PHILADELPHIA — Renovations underway at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station will restore a direct pedestrian tunnel connection to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s Market-Frankfort Line, eliminated in 1984, the website Billy Penn reports.
Currently, the connection requires going above ground and following a route without signage that crosses a street that is an exit route off Interstate 76. A tunnel connected the transit line and a concourse adjacent to 30th Street Station beginning in 1934, but was eventually closed because of concerns about storm leakage, lighting, and fire hazards.
But the renovation and redevelopment in progress by developer Plenary Infrastructure Philadelphia [see “Amtrak, developer reach agreement …,” Trains News Wire, Sept. 15, 2021] includes a new concourse that will, along with other amenities, include a stairwell leading to a tunnel to the Market-Frankfort Line’s 30th Street platform.
An Amtrak representative told the website that it is unclear when work on that connection will begin, so there’s no timeline for its completion.
More on the 30th Street Station project is available at this website.
The Market-Frankford station is joint with the Subway-Surface trolleys forming a four-track line. The transit station is between 30th and 31st Sts while the RR station is between 29th and 30th Sts. This makes the concourse relatively long and the comments regarding security are well founded. Before the concourse was closed many people preferred going up to the surface regardless of the weather.
The transit lines have to tunnel under the Schuylkill River so their station has to be set back a block.
Note the spelling is Frankford for the creek and neighborhood in NE Philadelphia and not the city in Germany.
A useful and ambitious project as long as transit security is properly ensured.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Wonderful project. Better include plenty of cameras and lighting in the tunnel.
Along with police officers at each end and in the middle along with foot patrols. I’ll stick to the street thank you.
I was really concerned the last time I used that tunnel right before it was shut down. It’s far worse now with the current DA. Given today’s crime situation in Philly, I wouldn’t use it unless there are working cameras and lots of police patrolling it.