It’s this time of year again when Penn students are leaving their dorms in a big two-day move-out event, which prompts the closure of a large section of Spruce Street to all traffic except for emergency vehicles. Here’s a traffic advisory for this Tuesday and Wednesday from Penn’s Public Safety Division:
“Spruce Street will be closed between 34th and 40th Streets on Tuesday, May 10th and Wednesday, May 11th between 7 a.m.-8 p.m. for student move-out.
No taxi cabs will be permitted access. Vendors will be permitted access to enter the street prior to the 7 a.m. street closure. Bikes will need to be walked on Spruce Street while the streets are closed to traffic. Septa Route 42 will be re-routed. Emergency vehicles and hospital patient transport vehicles will be permitted access. Access will be provided to the Ryan Vet Hospital.
During this street closure: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Wistar Institute and Ryan Vet Hospital deliveries will be allowed to enter Spruce Street at 38th Street. Garage 14 will be open and accessible throughout move-out.”
Indego bike share station in Clark Park (archived photo).
Philly’s bike-share program Indego celebrated its first birthday this week by announcing a couple dozen more docking stations around the city, including a few in West Philly. The program also introduced new rates and ways for low-income residents to pay for the service and a snappy new app.
New docking stations will be located near 34th and Mantua, 42nd and Lancaster and 46th and Market. Indego will also start accepting Pennsylvania ACCESS cards and offer an unlimited number of one-hour rides for 30 days for $5 – down from $15. The new rates should widen the availability of the program, something Indego officials had hoped for when the program began.
The program’s new app will allow riders to find stations, check on bike availability, renew membership passes and search trip history.
Indego has been very popular over the past year, logging about 420,000 rides and more than 8,000 memberships.
UPDATE (Fri, Apr. 22):Beginning Friday, Apr. 22 at 11:00 p.m., Routes 10, 11, 13, 34, and 36 Trolleys will operate on a temporary diversion to allow for repairs and inspection to the Trolley Tunnel. Regularly scheduled trolley service will resume at the start of the service day Monday, Apr. 25, 2016.
Many people were wondering why trolleys were running above ground over Spruce to 40th Street today (Thursday). It turns out SEPTA had to divert Routes 11, 13, 34 and 36 to 40th and Market Streets due to continuous repairs of overhead wires in the tunnel. Wire repair work in the tunnel will continue overnight and possibly on Friday. Here’s more information from SEPTA:
“Service disruptions on the Trolley network (Routes 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36) have been occurring with increasing frequency in recent weeks. Despite the best efforts of our maintenance forces in the limited work windows afforded to them, overhead wire conditions in the Trolley Tunnel continue to worsen and have created this reliability issue. Continue Reading
Demolition of the deteriorating 41st Street Bridge, which began last summer, has reached its final stage. Work began on Sunday, April 17 to remove the existing bridge piers adjacent to the Amtrak tracks. This work will run through the end of the month from Sunday through Thursday during the overnight hours of 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. to avoid interruption of Amtrak’s rail line. Most of the demolition activities will occur between 12:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., during Amtrak’s power and train outages.
New 41st Street Bridge rendering.
Demolition of the bridge, which connects Mantua Avenue and Poplar Street over Amtrak railway, is part of the $10.8 million 41st Street Bridge replacement project. Starting Sunday night, May 1, the contractor, Loftus Construction, Inc., will begin to erect the structural steel for the new bridge. This work will also occur during overnight hours on Sunday through Thursday. Steel beam erection is expected to be completed by mid-June.
The new bridge will be a two-span, continuous structure with architectural concrete parapets and fencing, according to the Streets Department. The proposed roadway will include two travel lanes with wide shoulders and sidewalks, new street lighting, signing, line striping, ADA curb ramps, and enhanced safety features, such as the realignment of the Mantua Avenue and 41st Street intersection.
The new bridge is expected to open by the end of 2016.
SEPTA will soon be looking for 10,000 people to test out their new fare payment system – SEPTA Key Card – starting in June.
We know what you’re thinking … you’ve heard this before. But this time SEPTA appears to be almost ready to go. The 10,000 early adopters will be issued a Key card on June 13 and will be able to purchase monthly or weekly passes (just passes for now) on buses, trolleys, the El, the Broad Street Line and the Norristown High Speed Line.
SEPTA recently announced that every bus and trolley now has a card reader on board. There are also 175 fare kiosks around the city and so far 187 turnstiles have been set up for the subway lines.
So stay tuned for more information on how to become an early adopter. Meanwhile, here is a little video SEPTA put together about the Key Card.
The Philadelphia Streets Department is conducting street improvement work, including road surfacing, in some parts of West Philadelphia this week. Residents are asked to move their cars from the work sites when temporary “No Parking” signs are posted so that vehicles are not towed. If your car has been towed, please contact your local Police District to determine its location.
The work scheduled for this week will be mainly conducted on streets north of Market Street – in Powelton Village, Mantua, West Powelton and Mill Creek neighborhoods. Click here to see if your street or block is scheduled to be resurfaced (weather or special events in the area may alter the resurfacing schedule).
Residents are urged to plan ahead and use alternative routes when traveling in these areas.
The entire list of streets being paved for the 2016 season has not been completed yet. We’ll post more information as soon as it becomes available. Continue Reading
It’s this time of year again when Penn students are leaving their dorms in a big two-day move-out event, which prompts the closure of a large section of Spruce Street to all traffic except for emergency vehicles. Here’s a traffic advisory for this Tuesday and Wednesday from Penn’s Public Safety Division:
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