March 07, 2024
Courtesy/Jay Arzu
A rendering of a stations for the proposed Roosevelt Boulevard Subway, a project that many are keeping their eyes on in 2024.
For those keeping their fingers crossed for a subway line along Roosevelt Boulevard, 2024 is an important year.
Last month, the city received about $12 million for upgrades to Roosevelt Boulevard, part of the larger 2040 Route for Change plan. Largely, that meant safety upgrades to the roadway like traffic signal upgrades, curb extensions and pedestrian safety features. Included in that funding, $2 million was set aside for the plan's National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, a piece of legislation that requires environmental assessments for projects at the federal level.
The funding is another step forward for a project that's been largely hypothetical: the Roosevelt Boulevard subway.
The Route for Change plan includes both short-term improvements to be done by 2025 and long-term improvements to be completed by 2040. Last year, the city nabbed the funds for a two-tier analysis that would identify six potential plans, called alternatives, for the roadway. That will be narrowed down to three, and then one, which will be presented to the Federal Transit Administration in 2025. PennDOT has said three of those six alternatives would likely include plans for a subway.
"PennDOT’s design team is currently studying the implementation of high-quality transit options to transform Roosevelt Boulevard, including light rail, bus rapid transit, and subway," PennDOT Community Relations Coordinator Krys Johnson said. "This effort builds upon the work previously completed by the City of Philadelphia in the Route for Change report."
Jay Arzu, a Ph.D. student at Penn studying city and regional planning with a focus on transportation, is the main force behind the Roosevelt Blvd Subway account on X, formerly Twitter, which has been gaining traction over the past two years.
This latest funding influx will keep the project moving through the NEPA process without having to stop and search for more funds to complete the study, Arzu said. What many don't realize, he noted, is that it can take up to $2 million to move from step to step in the planning process.
"We can continue moving this [forward] without having to worry about stopping and looking for funding, so this is going to be a lot more streamlined than people are used to," Arzu said. "This is not something that happens every day for a project."
Though multiple studies have been done since the 1940s on the viability of the subway, Arzu said, he thinks that there's strong momentum for the subway this year. According to him, the last time the subway was studied in the late 1990s/early 2000s, the project never made it as far as the Federal Transit Administration. But with Route for Change, the federal government is getting looped in on a potential project, making things a little more real for those in favor of the project.
"I would say that this is the closest that we have ever been to getting the Roosevelt Boulevard subway," he said, with the exception of the station that was built by Sears in the 1960s.
According to PennDOT and the city, "significant work" on the plan is lined up for 2024. In the spring, PennDOT will host public meetings about the subway, and they're expected to publicly share specifics about the cost of the project, a service plan and daily ridership numbers.
"We're committed to continue partnering with PennDOT and SEPTA to advance the long-term vision described in Route for Change report," a spokesperson for the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability said in an email. "We look forward to building on the community engagement completed in December 2023 with additional discussions throughout 2024 regarding transformational roadway and transit improvements for the Boulevard."
A new subway would be part of the SEPTA network, likely connecting to the Market-Frankford line train. Though the agency has largely stayed quiet on the topic, it was a partner in building the Route for Change plan and said it will be considering all options as the process moves forward.
"As the 2040 alternatives study advances, SEPTA will be working with stakeholders to evaluate all transit options to transform the Boulevard for the next generation of users," SEPTA spokesperson John Golden said. "Any solution will require significant infrastructure investment from all levels of government, and SEPTA continues to advocate at the state level for local funding options that will be needed to secure federal competitive grants and fund construction.”
For Arzu, though, the project is a no-brainer, no matter the cost.
"There's not many projects in the country that are like this where you can get over 100,000 riders daily and have billions of dollars of transit-oriented development and transit oriented-communities that could be created adjacent to new subway stops."
