The Sixth Borough

As more and more transplants make Philadelphia their home, more and more transplants are altering the Philadelphia that once was. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Philadelphia isn't a boutique city, it's a force, quickly becoming an international one. But it is a city that clings to tradition - for better or worse. 

Now it's true, I am a transplant myself. I moved here for the same reason many have relocated to Philadelphia. Priced out of Washington, D.C. by rising rent and the dot.com bust, Philadelphia was a nearby and affordable slice of urbanity. But I had always had a fascination with Philadelphia. I didn't just move here because it was convenient, I moved here because it was time to live in the city I had always loved. 

In 2004, before Comcast was both synonymous with cable and our skyline, there was little national interest in Philadelphia. It was both wonderful and frustrating. Getting friends to visit was like pulling teeth. "If I'm going to go to Philadelphia, why not just go to New York?" Oh, the hell of living in the shadow of Manhattan. It's interesting to wonder, were Philadelphia isolated in the midwest, would be we on par with Chicago, or Indianapolis? 

The burden of coolness-proof lies on us, and that sucks. But in a way we do profit from our proximity to New York City and D.C., as much as any other city in America's Megalopolis feeds off one another, including New York and D.C. themselves. After all, the National Aquarium is not in D.C., it's in Baltimore. The Redskins play in Maryland, and the Giants in New Jersey. 

The Northeast Corridor isn't two cities surrounded by Dredd-style suburban and urban sprawl, it's a hive of cities, a collection of residents, unlike anywhere else in the world. And Philadelphia, as much as it benefits from New York and D.C., has a reciprocal relationship with both of those cities and others. 

So why then, won't "The Sixth Borough" die? Perhaps because the moniker is much older than most think. Philadelphia Speaks' user, OffenseTaken, posted a clip from an 1882 article that referred to Philadelphia as a "Suburb of New York." While the 19th Century article continues with the same sense of New York's ballyhooed self-worth that carries on today, it also recognizes that, over a century ago, Philadelphians were equally frustrated by the sentiment. "The above statement should not be a pleasant one for a Philadelphian to contemplate," said The Record of Growth.

At least for now, Philadelphia is not included within the New York Statistical Metropolitan Area. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Baltimore. Although almost exactly the same size both geographically and in population, Baltimore is largely considered a suburb of Washington, D.C. One will hope, in time, the merit of each city within the northeast corridor will be in its productivity, not its population or height. In an increasingly remote-access marketplace, the Megalopolis is going to continue to grow from Boston to D.C., even from Portsmouth, NH to Portsmouth, VA. 

We are not, and never have been New York's Sixth Borough, any more than Hoboken or Norfolk, VA. We're a productive cog in the world's largest organic machine, and we're returning to our roots as an international powerhouse. That's all that matters. I'll pass on the "Sixth Borough" t-shirt, and opt for the one that says "The Workshop of the World." 

William H. Gray III Station

As Philadelphia inches towards regaining its reputation as a world class city, local politicians have taken the city's recently publicized success stories as an opportunity to remind us that they had nothing to do with it. 

Continuing to do what they do best, politicians have opted to couple our improving corporate environment with governmental tokenism. U.S. Rep Chaka Fattah has proposed renaming 30th Street Station after his predecessor, William H. Gray III. 

Despite the silliness of renaming a station that's been known to the Northeast Corridor by one name for eight decades, it's a costly move that will require the city, state, and Amtrak millions of dollars rebranding every sign and map in the country. Money that could otherwise be spent renovating and restoring a train station that is beginning to show its age, particularly next to the recently renovated IRS Building across the street.

An online poll showed just 10% in favor of renaming the station and a Change.org petition to keep it as is has emerged.

A few years ago an idea to rename the station, Ben Station was floated until someone pointed out that Ben Franklin had nothing to do with the invention of railroads which wouldn't appear until long after his death. 

Blind spending is an unfortunate side effect of a successful city. When Washington, D.C. was trading its reputation as Murder Capital to simply be our capital city, Virginia renamed the liberal city's closest airport, National Airport, after the conservative Ronald Reagan in a similarly shallow political gesture.

On the corporate side, Verizon has been campaigning to rename Suburban Station, Verizon Station, likely trying to air a presence within Comcast's domain. As absurd as that may seem, corporate branding brings with it maintenance and renovations. The William H. Gray III Station brings nothing to Philadelphia but more debt to the city and region.

Amtrak Shrugged

It looks like a scene out of Atlas Shrugged. A high speed train carrying passengers from DC to Baltimore in fifteen minutes, to New York City in one hour. At 315 miles per hour, it would be the fastest train on the planet. And it could be America's for free.

The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe recently offered to build the first leg of the new line, DC to Baltimore, entirely free of charge.

Unable to successfully market the wild magnetic levitation technology, Japan is hoping that America's participation will excite other customers. The catch? We'd have to complete the rest of the Northeast Corridor ourselves.

The offer is more than enticing. America's involvement in the rail industry has been lackluster for years, even between DC and Boston where it's most successful. Large cities routinely struggle with state governments to maintain their subways, lightrails, and trollies because, let's face it, most of the nation just doesn't need it.

The debacle isn't unique to the United States. The car has made it simply easier for most people to get around, and highways have allowed us to spread out to locations that trains just don't go and aren't needed.

Where rail transit abounds, so do taxes and socialism. Which is why conservatives fear the word "rail," and many democrats skirt the subject. They're money pits. Dreamy, sleek money pits.

The TNEM, or The Northeast Maglev, would be a Superconducting Maglev train, or SCMAGLEV. Understandably concerned, Amtrak is worried what kind of affect the TNEM would have on its slow growth. Though the forty miles between DC and Baltimore would be built with Japanese money, the New York City extension would be costly. Funds would likely be siphoned from Amtrak's system, still struggling to find success outside the Northeast.

However, Prime Minister Abe has pointed out that the TNEM is not intended to replace Amtrak. Quite the contrary, it's intended to compete. It's a tough sell. America's love affair with a competitive rail industry died long ago. It's hard to say if we'd want to relight that fire, if it's even possible.

The truth is Amtrak's trains aren't slow. The Acela can easily exceed 200 miles per hour. The problem is it shares tracks with regional lines, so our high speed trains rarely move faster than a car.

With no competition Amtrak easily sold the Acela to the public hiding the fact that the existing infrastructure would need to be replaced for it to be worth a damn. For more than the cost of a flight to JFK you can get to Manhattan twenty minutes faster than a much cheaper regional train ticket.

However the system is subsidized and not configured for competition. Tax dollars keep Amtrak running, not ticket sales. The TNEM wouldn't just poise itself to compete with Amtrak, a Northeast SCMAGLEV could shut down Amtrak's entire national network.

It's an exciting proposal, and the free offer incredibly tempting. But weighing the potential outcome for the national passenger rail system, America's attitude towards rail travel needs to change, funding has to increase, and Amtrak would have to succeed outside the Northeast Corridor. Prime Minister Abe's offer comes with more than a caveat. It's an advertisement for Japan's technology, one that states, "if the United States can embrace rail travel again, any country can."