optimism
was misplaced, as the federal government soon afterwards revealed that it would make
only a partial commitment because the DVRPC had yet to become a permanent agency.
Once New Jersey, which had resisted making the agency permanent, gave its agreement
to enter into a permanent arrangement with Pennsylvania and the DVRPC adopted a
long-range transportation plan, the city would then be able to apply for the remaining
funds.

The DVRPC situation would not be resolved until 1969. Five years after UMTA passedand
nine years after the tunnel, among other ambitious transportation projects that would require
federal funding, was placed in the city comprehensive planPhiladelphia still had not taken the
bureaucratic steps necessary to acquire the funding. And, as Walter Johnsons misplaced
optimism about federal generosity reveals, Philadelphia officials and planners still did not quite
grasp the new world of bureaucratized federal spending. No longer were personal connections
and political support enough to ensure remuneration; now a projects eligibility for federal
funding would be determined by a highly organized, supposedly objective set of standards set by
transportation professionals. Or at least that was how the system was supposed to work.
Nor was Philadelphias inability to get its bureaucratic house in order the only obstacle to
gaining federal funding for the tunnel. Federal officials did not have to look too deeply into the
projects record of support to see that it was being pushed primarily as a mechanism to promote
and enable future economic and employment growth in Center City, rather than as a panacea to
the Philadelphia regions transportation woes. The tunnel projects primary semi-governmental
benefactor was the Old Philadelphia Development Corporations Market Street East Committee,
formed in 1965 with a mandate to promote that section of the city, the area around Reading

12

Terminal. Composed largely of downtown businessmen who had handled the successful
revitalization of the Society Hill neighborhood during the 1950s (a process that has been labeled
as one of the first examples of gentrification), the Market Street East Committee was also
heavily influenced by Edmund Bacon, who, though in the twilight of his years as Philadelphias
chief planner, popped into the meetings to promote cooperation with City Hall. (Kobrick 2010, p.
319) Not surprisingly, the tunnel projects roots in urban revitalization strategies conflicted with
federal preferences for funding projects with more clearly defined transportation benefits. Even
the resolution of the bureaucratic obstacles to federal funding (accomplished in 1969) and the
transition to the (perceptually) more business-friendly Nixon administration could not resolve
this conflict in values; In August 1970, the UMTA rejected the citys application for the tunnel
on the grounds that it would provide minimal transportation benefits. The federal government
took the position that the tunnels primary purpose was to revitalize and redevelop the Market
East area and that federal transportation funds could not properly be used for such a purpose.
(Kobrick 2010, p. 322) A reapplication by Philadelphia officials later in the same year lead to a
partial change-of-heart by Transportation Secretary John Volpe, who decided the federal
government would fund the project in part, but only up to an absolute capa problem for a
project whose final budget had not yet been determined, and which was certain to encounter cost
overruns during construction. (ibid) It had taken ten years of acrimony between federal and local
officials, and between local politicians and officials of various stripes, but in 1970-71 there was
finally some movement towards perhaps, eventually, getting the tunnel built.

13

Regional Transit: The History of SEPTA

No history of the tunnel project is complete without an account of the politics and
dynamics of the creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA,
the regions public transit operating agency. The oft-acrimonious bureaucratic and political
battles that accompanied the creation and evolution of SEPTA mirror, in many ways, those about
the tunnel project itself; and the dream of the tunnel was often believe to be at odds with the
possibility of Philadelphia ever operating an efficient, pleasant, and coherent system of public
transit. Indeed, for almost two decades after its creation SEPTA itself took a skeptical attitude
towards the tunnel, unsure how it as an entity would benefit from the new infrastructure. Though
not the same, the history of SEPTA is inextricably intertwined with that of the Center City
Commuter Connection.
Like many cities, Philadelphia in the 1950s found itself struggling with the decline of its
aging transportation system. The equipment across the systemon the privately-owned bus and
streetcar lines, on the city-owned Broad Street Line subway, and on the commuter railroads
was creaking from old age and increasingly unreliable. The railroads and other transit companies
soon found themselves unable to turn a profit on passenger services in the wake of the newfound
dominance of the automobile. At the same time, the region still relied upon its transit
infrastructure; the ambitious program of freeways that would be laid out in the 1960
comprehensive plan was not yet complete (and much of it never would be completed). And in
any case, employment in Philadelphia, though decentralizing, was still strongly unipolar, with
Center City attracting far and away more commuters than any other point. Philadelphia planners,
to their credit, recognized early what planners in other cities would come to learn: a dense

14

downtown with narrow streets would never be able to fully accommodate itself to the
automobile. Philadelphia would have to find a new way to support its aging transit system.
Though the equipment and service of the core urban transit lines was suffering in the
postwar era, ridership remained high, since many of the riders were transit dependent. The same
could not be said of the suburban commuter lines. Wealthier areas, of course, experimented with
car ownership sooner than poorer ones, and the exploding suburbs saw the fastest growth of all.
The Pennsy and Reading suburban operations found themselves in a vicious cycle of being
forced to raise fares to make up ridership losses, which in turn drove more riders to their cars,
and to government-subsidized (and free to the driver) freeways. Noting this crisis, in 1958 the
City of Philadelphia, in an innovative and at the time unparalleled experiment, partnered with the
railroads to stem the flow of decline in what was dubbed Operation Northwest. Operation
Northwest saw the city devote $160,000 of its own money to helping the Pennsy and Reading
step up frequencies on their parallel Chestnut Hill branches. Those lines were chosen because
they both run entirely within the city of Philadelphia, reaching out to the wealthy, semi-suburban
neighborhood of Chestnut Hill but running through neighborhoods of less prestige along the
way. In addition to running more trainsthe Pennsylvania ran every 15 minutes at rush hour,
and every half-hour the rest of the timethe city also helped to coordinate timed and discounted
transfers between the commuter lines and privately owned surface bus and streetcar lines, and
helped the railroads to discount fares. The results were clear:
In the fourth week of operation, the Pennsylvania carried 4,133 more passengers than it
had in the test week of October 6, before the plan went into effect, a gain of 14.8 per cent;
and the Reading picked up 2,422 passengers in the same week, an improvement of 7.6
per cent over its test week in May. For the entire four weeks, the Pennsylvania gained
11,128 additional riders; the Reading 7,099. The effect on city traffic already was
observable; 600 fewer automobiles a day were coming into the city from the suburbs.
(Cook 1958, p. 470)
15

The Operation Northwest experiment was so innovative, and its results so spectacular, that it was
written up in The Nation (the article from which the above quote is taken), Business Week
(Business Week 1959) and the Saturday Evening Post (Morris 1961). It was the first step into
public subsidy of struggling transit properties, and the positive results would lead Philadelphia
decisively down that path.
The success of Operation Northwest led directly to other such Operations on other lines
in the following years, and eventually to the creation of SEPTA. SEPTA was created as an entity
in 1963 by an act of the Pennsylvania state legislature, with its purpose being the planning,
acquiring, holding, constructing, improving, maintaining, operating, leasing, either as lessor or
lessee, and otherwise functioning of a public transit system. (Siddiqi 1995, p. 422) For the first
several years of its existence, SEPTA held the role of coordinating subsidies to private operators
in all modes of transit. In 1968, it shifted into the role of direct operator by acquiring the
Philadelphia Transportation Company, which operated all transit within city boundaries,
including the city-owned Market-Frankford and Broad Street subway lines (though it had no role
in the operation of the commuter lines). (ibid, p. 424) SEPTA would go on to acquire the
suburban transit operations of the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company (PTSC, the
famed Red Arrow) in 1970 and the Schuykill Valley Lines in 1976, thus bringing all of the
regions transit, with the exception of the suburban rail lines, under public ownership.1 (ibid)
SEPTAs relationship with the commuter lines was rather more complex. As previously
noted, the regions first experiments with public subsidy for transit had been for the suburban
lines, which had (entirely understandably) led to significant protest both from other private

The one transit property in Philadelphia not controlled, then or now, by SEPTA was the rapid-transit line over the
Ben Franklin Bridge, which was owned by the Delaware River Port Authority, and was extended to Lindenwold,
New Jersey, and renamed the PATCO Speedline in 1969.

16

operators and from transit-dependent city residents, who felt (accurately) that their interests were
being ignored in favor of wealthier suburban riders. Though the four suburban counties joined
the city of Philadelphia in providing subsidies to the commuter lines during the 1960s (DeGraw
1994, p. 107), there is no question that investment was being funneled from the center out. And
the biggest flashpoint for the conflict over the suburban lines was the plan for the elaborate
Center City tunnel.
The tunnel had been
inserted into SEPTAs capital
plan in 1966, despite the
complete lack of federal
funding. And yet, as an
institution SEPTAwhich was
focused on acquiring lines it
could directly controlwas
Figure 5: SEPTA Regional Rail and Rapid-Transit Lines, 1980. (From DeGraw 1994)

lukewarm on the possibility of

the tunnel, which, despite the crisis then occurring in the railroad industry, was not under current
plans going to be operated by the transit agency itself. SEPTA dragged its feet on several
measures relating to the tunnel, leading to considerable acrimony between city and SEPTA
officials:
By December 1968, [Philadelphia Mayor] Tates patience was reaching its limit. Blaming
tunnel delays in part on [SEPTA Chairman James] McConnon, Tate demanded the
SEPTA chairmans resignation. McConnon had aroused Tates ire by opposing the
establishment of a separate corporation to run the commuter rail lines in the event that
SEPTA acquired them a mechanism the federal government was demanding in order to
protect railroad workers federal retirement benefits. SEPTAs suburban representatives
opposed such a corporation, not wanting to become involved with railroad labor issues.

17

McConnon refused Tates demand that he resign, blaming both Tate and the railroad
unions for holding up the tunnel. (Kobrick 2010, p. 249)
McConnon survived for several more years. The 1968-69 conflict between the city and SEPTA
over the tunnel revealed the complicated three-sided battle that would ensue over the ownership,
financing, and operation of the tunnel over the next decade. At one corner stood (figuratively
the tunnel would actually run under it) Philadelphia City Hall and the business interests that
backed it and the tunnel. At another point was SEPTA, which was single-mindedly interested in
pursuing its mandate to unify the regions transit system, and did not want to tempt fate by
inviting a labor battle such as the one that would indeed ensure when the agency did acquire the
suburban lines in 1983. On the third side were those who opposed the tunnel entirely, including
many African-American and working class city residents, many in the federal government, and
some railroad labor factions.

The Transformative Reactionary: the Mayoralty of Frank Rizzo

After the lost decade of the 60s, hopes had begun to perk up again for the tunnel in
1970-71. U.S. Transportation Secretary John Volpe had indicated some federal willingness to
fund part of the tunnel, and most of the bureaucratic tensions within the Philadelphia region had
been resolved. The first five years of the 1970s would see two additional important
developments for the tunnel: the election of Frank Rizzo as mayor of Philadelphia in 1972 and
amendments to the UMTA in 1974 that would loosen the rules of funding and make it easier for
Philadelphia to receive what it needed for the tunnel.
Frank Rizzos election as mayor in November 1971 proved to be a watershed moment for
the city as a whole, and incidentally for the Center City tunnel project as well. Elected mayor
from the position of Police Commissioner, Rizzo was an up-from-the-streets story, a former
18

patrolman with an 11th-grade education. He was also, incidentally, the first Italian-American
mayor of this famously Italian city. In a Philadelphia convulsed by racial, class, and ethnic
tensions, and by the accelerating population loss that had prompted postwar efforts at renewal in
the first place, Rizzo offered a comforting face to the citys working-class white population. A
law-and-order type (to put it mildly) with a track record of brutality and racism, Rizzo was a
break from the recent Philadelphia tradition of patrician, reformist politics, though to be fair the
transition back to a more patronage-laden mayoralty had been initiated by his predecessor, James
Clark. Still, Rizzos constituency was very different from that of the local officials who had so
far pushed the tunnel project, as Joseph R. Daughen and Peter Binzen write in their book on
Rizzo, The Cop Who Would Be King, written in 1977 while Rizzo was still in office:
In an era of rising crime, other cities had elected policemen to run their government. But
they were not like Frank Rizzo.Rizzo was an eleventh-grade dropout, a lusty, brawling,
profane street cop who let the experts worry about the causes of crime while he busied
himself with busting heads.
Yet Rizzo professed his belief in Philadelphia. And his belief in the neighborhoods.
Fishtown and Juniata and Bridesburg had a right to guard their sections against change,
especially racial change. (Daughen and Binzen 1977, p. 17)
Rizzos core support came from the kind of reactionary working-class white families who tended
to be suspicious of major government infrastructure projects, and especially of public transit.
And yet, Rizzo would prove to be the single most effective local shepherd of the project (a point
that should not be taken as condoning much of his other leadership of Philadelphia).
A right-wing reactionary (on racial issues at leasthe remained a Democrat, if only in
name) Rizzo may have been, but there were actually several factors that made him a decent, if
unlikely, steward for the tunnel. First and foremost was the fact that the citys construction
unionsthen and now heavily white, and exclusive to otherswere a major, and fanatically
loyal, source of support for Rizzo. Second was his flirtation with the urban policies of the
19

Richard Nixon administration, which brought City Hall into close contact with the federal
administration once again, as it had been during James Clarks lobbying for the 1964 UMTA.
Finally, though Rizzos relationship with downtown business elites could not reach the levels
achieved under Dilworth, the mayor did maintain some contact with the grandees of Market
Street. After all, if government investment was to be directed away from improvements in black
neighborhoods, public housing, and other projects that were anathema to Rizzos working-class
white constituency, the money had to go somewhere, lest Rizzos administration be seen as
squandering an opportunity to bring money into Philadelphia. And thus, the tunnel emerged as a
reasonable project that offered some benefits for some of Rizzos constituents, cost the city
directly relatively little, and offered far more benefits to commuters than to (majority-black) city
transit riders.
Frank Rizzos connection to Philadelphias labor unions would be perhaps the most
purely transactional, straightforward, I scratch your back, you scratch mine element of support
for the tunnel project. As Kobrick writes,
By and large, it is fair to say that Philadelphias postwar transportation planning favored
big business at the expense of the working class and poor. In the particular case of the
Center City Commuter Connection, however, an important exception to this general
truism must be acknowledged. Whereas most Philadelphians opposed the tunnel in favor
of improvements to SEPTAs urban transit system, members of the construction unions
that stood to win jobs building the tunnel felt differently. The construction sector of
organized labor, along with big business, formed a major constituency pushing for the
project, and in the eyes of some, had even more influence over Rizzo. As Philadelphia
Magazine put it, the economic slowdown of the early 1970s, had hit labor hard and they
let Rizzo know it. If the union officials who provided Rizzo with crucial support lost
their power, asserted author Mike Mallowe, so too would go the base of Frank Rizzos
hard-hat constituency. (Kobrick 2010, pp. 380-381)
The tunnels construction was supposed to create up to 10,000 well-paying construction jobs.
(Kobrick 2010, p. 360) To Rizzos supporters in labor, it offered an unparalleled opportunity to
find employment in their own citythe rare major infrastructure project in the postwar era that
20

would happen in an urban, rather than a suburban, context. Philadelphia had built some freeways
in the postwar era, but the extensive network envisioned in the 1960 comprehensive plan had
never materialized, and in an era where the federal government had funded several secondgeneration transit systems, Philadelphias obsession with the tunnel had prevented it from
applying for such funds. Simply put, the tunnel was an exceptionally rare opportunity for the
construction unions, and there was very little Frank Rizzo could have done for them that would
have exceeded its benefits.
Just as James Tates close relationship with the Johnson administration had put the tunnel
project on federal radar in the 1960s, so too would Rizzos flirtation with the Nixon (and later the
Ford) administrations prove fruitful for Philadelphia, or at least his vision of it. True, Rizzo was
a Democrat; but, as Rick Perlstein notes (via Kobrick 2010, p. 382), he was Nixons sort of
Democrat. Indeed, Daughen and Binzen explain that Rizzos victorious 1971 campaign was
remarkably like the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon. On the stump, he singled out
a few scapegoats and spoke in soothing generalitieshe would take care of the criminalsAnd,
like Nixon, lest anyone accuse him of ducking the issues, he had available staff-produced
position papers. Rizzo and Nixon were like souls, dedicated with simple ferocity to hold on to
power and to punish those who opposed them with whatever means available. As Kobrick writes,
It therefore made sense that Nixon who counted Frank Rizzo as one of his strongest
supporters chose Philadelphia as the test case for his strategy to destroy the Democratic
Party. Nixons Philadelphia Plan aimed to use voluntary affirmative action goals to
increase black employment in the construction trades. While the Republican base would
not be pleased, the true intent behind the plan was, as Perlstein explained, to drive a
wedge through the Democratic coalition at its most vulnerable joint: between blacks and
hard-hats. (Kobrick 2010, pp. 382-383)

21

Just as Rizzo had imitated Nixons 1968 electoral strategy, Nixons Philadelphia Plan exploited
the same racial and class tensions that had allowed Rizzo to triumph in 1971. In tactics, it was
the mirror image of Rizzos actions, but at the intellectual core, the principles were the same.
And the special relationship between Rizzo and Nixon brought the mayor benefits too, as
Daughen and Blinzen recount in memorable manner:
During the 1972 Presidential campaign, when Richard M. Nixon was running for
reelection against Democrat George S. McGovern, Frank Rizzo boarded a Metroliner at
Philadelphias Thirtieth Street Station (sic) and, with a group of aides and reporters,
traveled to Washington. Although he was a Democrat at a time when Nixons henchmen
were putting Democrats names on enemies lists, Rizzo was welcome at the White
House. On this particular day, he had an appointment in the Oval Office with Nixon, and,
to show his clout, he had gotten the reporters accompanying him past the White House
police and into the West Wing. The reporters were even permitted a few minutes in the
Oval Office, a privilege denied the White House correspondents assigned to cover Nixon,
where the President assured Rizzo he would have no difficulty getting the federal aid
Philadelphia needed. (Daughen and Blinzen 1977, p. 222)
In the case of the tunnel, the last-mentioned promise was certainly of limited truth; the Nixon
administration proved only marginally friendlier to the tunnel project than had previous
presidencies. The close Rizzo-Nixon relationship did, however, come with certain benefits when
it came to the tunnel as well. Possibly on the same trip to Washington in 1972, Rizzo had a
persuasive encounter with Secretary of Transportation John Volpe:
The tunnel looked like it might be dead when Volpe announced DOTs rejection of the
project. Less than two hours after his announcement, however, Mayor Rizzo and his aides
gave Volpe a 45-minute presentation on the tunnel. When they were finished, Volpe met
with reporters and reversed himself, explaining that he had not understood fully the
tunnels significance as a regional transportation project. According to a later mayoral
press release, the presentation had saved the day. Rizzo aide Anthony Zecca boasted in a
1979 interview, [Rizzo] talked to him for twenty minutes and Volpe came out and says
we changed our minds and he resurrected the tunnel. And the records will show you
that. While Volpes decision was a reprieve for the tunnel, it did not come with a
guarantee of full financial support, and thus did not resolve the nagging issue of how the
project would be funded. (Kobrick 2010, p. 326)

22

This was not the first time the tunnel had been approved by Volpes DOT, nor would it be the
last time it was considered dead or revived. The anecdote rather speaks to the pull that Rizzo,
whether by pure force of personality or more likely by dint of his mutually beneficial
relationship with President Nixon, was able to exploit with other federal agencies.
Finally, Rizzo was able to draw upon the support of the Center City business community.
Rizzo certainly did not enjoy the close personal relationship with the city fathers that Richardson
Dilworth had. City Halls movement away from the business community had begun under Tate,
and accelerated with the election of Rizzo, whose constituency lay more or less entirely
elsewhere. As Kobrick writes, In fact, according to some close to Frank Rizzo, the mayor was
skeptical about the tunnel and pursued it only in response to overwhelming political pressure
from the citys business interests. Reportedly Rizzo had derided the tunnel as a goddamn hole in
the ground, that wouldnt get him any votes from an urban constituency forced to use SEPTAs
crumbling mass transit system. (Kobrick 2010, p. 378) In other words, Rizzo had to be forced
into support for the tunnel. The fact that the downtown business community chose to use its
scarce political capital with Rizzos City Hall on this issue would seem to indicate its importance
to them.
And yet, as Teich-Adams argues, the Center City business community saw few truly
negative consequences from the breakdown of its relationship with City Hall: During the 1960s
the administration of the machine-style mayor James Tate was far less aligned with the business
community, and yet the proportion of Mayor Tates capital program that went to center city
projects and various citywide development projects was virtually the same as in the previous
decade. Mayor Rizzos administration during the 1970s did not close the gap between city
government and the business community; if anything that gap widened. (Adams 1988, p. 157)

23

And yet, as the political chasm between Rizzos City Hall and the businessmen widened, capital
spending followed the same pattern; Even when the business community had no direct access to
city hall, the capital budget favored large-scale, developmental projects. (ibid) In other words,
the causal link between business access to City Hall and the city spending its capital budget on
projects that everyone else perceived as business-friendly was broken. City government was
going to spend the money, both its own and federal grants, on projects of which the business
community approved regardless of whether there was direct lobbying involved.

Triumph of the Tunnel: Rizzo, Ford, and Coleman

Ultimately, it would be under Rizzos supervision that Philadelphia finally got the reward
some of its leadership had been obsessing over for 15 years. As already noted, under John Volpe
Nixons Department of Transportation had shown some willingness to consider the tunnel
proposal, particularly after the UMTA was modified with new legislation in 1970 and 1974. The
funding issues were still to be worked out, and many federal officials remained suspicious that
the tunnel was not the best imaginable use of available federal funds. As Nixon left office under
a cloud of disgrace in 1974 there were certainly no guarantees that the tunnel would be built. The
coming years would prove decisive.
The resignation of Nixon and his succession by the relatively nondescript Gerald Ford
was a watershed time for the nation, a moment of self-questioning and uncertainty about the
future of the nation. In Philadelphia, the mood was no different, and with regards to the tunnel
project, which had benefited from the Rizzo-Nixon relationship, the new Ford administration
appeared to be a mixed bag. Fords idea of government differed in some significant ways from
Nixons, and in ways that would make the tunnel project suspect: William Grabske, Mayor

24

Rizzos transportation deputy, fretted over a 1974 speech by new president Gerald Ford in which
he stated that the federal government should not be in the business of funding transportation
projects that were really aimed at economic development or increasing urban density. (Kobrick
2010, p. 357) And UMTA staff remained implacably opposed to the project, on the grounds that
it was a) a vanity project for white, suburban riders b) not an efficient use of federal money and
c) diverting funding and attention from various other needy transportation projects in the
Philadelphia region. (ibid) All of these perceptions were accurate to one extent or another,
though Philadelphias ability to divert potential tunnel funding to other needs was dependent on
the federal governments willingness to provide said funding in the first place; the tunnel was
not, and would not, drawing much on the (very limited) regional transportation budget. Finally,
there was worry over Fords choice of personnel:
When President Ford nominated Philadelphia lawyer William T. Coleman for Secretary
of Transportation (making him the second African American cabinet member in U.S.
history), many worried that Colemans appointment could spell doom for the tunnel,
reasoning that it would look like favoritism for him to award his home city a huge and
controversial transportation grant immediately upon taking office. Thus, the race was on
to reach an accord for federal funding before Coleman assumed his new position.
(Kobrick 2010, p. 358)
In this environment, the future for the tunnel looked very bleak indeed.
The tunnels big break would come from an unexpected direction. Jacob Kobricks
account of the incident is worth quoting in full:
According to Mike Mallowe, who penned The Black Hole, the highly critical 1979
review of the tunnel that ran in Philadelphia Magazine, the UMTAs doubts about
the tunnels cost versus its transportation benefits were overridden by political
considerations with the strings being pulled by President Ford himself. Allegedly,
prominent Philadelphia Republicans told the Republican National Committee that Fords
ability to carry the city (whose political landscape Democrats had dominated since 1951)
and thus the state of Pennsylvania in the 1976 election would hinge on federal
approval of the tunnel. Ford, who took his marching orders supposedly from the RNC,
felt according to Mallowe that if the decision-makers in Philadelphia were in favor of
the tunnel, then the tunnel had to be a good thing. As a result, the UMTA, at the behest
25

of both the White House and the RNC, requested more information from Philadelphia
about the tunnels costs and benefits in early 1975. (Kobrick 2010, p. 359)
This account is hard to square with Fords previous skepticism about the tunnel, but whatever
happened, the Ford administration suddenly became much more interested in the tunnel during
1975. Just a few days before Coleman (who was, indeed, to initially prove a roadblock) was to
take office, the UMTA, under severe political duress, sent a memo to the city of Philadelphia
giving preliminary approval for the tunnel and starting the process of writing a contract. (ibid)
Upon taking office, Secretary Coleman took the position, as had John Volpe, that if the
federal government were to provide the theorized 80% funding match for the tunnel, it certainly
would not do the same for cost overruns. And the cost of the tunnel had been, as infrastructure
projects are wont to do, rising dramatically, from a projected $40 million to around $300 million
plus ancillary costs in the mid-70s. (Kobrick 2010, p. 360) Coleman would, however, change
his mind about that particular ruling a short time later; just in time, in fact, for the tunnel to be
thrown into question yet again by a breakdown in labor negotiations on the commuter rail lines,
set off by the threat of SEPTA taking over their direct operation. Resolved when the newlycreated federal corporation Conrail took over both operations (incidentally, bringing them under
the same management for the very first time), along with numerous other Northeastern railroads
in April 1976, the threat of disruption once again almost threw off the delicate negotiations
between local and federal officials.
Finally, and despite considerable local opposition to the tunnel (to be covered below),
Coleman and Rizzo concluded a contract in January 1977, when the Ford administration was
already a lame duck, agreeing to an 80%, or $240 million, federal cost share for the tunnel. The
Center City Commuter Connection was, at long last, on its way. The reasons for Colemans
apparent change of heart are much-debated. The most popular theory is that Coleman bought the
26

propaganda emanating from Philadelphia City Hall about the number of jobs the project would
provide, and believed that many of those jobs would, as was legally required by federal
affirmative action policies, go to African-Americans. Looking back on the tunnel in 1993,
veteran Philadelphia columnist Dan Rottenberg wrote that Coleman promoted the tunnel not so
much for its transportation virtues but because he believed (erroneously, as things turned out)
that the project would open up Philadephia's construction unions to a large influx of black
workers. (Rottenberg 1993) Like many aspects of the tunnel project, if opportunity for black
workers was indeed Colemans goal in approving the project, this ideal, too, fell by the side of
the ugly, opportunistic realities of Philadelphia politics:
According to Philadelphia Magazine, Coleman saw the Commuter Connection as a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Philadelphias construction industry to increase its
minority representation dramatically. The Secretary insisted, therefore, that the final
agreement for the tunnel include provisions mandating that African Americans would be
involved in substantial numbers in all phases of the projects construction. By 1979,
however, what the magazine called Colemans black power vision had faltered
badly, as the citys construction unions had failed to include more African American
workers and contracts awarded to black-owned business constituted a miniscule
percentage of the projects total cost. Two years later, the situation had not improved. The
Philadelphia Tribune reported that the tunnel had produced only 1,000 total jobs, a mere
10% of what had been projected. African Americans had been promised 4,000 jobs but
had received only 250. According to the paper, reliable independent sources estimated
that black contractors had received only $1 million out of the $30 million of business that
had been pledged to them. An attorney studying the matter on behalf of the Public
Interest Law Center of Philadelphia alleged that major contractors were playing a game
by hiring black subcontractors and laborers to comply with federal requirements and then
laying them off quietly. (Kobrick 2010, pp. 386-387)
Regardless of intentions, regardless of enthusiasm (of which there was very little in most places),
and regardless, apparently, of wisdom, as of January 1977 the Center City Commuter Connection
was on its way (though actual construction would not start until the following year, after one
final lawsuit from opponents was disposed of).

27

Opposition to the Project and the Breakdown of the Philadelphia Transit

System
The Center City business communitys long and brutal battle for the prized tunnel had
been won, but the costs to the rest of the Philadelphia transit system had been high. As early as
the 1960s, the fact that the tunnel was diverting the regions attention from more immediate
transit investment needs had been apparent. The situation was not a simple one where a massive
infrastructure project sucked up all of the available local funds, since, after all, the federal
government had always been envisioned as paying for most of the tunnel; rather, the issue was
more properly framed as one of inattention or opportunity cost. Kobrick writes that the tunnel
delays had been disastrous from the perspective of Philadelphias overall transit planning. As of
late 1969, the Philadelphia region had received only $4.8 million in federal transit aid under the
Urban Mass Transportation Act, compared to over $100 million each for New York City,
Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. (Kobrick 2010, p. 322) As we have seen, the Philadelphia
regions inability to exploit federal transit funding, exacerbated by bureaucratic infighting, was
more of a cause of the delays in the tunnel than a symptom. There is, however, no doubt that the
attention of planners and business leaders alike was diverted by the giant shiny object on which
they had fixed their sights.
The damage of that obsession would linger, and intensify, into the 1970s. A 1980 profile
of SEPTA in Railway Age wrote that
On a map, Philadelphias public transportation system looks impressive: almost 500
miles of commuter, light rail, and conventional rapid transit lines weave through the city
and its suburbsthe third largest urban rail infrastructure in the country, mostly
electrified and built to high-speed standards. Meanwhile, headlines tell of two spectacular
rail projects, both well under way: a $307-million tunnel linking at last the regions old
Pennsylvania and Reading commuter rail lines in a huge downtown complex, and a $90million rail line from center city to Philadelphia International Airport.
28

But the map turns to dust at a touch. Last November, the citys north-south Broad Street
Subway line came close to death by old age.elsewhere the situation has grown almost
as dismal. (Kizzia 1980, p. 34)
The Broad Street lines cars were ancient, dating back mostly to 1928, with the newest ones built
a decade later. Other lines and services had seen similar levels of disinvestment from basic
maintenance and updating. And the problems could seem intractable at times; Tom Kizzia wrote
in the Railway Age profile that local politicians seem to be awakening to the fact that
institutional obstructions and scrambled jurisdictions are greatly to blame for SEPTAs state of
dilapidation. (ibid) And while in 1980 that was a hopeful note, it also testifies to the extent of
ignorance about the true state of the systemand its causesthat regional politicians and
leaders exhibited before then.
And the tunnel was at the center of what critics charged was a consistent pattern of abuse
of public trust and misconduct. Kizzia wrote that
Philadelphias transit problems are the result of decades of political squabbling and
difficulties in obtaining local financial support, but there is another factor as well. In
recent years the transit system has received large capital grants from the federal
government. But while the rail and bus system crumbled, city administrations used those
grants to fund large economic development projects.
Foremost among those projects has been the 1.7-mile downtown commuter rail tunnel,
now estimated to cost $307 million, with most of the federal share coming from funds
earmarked for modernization rather than for new starts. It pushes everything else we
need into a lower priority, says [then-SEPTA chairman David] Gunn. (ibid)
The tunnel certainly offered potential operational benefits for the commuter services (by then
funded, but still not directly operated, by SEPTA), but it was hard for the agency to see past the
decades-old railcars and falling-apart infrastructure it was forced to make do with elsewhere.
And the common citizens of Philadelphia took note of the leaderships obsession with the
tunnel. Though business elites and City Hall tried to portray the tunnel as having popular backing
(not least to skeptical federal officials),
29

In fact, public opinion ran against the project heavily, at least among those willing to
express their opinions publicly. Citizens wrote letters to government officials,
newspapers, and radio and television stations, formed advocacy organizations, and even
filed a lawsuit to stop the tunnel from being built. City residents who had no choice but to
ride SEPTAs ancient, neglected urban transit system could not fathom how SEPTA and
the city could justify using $240 million in federal funds to construct a railroad tunnel
that would be used primarily by suburban commuters, instead of using those funds to
improve and maintain the citys subways, buses, and trolleys. (Kobrick 2010, p. 342)
It is hard to argue that the citizens who criticized the tunnel project were wrong to do so. There is
no doubt that in the interim the funds devoted to the tunnel project would have been better spent
on state-of-repair issues with the rest of the transit system. However, the cost of the tunnel, the
perception that it would be used mostly by suburban commuters, and the ugly racial politics
surrounding it prevented some critics from
recognizing its transformative potential.

The Tunnel and the Potential for a

Transformative Rapid-Transit
System
Certainly, the obsessive focus that
Philadelphia officials had with the tunnel from

Figure 6: Mayor Wilson Goode and Other Dignitaries at the

Opening Ceremony for the Tunnel, via Kyriakodis 2014

the time it was placed in the citys

comprehensive plan in 1960 until its approval by federal officials in 1977 took their attention
away from the day-to-day challenges facing much of the rest of the regions transit
infrastructure. It is no accident that things began to perk up for SEPTA in the late 70s, as the
tunnel moved across the finish line. But had the tunnel been used to its full potential (and to date,
it never has been), it could have been the first piece of a nation-leading rapid-transit system,
moving Philadelphia from the category of cities that operated a staid suburban service for 9-to-5
commuters to a place of its own as the only North American city to operate a European-style

30

overground rapid transit system, an outcome that, had it been implemented, probably would have
quieted a large proportion of the tunnel projects critics.
As we have seen, as early as 1970, a report prepared for Philadelphias Redevelopment
Authority had shifted the PR emphasis on the tunnel from its strident focus on downtown
development to an understanding that it had transportation benefits as well. That report
emphasized the tunnels potential to raise the systems peak-hour capacity from 27,000
passengers per hour to the enormous number of 85,000, capacities more in line with an urban
subway system than a commuter railroad. It also, however, brought an early focus on reversecommuting, a concept relatively new to the American scene in 1970. The report acknowledged
that the suburbanization of regional employment that had happened in the 60s was likely to
continue, and even accelerate. Even though Center City was expected to grow as well as an
employment centerindeed, the whole tunnel plan was premised on its growthin 1970
employment opportunities in the suburban counties of the region [were] increasing at twice the
rate expected in the urban counties of Philadelphia and Camden. (Economic Research
Associates and Redevelopment Authority 1970, p. 25) The transit system was not yet adapted to
the needs of the growing numbers of reverse-commuters; For the predominantly white,
relatively affluent, suburbanite, this difficulty can usually be avoided by use of the automobile,
howeverfew residents of [poor urban areas] are able to afford private means of transportation
to work or even to look for potential work. (ibid, pp. 25-26) With its already built-out suburban
infrastructure, the commuter rail system offered the best potential for serving these unlucky
workers.
To their credit, Philadelphia and SEPTA officials seem to have recognized this potential
in the tunnelor, perhaps, that transformative change was necessary if the expense of the tunnel

31

was to be justified. Before its opening, they contracted with University of Pennsylvania professor
Vukan Vuchic, an expert in urban transit systems, and his colleagues to produce a detailed
operating plan for the new system. Cognizant of the need to realize the tunnels potential through
re-framing the terms of service through it, Vuchic wrote that the Tunnel will be an important
step in converting a commuter rail system, transporting primarily commuters into and out of
center city, into [a] multipurpose regional transit system supported by extensive local transit
services throughout the region. (Vuchic and Kikuchi 1984, p. 1-4) Vuchics models for the
project were not the commuter rail systems common in American cities but rather European
metropolitan areas such as Brussels, Hamburg, Munich, and Paris. In German-speaking cities,
the aboveground urban-suburban rapid-transit system, often reliant on a center city tunnel such
as Philadelphias, is typically known as an S-Bahn, while in Paris it is called the RER; Vuchic
planned to make Philadelphia North Americans first example of such a system. Sadly for
Philadelphia, Vuchics plan was never fully implemented, and train frequencies on most
branches of the system remain well below his recommendations. Vuchic would go on to write a
series of plans for the system over the following two decades, with an increasing level of
bitterness. And it is hard to blame him; after all, Philadelphia had managed to build one of the
nations most advanced pieces of transportation infrastructure, the only place in the US where
commuter rail trains run through downtown to destinations on the other side. It had neglected the
rest of its transit system for two decades in order to do so. And now, it was refusing to take
advantage of the tunnels full potential to serve the citizens who had long suffered from its
monopolization of the regions transit funding.

32

Conclusion, Evaluations, and Lessons Learned

Ultimately, then, what is one to make of the Center City Commuter Connection? Given
its sordid political and economic history, it is a remarkably advanced piece of infrastructure,
albeit one whose potential remains unrealized. In many ways, the situation after the opening of
the tunnel remained similar to the one before it: distracted by the shiny object of their
achievement, Philadelphia officials neglected to provide the basic service upgrades that would
justify its massive costs. Poetically, less than a week after the tunnels ceremonial opening in
November 1984, an inspector noticed that a bridge on the Reading main line north of Center City
was so dangerously dilapidated that it was in imminent danger of collapseand ordered the
entire line shut down for weeks. (Nussbaum 1984) The decades of disinvestment had taken their
toll. And while SEPTA officials were prone to blaming the maintenance issues on the Regional
Rail lines on previous owners Conrail and Penn Central, they acknowledged that the tunnel was
an incongruous insertion into a decaying system. In the wake of the bridge incident, SEPTA
assistant general manager Frank Wilson told Philadelphia Inquirer transportation reporter Paul
Nussbaum that the tunnel was like transferring a new heart into an 80-year-old body, while
City Councilman Ed Schwartz offered the analogy that it was like putting a V-8 engine in a
Maxwell. Then you step on the accelerator and the car falls apart. (two quotes: Nussbaum 1984)
Whatever the analogy, these quotes seem an appropriate summary of the tunnela powerful
engine, perhaps, in 1984 as in 2014 starved of gas.
Whatever the unfortunate transportation aspects of the tunnel, it has been considered an
unparalleled triumph for Center City. Looking back at the tunnels past in 1993, Dan Rottenberg
wrote that

33

With the benefit of hindsight, today we can see that the tunnel's critics all suffered from,
well, tunnel vision In retrospect, the Commuter Tunnel was a heroic and farsighted
civic engineering project, comparable to the Brooklyn Bridge or the Moscow subway or
the reversal of the course of the Chicago River. In spite of ourselves, sometimes we
Philadelphians collectively respond in heroic fashion to civic challenges. Now, if only we
could figure out how and why. (Rottenberg 1993)
Even if Rottenbergs language is comically exaggerated, it was apparent almost a decade after
the opening of the tunnel that it had helped Center City rebound, causing (or at least helping
along) a development boom just like what tunnel backers had always hoped for. The nature of
the development was a little different; Center City today is one of the top residential downtowns
in the country and has a significant amount of office space, although retail has largely stayed in
the suburbs. Of course, as with any transit-oriented development, it is hard to tease out
correlation from causation; sources as early as the 1970 Redevelopment Authority report had
chronicled new development in Center City, so saying that the building boom there could be
attributed to the tunnel is overly simplistic. It is, however, fair to say that a narrative of the
tunnels success had taken over the popular consciousness in Philadelphia within a decade of its
opening, a rather remarkable turnaround.
In the final calculation, the political aspects of the Center City Commuter Connection can
perhaps be best summed up by Carolyn Teich Adams framework of off-budget,
developmental city infrastructure projects. She writes,
The citys second capital budget is the collection of projects financed primarily offbudget by revenue bonds of intergovernmental grants or a combination of the two. Such
projects do not normally compete for funds with those in the tax-supported budget; they
constitute an entirely separate category of expenditures. They are usually supported by a
well-financed coalition of developers and business interests; what opposition exists
comes from residents or business people who may be displaced by new construction. But
because developmental projects can be sold to the public as contributors to the local
economy, and because the money need not come from the coffers of city government, to
oppose them is tantamount to opposing civic progress. Once approved, these projects are
most often managed outside the city government, much the same way that any business
manager would operate...[the] overriding obligation to their bondholders, rather than to
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the urban electorate, leaves them little room to shape their operating policies in ways that
advance the public welfare. (Adams 1988, pp. 165-166)
Many aspects of Adams framework fit the tunnel to a T. The Commuter Tunnel is perhaps best
understood as a developmental project that happens to have significant transportation benefits;
indeed, its original supporters were unabashed in their acknowledgement of this reality. As a
developmental project, there should be little surprise that there has, throughout the tunnels
history, been little concern for using the infrastructure in a way that would maximally benefit the
public welfare. The tunnel exists now, and it is considered a success; but the challenge of the
current generation of planners and activists is to recognize its history and baggage, and to
continue pushing for the tunnels unused potential to be realized.

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