Page 1

3 MR. DOUGHERTY: What a beautiful

4 place and a beautiful view of the river.

5 My name is John Dougherty. Mostly

6 you know me in my full-time capacity as a

7 labor leader, but I'm here as head of the

8 Pennsport Civic Association, which is at this

9 point my most favorite job.

10 Just want to let you know, being the

11 President of a community association with so

12 much development, not only in our

13 neighborhoods but on the water front area

14 attached to our neighborhood, has been

15 exciting and a little confusing. So we're

16 here today to talk about the impact that the

17 large box, stadiums, residential, retail,

18 commercial developments along the water front

19 and through our neighborhoods and talk about

20 the impact, you know. And I don't believe

21 that it's a positive impact at this present

22 time.

23 And that's why it's been an honor to

24 work alongside State Representative Keller,

25 also with our other community groups, you

2 know, to the north and the one that we deal on

3 a daily issue is our good friends from the

4 Whitman Civic Association.

5 What I'd like to do for a second is

6 just acknowledge that we do in the room have a

7 Jim Foy, Ed McBride, Jim Penza, Fred Keller

8 and Richie Laser, all from the Whitman Civic

9 Association who is our partner here in

10 sponsoring this. Also Rich Laser is the

11 Administrative Assistant of Councilman Kenny.

12 And also we've had some, just in our

13 own little neighborhood, we transcend so many

14 issues, we've had so many detailed

15 conversations about development that we

16 haven't been able to resolve, you know, within

17 a ten block radius. So when the water front

18 starts to open up and we have things like

19 Senate Bill 862, I know it becomes very

20 confusing.

21 So it's been improved, in depth

22 conversation with our State Representative

23 Bill Keller, and we come up with this idea of

24 about having some sort of symposium that did

25 away with all the superficial approaches that

2 we've taken and get more into what exactly has

3 happened, how can we help the process along,

4 how can we have more detailed neighborhood

5 involvement and how can we ask the difficult

6 questions. Some as simple as a flooded

7 basement to as complicated to a casino or two

8 in anyone's neighborhood.

9 So we're here today with a -- to

10 start off a two-day symposium. The first part

11 of this will talk about transportation this

12 morning. The second part will talk a lot

13 about the water issues and the environmental

14 issues and the one pipe sewer system and

15 things along them lines. Tomorrow we will

16 have a varied agenda which will end up with

17 gaming.

18 So I really appreciate all our

19 neighbors and community activists and friends

20 who have stopped in to join. To my left,

21 State Representative Keller, who has taken a

22 lead of working with his partners in

23 Harrisburg.

24 And to my right, the legendary State

25 Representative Marie Lederer.

2 And also we have John Taylor, who

3 has been an activist as well as a legislative

4 leader for years and this is a bipartisan

5 community symposium. We're lucky enough to

6 have a wide variety of professionals.

7 And again, you know, trying to

8 avoid -- I guess we will have an opening

9 statement from everyone on the podium and then

10 we'll just jump into the meat and potatoes.

11 We're going to open up with the

12 Delaware Valley Regional Planning Manager, Ted

13 Dahlburg, and then we'll move forward.

14 This has, so you know, has nothing

15 to do with politics and everything to do with

16 community. This has nothing to do with the

17 executive order that the Mayor, you know, put

18 forward yesterday. But we're glad to see that

19 there is some, you know, design and ideas

20 about planning on the water front. This is

21 purely a neighborhood driven symposium and

22 we're looking forward to all you're input.

23 State Representative Keller.

24 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: Thank you,

25 John.

2 Good morning, everyone. Thanks for

3 getting up early on a Saturday morning and

4 being here. We do believe this is important

5 and I know you believe it's important that's

6 why you're here.

7 As John said, we're here to really

8 get answers. There's a lot of questions out

9 there, and to tell you the truth, we have been

10 asking questions and we have been getting

11 probably the same results you have, you know,

12 there's three or four different answers to

13 every question. So as somebody who has been

14 involved with the water front a long time, I

15 have made my living -- and I see Sonny Howlett

16 out there -- I have made my living on the

17 water front for 25 years.

18 It's very important not only to the

19 people who make their living on the water

20 front, but it's a very important economic

21 engine. There's a lot of very important good

22 high paying family sustaining jobs along the

23 water front. There's some studies to say that

24 there are 45,000 direct jobs related to the

25 water front. And multiply that by ancillary

2 jobs. And this is just on the freight side.

3 And we've lived through, the people

4 who have been making their living on the water

5 front have lived through a cycle where even on

6 both sides of the river at one time there was

7 almost no value to the property along the

8 water front. You could see where New Jersey

9 had put up a prison and in an ideal spot along

10 the water front because there was no other

11 takers, nobody else, there was no other use

12 for that land. Now we're talking about

13 tearing the prison down.

14 You see where we put -- and I

15 thought at the time was probably the best

16 use -- big box retailers along, right on the

17 river. That's no longer the case, as you can

18 see.

19 I guess Representative Lederer will

20 tell you that, I think there's over 3,000 new

21 condo units being developed just in her

22 district alone along the water front. And I

23 am one who believes that if we sit down and do

24 this the right way we will absolutely be able

25 to have new residential buildings along the

2 water front. We need residential buildings.

3 You always want to increase your population.

4 You want to have good people in, living in the

5 city and that's how you can, you know, that's

6 how you continue tax base.

7 So I absolutely believe there's room

8 for residential, there's room for commercial,

9 no matter what that is, but we also have to

10 make room for the industrial water front that,

11 as we said, makes, you know, there's 45,000

12 direct jobs and we need to keep that as an

13 economic engine in this city. There's no

14 reason to throw away any of those three

15 pieces.

16 But I have -- you know, I have a

17 feeling, and I think I have been watching it

18 happen, where if we don't do this the right

19 way we will force a round peg in a square

20 hole. And to me, the way the water front is

21 being developed now, that is what's happening.

22 People are just rushing. It's valuable land,

23 it's a valuable resource. And now it's like,

24 I guess, the Forty-Niners' Gold Rush,

25 everybody is rushing down there and staking a

2 claim. And I think it's our job as community

3 leaders, as political leaders, to just say,

4 Sit back, Everybody take your time, Everybody

5 will be taken care of.

6 But we only get one shot at doing

7 this. This is one shot. And we got to do

8 this the right way. And I think today is the

9 first step in making sure we are going to do

10 this the right way.

11 I would like to hand it to John

12 Taylor.

13 REPRESENTATIVE TAYLOR: Thank you,

14 Bill.

15 I'm Representative John Taylor. And

16 along with Representative Keller and

17 Representative Lederer I share, at least from

18 the state point of view, the Delaware River

19 up, I guess from Cumberland Street to Bridge

20 Street.

21 And if you noticed on your way in

22 the sign about the symposium uses the word

23 2026. And I think that's very important in

24 that, well, while there's no doubt that our

25 immediate concerns are gaming and how it's

2 going to effect us, I think we really do need

3 to look at it long term.

4 When I was asked to participate the

5 first thing I said to Bill Keller was that

6 hopefully we will also include that land north

7 of the proposed gaming sites because there's

8 some very important and controversial things

9 going on there with development of one

10 project, 800 brand new houses along the river

11 in Bridesburg, trails, many retail end and

12 residential proposals that people aren't

13 talking about it in this end of town.

14 So what this does for us, at least

15 for me this weekend, it's very difficult to

16 get the kind of people that we have scheduled

17 here in one room at one time. But this -- you

18 know, the reason we're doing it on a weekend

19 because when everybody's schedule starts

20 getting rolling it's hard to coordinate that

21 kind of thing, and we have a great opportunity

22 to hear firsthand. Hopefully, all the folks

23 that spent a lot of time giving out

24 information in the past three months would

25 fill these seats and hear from the very people

2 who are charged with the responsibility of

3 knowing what they know. So we're looking

4 forward to hearing all the testifiers and

5 getting your input as well.

6 This is Rich Levins from the New

7 Kensington Community Development Corporation.

8 MR. LEVINS: Good morning, everyone.

9 As John said, I'm Rich Levins, I'm

10 the President and Chairman of the Board of New

11 Kensington Community Development Corporation.

12 I'm a resident of Fishtown for the last 25

13 years and a lifelong resident of Philadelphia.

14 And I share this distinguished panel's passion

15 for the water front and the city in general.

16 New Kensington very briefly

17 represents Port Richmond, parts of Port

18 Richmond, Kensington and the Fishtown area.

19 We do housing development zoning issues, we

20 clean brown fields, we clean lots, we maintain

21 lots and we build houses.

22 Just very briefly, as Representative

23 Keller said, we have one shot at the water

24 front. And I think we really need to, you

25 know, draw on the vision of the past leaders

2 in Philadelphia like Ed Bacon who was

3 responsible for the Renaissance of Old City

4 and those other great leaders who were

5 responsible for the development of Kelly

6 Drive, the Schuylkill River water front and

7 the Parkway.

8 I think there can be uses that are

9 both residential, recreational and commercial

10 in the water front and I think that we need to

11 do it right. So I hope you enjoy the

12 conference. Thank you.

13 I'm going to pass this on to Matt

14 Ruben who is with the Northern Liberties Civic

15 Association.

16 MR. RUBEN: Hi, my name is Matt

17 Ruben, I'm on the Board of Directors of the

18 Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association, a

19 community of approximately 5,000 people. I

20 have lived in Philadelphia for 14 years, which

21 makes me a newcomer, I know. Another 50 years

22 I will be considered a native.

23 The Northern Liberties Neighborhood

24 Association has been concerned about planning

25 and river front planning for quite some time.

2 We actually conducted and completed our own

3 neighborhood plan in 2026 because no one else

4 was going to do it because we had a city which

5 had abdicated its planning role.

6 And we have also now embarked upon

7 an addendum to our neighborhood plan, which is

8 for a section of the Delaware River Front that

9 includes our neighborhood in some areas

10 immediately adjacent to the north and south.

11 And we look forward to being a part moving

12 forward with any comprehensive planning on the

13 river front which is sorely needed and very

14 much overdue.

15 And I have just three very brief

16 comments about what I think is important about

17 the river front planning process.

18 Number one, as was said a few

19 moments ago, and I think it is very important,

20 Philadelphia has always been whatever else

21 it's been, a working city. And the Northern

22 Liberties Neighborhood Plan, which includes

23 the water front, but also includes the whole

24 neighborhood, emphasizes the need to retain

25 and maintain whenever possible industrial uses

2 which are compatible with the mixed use

3 character of the neighborhood.

4 And I think that principle should

5 carry over to the river front, which is to say

6 that we should not have a river front simply

7 of retail uses and residential uses. We

8 should maintain manufacturing uses where

9 appropriate and we should even maintain light

10 industrial and artisanal uses mixed in with

11 residential and commercial uses. I think that

12 does justice to the heritage of our city and

13 obviously it's incredibly important in

14 creating and preserving jobs and maintaining

15 the urban fabric that we love about

16 Philadelphia.

17 Secondly, I think greening of the

18 water front is crucial and important. And all

19 too often environmental concerns get treated

20 as a kind of extra boutique concern that

21 aren't really important to the core of what we

22 need. And that's not true. There is precious

23 little land left on the Delaware River Front

24 that you can see when you're not on the river

25 front and that you can get to and that you can

2 actually do something useful once you get

3 there. There are piers going out into the

4 river that need to be claimed and preserved

5 for the public as green park areas for public

6 recreation and for public use for enjoyment

7 and for health and for the use and

8 preservation of true public access which is

9 fast disappearing on the river front.

10 This also includes the need to have

11 greenways and mass transit pathways so that

12 people can get up and down the river and from

13 the neighborhoods to the river front. The

14 idea that the river belongs to all of us and

15 that we all have to have guaranteed access is

16 an idea that has atrophied in recent years and

17 we need to be very strong and stand up for

18 that.

19 And any river front plans has to get

20 down to specifics. In other words, where

21 exactly do we propose to put public access and

22 create public spaces? There has to be some

23 point in our river front planning discussions

24 where we sit down to the nuts and bolts and

25 say, This is going to go here and that's going

2 to go there, and we don't want this here, we

3 want it over there. And that's key or else

4 we're never going to have public access if we

5 keep articulating it as a vague principle and

6 don't actually start targeting areas of the

7 river front where we want to preserve that

8 public access.

9 Finally, the most important thing is

10 we need a true public and community process.

11 We certainly need to do river front planning

12 right, but we need to do it. And we've tried

13 to do it right for many, many years and we

14 haven't actually done it. There needs to be a

15 process where communities and community

16 organizations have integral input into the

17 nuts and bolts of planning. And I'm

18 encouraged by some recent developments that

19 indicate that there might actually be such an

20 advisory process for river front planning

21 going forward.

22 And there has to be a committment

23 among elected officals at all levels of

24 government to actually implement this thing.

25 And that includes, as I mentioned before,

2 considering things like getting state riparian

3 rights for certain piers given to the city so

4 the city can make public land for the public.

5 So we need a real political commitment and we

6 need the political will to include the public

7 and to actually make this stuff happen.

8 So to me those are the three things

9 that we need, we need to preserve the mixed

10 character of the uses in the city, we need to

11 green the river front and provide true green

12 public access. And we need to have a public

13 process that includes true accountability and

14 a concrete commitment of elected officials to

15 get this done with public input.

16 As a final note I would just say

17 that I think we have great models for how to

18 do this. And we also have city chartered

19 non-profit organizations that are great models

20 for how not to do water front planning and we

21 need to move away from that model and towards

22 a more open and accountable process. Thank

23 you.

24 MR. DOUGHERTY: I'd like to welcome

25 and thank Matt for his comments and Richie for

2 his comments.

3 Marie Lederer.

4 REPRESENTATIVE LEDERER: I'm the

5 State Representative for this district. I

6 live on Shackamaxon Street, one block off the

7 river, one of the proposed sites. I have

8 lived there for 50 years. I've seen it change

9 in a way that could be better, but could be

10 worse.

11 My concern, one of the concerns I

12 have, is the fact that 3,000 new condos will

13 be built within a mile and-a-half along the

14 river. And true, the developers guarantee and

15 the ordinance guarantees that they will have

16 their own indoor on-site parking. But where

17 are these cars going to drive?

18 Add 3,000 condos -- you can't hear?

19 Add the 3,000 condos to the casino

20 traffic and the buses and I really wonder what

21 kind of planning we have so that the traffic

22 doesn't overtake the neighborhoods.

23 There never has been a plan for the

24 water front, a complete plan. I hope that

25 this results in one.

2 The eleven mega nightclubs that we

3 had in a mile and-a-half radius on Delaware

4 Avenue created havoc as far as traffic was

5 concerned. Ambulances couldn't get through,

6 fire engines couldn't get through, it was

7 really a complete nightmare. I don't want to

8 see that happen again.

9 I don't know whether there's any

10 plan to remove the beautiful strip that's in

11 the middle of Delaware Avenue in order to make

12 more traffic lanes, but certainly PennDot will

13 speak to us and perhaps they have a plan.

14 I know that there's talk about

15 removing the 43 bus, which is one of the only

16 sources of public transportation on Delaware

17 Avenue and Columbus Boulevard. Penn Treaty

18 Park Place, where my office is presently, has

19 500 employees in that building. The bus

20 service would be cut. These are the things

21 that we have to settle before any definite

22 plan goes into operation.

23 I'm thrilled that this symposium is

24 happening because we need help. We need help

25 in planning this properly. Thank you so much.

2 MR. DOUGHERTY: Thank you, Marie.

3 Also with us, joining us, is Rene

4 Goodwin, who is the Riverfront Community

5 United spokesperson and president.

6 MS. GOODWIN: My name is Rene

7 Goodwin. I'm a lifelong member of Pennsport

8 before it was Pennsport. I have been serving

9 as the Chair of Riverfront Communities United,

10 although I am not here representing that

11 particular group today. I'm not even here

12 representing Pennsport because our President,

13 Mr. Dougherty, can adequately do that, I'm

14 sure.

15 Who am I representing? Well, my

16 grandparents got off the boat a long time ago

17 from Poland, thought it was California, it

18 wasn't. They were Polish, you know. I can

19 say that, I'm both blonde and Polish. They

20 lived in a house on Ellsworth Street all of

21 their lives here in this country. They bore

22 their children, they gave birth to their

23 children in that house, they raised them in

24 that house. My grandfather walked to his job

25 up in Kensington at a metal manufacturing

2 company every day until the day he took a

3 stroke. My grandmother devoted her life to

4 raising her family in that community.

5 But you know what, they weren't

6 really unique because around the turn of the

7 century, in particular, there were thousands

8 of families who came from Ireland and Poland

9 and Russia, Ukrainia and settled all along the

10 communities around the river front. Maybe I'm

11 representing them.

12 I've always thought of the water

13 front and the people who live in the water

14 front as ethnically diverse, culturally rich

15 and financially very resourceful and

16 resilient. If you look at the history of the

17 water front, the water front has always been

18 at the heart of the economic life of this

19 entire region, not just this city. It

20 continues to do that. It goes through

21 metamorphose after metamorphose. It

22 transforms itself from a manufacturing

23 community to a high-end residential community

24 to a service community, but it lives, it

25 survives.

2 There's enough creativity in this

3 room alone to come up with a cornucopia of

4 creative ideas on how best to save and develop

5 the water front. My concern is where do we

6 find the resources? That's my particular

7 interest. Can we come up with enough of the

8 funds required from our own pockets as

9 taxpayers? How do we find inducements and

10 enticements and requirements should that be

11 necessary from the private sector, from the

12 developers, even from the private sector who

13 is not developing along the water front.

14 The water front is the jewel of this

15 city. We all have a responsibility, even

16 those with very deep pockets. To see that it

17 is accessible and treasured as it is. Thank

18 you.

19 MR. DOUGHERTY: Thank you, Rene.

20 What I'd like to do is, we'll move

21 right into the Delaware Valley Regional

22 Planning Manager, Ted Dahlberg.

23 And if you don't mind, I'll ask you

24 a question myself to start off.

25 In the Pennsport community, the Reed

2 Street/Washington Avenue exit, all four

3 casinos who are looking to put their business

4 on the water front are looking at that area as

5 their main point of access and egress. When

6 we look at the transportation improvement

7 plan, be it the 12-year or the 30-year plan,

8 there's absolutely no mention of doing

9 anything with the Reed Street or Washington

10 Avenue off-ramp.

11 Things like that are very concerning

12 to the community. You know, if we were to

13 leave here today and try to get down Delaware

14 Avenue toward the Ikea site it would take you

15 every bit of 45 minutes. So when you take a

16 look at the possibility of that being, again,

17 the main point of access and it's not, you

18 know, it hasn't been in any of the

19 transportation improvement plan forecasts,

20 that concerns the community, it concerns

21 ourself.

22 And they're the type of questions

23 that we, as a community, have been dealing

24 with and trying to get answers for. So I

25 really appreciate you taking the time to come

2 out.

3 And what we'll do is, we'll probably

4 direct the questions directly to Ted. You

5 don't have to go through, you know, the Chair

6 here, you know. But if it gets out of hand

7 I'll interject.

8 But that's the type of, you know,

9 quality question that we get from Joe

10 Neighbor.

11 MR. DAHLBERG: Thank you very much.

12 I do have a Power Point presentation

13 that I'd like to kind of segway into and I

14 hope I respond to your remark and question in

15 that context.

16 Can we pull this over a little bit?

17 Okay. I'm a transportation planner,

18 when I talk I like to have slides and Power

19 Point presentations. So I have about 24

20 slides here, some maps and photographs that I

21 hope will tell you a little bit about our

22 agency and some of the work that I'm doing.

23 Making the Delaware Valley a Great

24 Region to Live and Work In.

25 And I think that's why we're all

2 here. That's certainly what our agency is all

3 about and certainly the Delaware River is a

4 primary asset to making that happen.

5 Okay. Can everybody hear me?

6 So my talking points today will be

7 to tell you a little bit about our agency,

8 also some of my current research.

9 Mr. Dougherty was kind enough to

10 promote me to Manager of the Delaware Valley

11 Regional Planning Commission, but in reality

12 I'm the Manager of Freight Planning so that's

13 principally what I'm going to talk about

14 today. We've done some current work in this

15 area. And also like to talk to you a little

16 bit about our long range plans and some other

17 initiatives going on that impact the water

18 front.

19 Here is a key term for you, MPO,

20 Metropolitan Planning Organization. Each

21 region in the United States over 50,000 people

22 has an officially designated MPO. And we

23 serve that function for the nine county

24 Delaware Valley Region. We're the sixth

25 largest region in the country. We work very

2 closely with the two states, PennDOT, New

3 Jersey DOT. We work very closely with the

4 transit agencies, SEPTA and New Jersey

5 Transit. And we also work very closely with

6 our cities and our municipalities. We have

7 close to 352 municipalities.

8 Our role and vision I think is to

9 kind of provide the big picture for things

10 going on in the region. But we're also very

11 concerned with kind of what's happening down

12 at the local level as well. So we straddle

13 those two objectives.

14 We're an agency of about 100 people.

15 We deal with all kinds of transportation

16 issues, aviation, public transportation, and

17 in my case, freight movement. That's become

18 something about 15 years ago the federal law,

19 ICE-T, directed the MPOs and state DOTs to get

20 more proactive in the freight area.

21 And there's a couple reasons you

22 want to do that. One is that as we shift from

23 essentially a manufacturing economy to a

24 consumer economy the sheer volume and movement

25 of freight is rapidly growing. Some of the

2 experts at the national level are predicting

3 and projecting a movement of a doubling of

4 cargo by the year 2026 to satisfy our

5 seemingly insatiable consumer needs.

6 Another aspect, as several of the

7 panelists alluded to, including Representative

8 Keller, is the economic impact and the

9 benefits that can be derived, whether it's at

10 a port facility, or some of the value added

11 activities that take place in the region like

12 at a refinery, those create really important

13 family level kinds of jobs. So that's really

14 important.

15 The other thing is that, as

16 consumers, something like the waterway and

17 cargo that's arriving here, whether it's

18 bananas or oil, helps keep our costs down of

19 goods that we're consuming here, they can get

20 here cheaper. So that's really important.

21 One of the things that is important

22 in my job and that I have to undertake is to

23 educate people about freight and maybe get

24 them excited about it and feel good about it.

25 So one of the things we undertook recently was

2 a regional scan, a snapshot, a day in the

3 life, if you will, of freight movement in the

4 Delaware Valley.

5 The event was actually conducted on

6 Wednesday, September the 20th. And I proved

7 to myself that I can still pull an

8 all-nighter. I was up the entire day. We

9 undertook a number of activities. For

10 example, we inventoried every truck rest

11 facility in the Delaware Valley to see what

12 the utilization rate was for truck parking.

13 And that's both the New Jersey side and the

14 Pennsylvania side at truck rest facilities as

15 well as service plazas on the turnpike.

16 A couple months back down in the

17 South Philadelphia area there was a facility

18 there, the Walt Whitman Truck Plaza, it

19 closed. That means that now the Philadelphia

20 Southeastern Pennsylvania region has no

21 privately operated truck rest facility. And

22 when you consider all the trucks and, you

23 know, the deliveries that they're making, that

24 seems like a real gap in the system. So that

25 was one thing that we looked at.

2 We also worked with PennDOT. We

3 took traffic counts of trucks on the major

4 highways. We also got data from truck

5 activity on the bridges and the turnpikes. We

6 were down at the airport surveying aviation

7 cargo. And we also worked very closely with

8 the local maritime community to see, hey,

9 what's happening on the river.

10 Let's take a look, September the

11 20th.

12 Here's an image provided by the

13 maritime exchange of all the barges and ships

14 that were on the river at 8 o'clock in the

15 morning that morning. So it's not just ships,

16 it's also the barges. And you can see --

17 first of all, you'll note, kind of maybe

18 different from some other ports, if you will,

19 we're a linear port, we're 90 miles up the

20 river. And there are facilities located from

21 Bucks County at the old Fairless steel

22 facility, all the way down to the State of

23 Delaware and so on. So there's a lot of

24 commercial activity, I think as this graphic

25 very clearly shows you.

2 You will note on it there are a

3 couple of clusters of activity. For example,

4 the refineries down in the Paulsboro and

5 Delaware County area. You also see that there

6 are even a number of barges on the Schuylkill

7 River, you know, Philadelphia's other water

8 front area.

9 Lastly, you will see that there are

10 a number of ships located between the bridges

11 here. And this has certainly become, from the

12 Walt Whitman to the Ben Franklin and also

13 Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, this is really

14 where the bulk of the general cargo activities

15 is occurring.

16 I checked and did a little research

17 on the nature of these ships and we determined

18 that that day some of the ships were coming

19 from Brazil, Nigeria, China and Germany. And

20 what are they carrying? Fruit, steel, oil and

21 containers. So it's a quite a variety, quite

22 a lot of activity.

23 I also got some reports in terms of

24 enforcement from the Coast Guard and also the

25 U.S. Customs. That's a very big aspect of

2 controlling and monitoring this commercial

3 activity.

4 So this is, you know, this took

5 place roughly a month ago, we're still going

6 through the results, but that was the maritime

7 side, very active that day and also very

8 representative. And I'm told from the

9 Maritime Exchange that this year we have a

10 total volume on the river, including Delaware,

11 of an increase of over 100 ships over this

12 point last year. So there's more ships

13 coming.

14 The other aspect is this --

15 important for us at the Planning Commission,

16 and thinking about communities, you've seen a

17 lot about deepening the river and the main

18 channel, that's certainly to accommodate

19 bigger ships. Bigger ships also means that

20 there's a need for increased capacity on the

21 land side because you have these bigger ships

22 coming in, maybe more containers, more cargo,

23 they're going to be pushing out a lot more

24 into the local community upon their arrival.

25 So, for example, container ships,

2 some of them they carry up to, say 3,000

3 containers. Other ports, we may never see

4 these, but other ports may be hosting ships of

5 like eight and 9,000 containers at a time. So

6 that puts a lot of pressure on your highway

7 and your railroad access.

8 Something else that we did that day,

9 kind of building on my previous comment, was

10 to, on September 20th we had about 50 planners

11 out looking at facilities and rail and port

12 facilities to -- and I'll show you some

13 pictures of what was the trucking activity

14 like on these short connector routes that get

15 the commercial vehicles from the interstate

16 into the port or the rail facility. That's

17 really where the trucks kind of meet the

18 community, if you will.

19 We have an example here where 95 is

20 largely a bridge. When you get off of it,

21 suddenly you're down into the community, we

22 have, we have ten facilities, about 29 miles,

23 I think it's actually our inventory has

24 increased to 29 miles, of connectors carrying

25 over 100 trucks a day to these intermodal

2 facilities. And they've been granted a

3 special status in our planning process in that

4 they're eligible for National Highway System

5 funding. That's one of the funding pots that

6 we administer.

7 Two of the facilities I'm showing

8 you here most germane to Philadelphia, Packer

9 Avenue Marine Terminal and South Philadelphia.

10 The NHS connector, again, that last mile, that

11 last critical link between the modes is

12 essentially in this area designated as Old

13 Delaware Avenue extending from Piers 82-84

14 south to the south gate of Packer Avenue

15 Marine Terminal. I don't know if you can see

16 the yellow line, that's basically the

17 connector.

18 So without a doubt, the epicenter of

19 freight movement for our region is South

20 Philadelphia. We have the biggest facilities

21 there for handling cargo. All three Class 1

22 railroads serve South Philadelphia. As a

23 matter of fact, Norfolk Southern has just

24 built a brand new intermodal rail facility

25 there. CSX has a very large and modern yard

2 there. And also the Canadian Pacific serves

3 that area. That's the epicenter. That's

4 where it's happening in terms of freight, both

5 on the port and the rail side. And really

6 good highway access too, 76 and 95.

7 The other port we were interested in

8 in Philadelphia is the Tioga Marine Terminal

9 in North Philadelphia. And I heard some

10 representatives from that area. And that

11 connector there is a little bit complex

12 because of the configuration of the ramps at

13 Allegheny Avenue, the northbound to the 95 is

14 actually achieved by Castor Avenue.

15 So with our critical eye and trying

16 to assure, I guess seamless is the operative

17 word, interphase and connections between the

18 modes, there were maybe ten or so items that

19 we were looking for to facilitate the movement

20 and connections between the modes.

21 One of them would be overhead bridge

22 clearances. And I apologize for the darkness

23 of the picture, but I think you get a sense

24 there. This is actually Penn Terminals in

25 Delaware County. You can get a sense that

2 there are restrictions on occasion for pushing

3 cargo through these connector highways. This

4 is an overhead railroad bridge that would

5 preclude really any kind of general cargo or

6 any kind of large cargo from going into and

7 out of this port.

8 Here's another aspect, another

9 aspect of the design and location of facility

10 gates. That's really important. The facility

11 gates, where they are located, actually has

12 ultimately an impact on traffic into and out

13 of the facility. You can see the trucks here

14 are starting to kind of back up onto the local

15 highway here.

16 Again, as I mentioned, the trucks

17 coming through the local neighborhoods as they

18 make their way from the interstate highway to

19 the intermodal facility. The trucks are

20 heavy, 80,000 pounds and even heavier. In

21 some cases in international cargo you get

22 volumes and tonnage that even exceeds that

23 limit. This is a pretty good example actually

24 over in the Camden area of some pavement that

25 needs attention.

2 So again, the idea is to highlight

3 some of these things in our planning process.

4 These are things that show some sensitivities

5 and sensibilities regarding freight movement

6 which has its own needs, if you will. There's

7 kind of a popular phrase that says that

8 freight doesn't vote, but we're trying to

9 assure that some of these things are

10 represented in the planning process.

11 Rail access. Again, another aspect,

12 this is Pier 82-84, not too far from here, but

13 one of the largest cocoa bean facilities in

14 the country where the Hershey's Chocolate

15 receives their cocoa beans from as it comes

16 from Africa. So the assuring good rail access

17 as an alternative, perhaps, to trucking is

18 really important.

19 Highway rail interphase. It's a

20 little difficult to see, but there's a rail

21 spur, this is down in South Philadelphia,

22 there's a rail spur here that cuts across the

23 main access point of Packer Avenue Marine

24 Terminal at Packer Avenue and it serves the

25 old Publicker facility just north of the Walt

2 Whitman Bridge. What happens is, or can

3 happen is, there's a train sliding through

4 this area here it can really cause the truck

5 traffic to back up rapidly and the trains sit

6 there for some amount of time.

7 The geometry of highway ramps. I'll

8 show you in this slide and another one that

9 commercial vehicles and big trucks have

10 special needs in terms of turning radii. And

11 here's an example here where this truck is all

12 the way into the opposing lane of traffic

13 trying to make a right-hand turn, just truly

14 inadequate.

15 Good signs, good directional signs

16 to and from. This is at the Tioga Marine

17 Terminal. For the drivers it's really

18 important to have good signage both to the

19 facility and at the facility gate and also

20 back to the facility as well. That's really

21 important. We try to emphasize that.

22 In some cases there's some conflicts

23 posed by on street parking. Here's

24 Columbus -- or Old Delaware Avenue again which

25 runs parallel to Columbus Boulevard. There's

2 so much, so much truck parking and other

3 vehicles here that it makes it kind of a

4 conflict for the vehicles that are operating

5 through here.

6 And you wouldn't want to be that car

7 sitting there as that truck makes the turn

8 there. That's actually Petty's Island over in

9 New Jersey. You can see this, they pulled the

10 stop bar pretty far back so that the truck can

11 make the turn there.

12 I guess now, so enough about freight

13 for a day and also our inventory of NHS

14 connectors. Here is something else we at MPO,

15 one of the things we have to do is prepare a

16 long range plan by law. And we have a plan

17 that's been prepared out to the year 2026,

18 actually.

19 Our theoretical construct, if you

20 will, for freight movement is to emphasize two

21 major axes of facilities, one is the

22 north-south corridor and one is an east-west

23 corridor. In the north-south corridor, just

24 like the east-west one, it's very multi-modal.

25 It includes the Delaware River, it includes

2 I-95, it includes 295, it also includes the

3 CSX main line that comes kind of parallel as

4 I-95 through the city and Bucks County and

5 Delaware County. And the idea is to focus on

6 these facilities and make sure that they are

7 well suited to accommodate truck and rail and

8 ship activity.

9 The best initiatives in the country

10 have really had this corridor focus when it

11 comes to freight planning. And I think that,

12 here you can see some of these things, the

13 main idea is to improve safety, velocity,

14 reliability, costs, and also mitigate any

15 local impacts for those facilities.

16 There's some cases, for example,

17 where they've instituted what are called

18 idle-free corridors where they try to provide

19 truck rest facilities that have anti-idling

20 equipment so trucks can turn off their engines

21 while the drivers are sleeping. So

22 emphasizing those corridors I think is a

23 really important approach for us as we move

24 forward.

25 Wow, that's really tough to see.

2 But one of the things that we did do in the

3 plan, in our long range plan, and I can get

4 you copies or if anyone's interested, is that

5 we met with various people from the port and

6 so on, especially the port. And we're showing

7 here the locations where we envision major

8 port and rail capacity increases.

9 And some of them are kind of within

10 this area. For example, South Port down at

11 the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, is a plan

12 that would marginalize Piers 122 and 124 at

13 the eastern end of the Navy Base and greatly

14 enhance the port activity down in that

15 location. The Port PRPA -- this is

16 coordinating with PRPA, the South Jersey Port

17 Corporation and others. There are even some

18 private facilities on here as well.

19 And I guess one -- another slide

20 that I wanted to show you is that freight kind

21 of by its nature is very multi-jurisdictional

22 and tends to kind of take us outside of our

23 own region. And here there are a number of

24 actual maritime initiatives going on right now

25 that may bring more freight to the region.

2 One of them is called Rapid or Agile

3 Port. This has to do with the transport of

4 military cargo, Philadelphia is one of, I

5 think, 14 now strategic military ports in the

6 United States. So that's a new commodity

7 within the past couple years that is flowing

8 in and out of the region. The Department of

9 Defense is actually, I think, the largest

10 shipper in the world. And so some of that

11 cargo is being handled here.

12 I think that's the main point I want

13 to make about this slide.

14 So just try to give you an overview

15 of some things we're doing at the regional

16 level with respect to freight.

17 I don't know if I answer any

18 questions now?

19 MR. DOUGHERTY: Yeah.

20 MS. GOODWIN: May I?

21 MR. DOUGHERTY: Yes.

22 MS. GOODWIN: Thank you,

23 Mr. Dahlburg. I have two questions, please.

24 There seems to be, based on what you're

25 hearing, and I'm very pleased to hear, plans

2 to continue to enhance freight activity along

3 the port. As you know, there are four casino

4 sites that are proposed for along this same

5 area. We know two sites are going to happen,

6 whether they're both going to be along the

7 water front, we don't know. I'm particularly

8 concerned with Foxwoods, but also as a

9 resident of Philadelphia I'm concerned with

10 all.

11 What sort of impact -- how do you

12 see the huge amount of traffic, for example,

13 Foxwoods is proposing that by three years

14 after opening they will be servicing 600 to

15 900 or so -- 9 million people. I mean, that's

16 a lot of vehicular traffic. You've already

17 indicated that there's a really close tie

18 between the train service, the rail service

19 and the ships, you know. So I'm interested to

20 know how you anticipate those two activities

21 co-existing together?

22 Secondly, there's the whole question

23 of the rail line in the middle of Columbus

24 Boulevard which I understand is controlled and

25 owned by CSX, with whom would a casino

2 applicant have to negotiate to assume those

3 rights or to take over some of those rights?

4 And lastly, I know this week that

5 the President signed into legislation a port

6 security bill, how do you see that impacting

7 the port activity?

8 MR. DAHLBERG: Okay. Wow, there's

9 some good questions there. Let's see.

10 With respect to the first question,

11 there was a reference made earlier about the

12 co-existence, I think, of many different uses

13 on the water front. And that's certainly

14 something we would support.

15 It appears that a lot of the

16 maritime activity along the river seems to be

17 kind of creeping slowly to the south. Just as

18 a, maybe from my regional perspective. The

19 South Jersey Port Corporation is opening up a

20 new facility at Paulsboro. I mentioned the

21 South Port facility at the Packer Avenue

22 Marine Terminal.

23 Our hope would be that through the,

24 through effective connectors and kind of

25 promoting maybe more of a carrot approach, if

2 you will, with good interstates and good

3 connectors that maybe there would be kind of a

4 separation, if you will, of the traffic

5 relative to those different kinds of

6 activities.

7 The second question?

8 MS. GOODWIN: CSX controlling those.

9 Because Foxwoods, for example, if Foxwoods

10 were to be the approved applicant, in

11 accordance with their mitigation plans for

12 traffic control they have not taken any

13 consideration, at least to my knowledge, into

14 account for the control of that middle line.

15 That is recessed. The CSX line there is not

16 on a level plane. You can't build roads that

17 way.

18 MR. DAHLBERG: CSX does have a

19 really active representative here in

20 Philadelphia. Perhaps we can engage him in

21 some conversation.

22 One of the things I know in selling

23 the region to other economic activity and

24 ports around the world is we do try to

25 emphasize the three Class 1 rail access that

2 come in here. These are the main rail,

3 interstate railroads that serve the port. So

4 let's see if we can work together more closely

5 with CSX.

6 With respect to port security,

7 that's not really an area that I do that much

8 in, so.

9 MS. GOODWIN: Thank you.

10 MR. DOUGHERTY: State Representative

11 Keller.

12 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: Ted, thank

13 you. As you know, I'm very interested in the

14 freight movement, especially along the water

15 front. I believe that creates the kind of

16 jobs we're after. And I believe that it's a

17 mandate from the Federal government to try to

18 create as many jobs as we can from that.

19 You have touched on South Port.

20 What's the MPO's role in helping to develop

21 South Port?

22 MR. DAHLBERG: I would say South

23 Port, again, is this bold new initiative for

24 the southern end of Packer Avenue Marine

25 Terminal. I would say that our role is to

2 kind of put it on a map, as we've done here.

3 I would say to a lot of you that a lot of

4 other MPOs probably do not even have port

5 facilities show up in their plan, just to kind

6 of get it into people's thinking.

7 The other thing that we're working

8 on is improving highway access, working with

9 PennDot and the City of Philadelphia, to

10 extend Old Delaware Avenue down there and pull

11 away some of that traffic maybe from Broad

12 Street so there's good access at the eastern

13 end.

14 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: Thank you.

15 Because that's exactly where I was going. We

16 believe involved in port industrial side of

17 this equation that, as you say, the increase

18 in freight will be at least seven percent a

19 year for the next 15 to 20 years. We're going

20 to double the freight coming into -- in ports

21 into the United States. And there's no way

22 around it. We're going to continue to buy and

23 we're going to continue to need this imports.

24 All indications I have that New York

25 is now what you talked about, land locked.

2 They have no -- in their port they have no

3 more room to build out, they're land locked,

4 they can't expand their port facilities any

5 more than they are. And that's the number one

6 port on the East Coast.

7 That gives Philadelphia an

8 opportunity that we have been waiting 100

9 years to get. We will be able to capture the

10 freight that cannot go into New York. It has

11 to come somewhere. We're ideally located, but

12 probably better than New York. You can bring

13 a ship into New York and deliver your

14 container faster even to New York than they

15 can if it lands in New York. We're able to

16 get the freight out quicker onto the highways

17 into New York faster than they can get it out

18 of their own port into the facilities. So

19 we're ideally situated.

20 And I'm very interested in South

21 Port. I believe that's where we capture that

22 freight. And that's a lot of jobs. And

23 that's a lot of good jobs.

24 But as you say, you're talking about

25 improving the access. I just looked at the

2 PennDot plan for that road that was -- that

3 South whatever it's called, South Delaware

4 Avenue. I believe that cuts our facility in

5 half. It will no longer -- we will no longer

6 have the ability to expand our port.

7 All the land that's been laying down

8 there nobody's wanted all those years, where

9 we'll be able to expand South Port and get

10 this industrial work in here. You guys are

11 going to put a road right down the middle of

12 it and we're not going to be able to expand.

13 It's just mind boggling. I mean, how come

14 that was never taken into consideration when

15 you planned the road that we need to expand

16 South Port, we need to capture this new cargo

17 and, by the way, we are going to put a road

18 down there where we can't capture it now. It

19 doesn't make sense to me.

20 That's one of the questions we need

21 to answer today. And that's why we're talking

22 about having this. We've never been able to

23 get these answers. And that road just

24 appeared with no, no future idea of -- I mean,

25 everybody is talking about South Port, yeah,

2 we're going to get South Port. But at the

3 same time you're talking about building South

4 Port and you're talking about building a road

5 that kills it. I don't understand it.

6 So that's why we're having this

7 symposium and one of questions I would like

8 the answer to today.

9 MR. DAHLBERG: On the positive side,

10 I wanted to --

11 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: Hubbida,

12 Hubbida.

13 MR. DAHLBERG: I think Mr. Keller

14 was talking about the, some of the positive

15 benefits of freight. One statistic I heard at

16 one point is that every container that enters

17 the region, somewhat like a hotel visitor, if

18 you will, generates a thousand dollars or more

19 in wages, local taxes and corporate benefits.

20 So it's just one way to think about the

21 benefits of a container.

22 Another aspect like the South Port

23 idea that's kind of in the vanguard of freight

24 planning has to do with freight villages. And

25 the idea behind that is to derive some value

2 added and provide value added activity for

3 some of the cargo, whether it's debagging

4 cocoa beans or some other aspect, the idea is

5 to take the freight and perhaps do something

6 with it before it gets shipped out of the

7 region, and that creates additional

8 employment.

9 Are one of you folks going to

10 deal --

11 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: I was going

12 to say how about answering the question?

13 MR. DOUGHERTY: What we have here --

14 what we will do is, what we have, Chuck Davies

15 here representing PennDot. So do you want

16 to -- we can make this more of a round table

17 type discussion if you would like to

18 interject, and if there's any questions that

19 transcend both of you, feel free to jump in.

20 Because I'm sitting here looking,

21 I'm looking at some of our friends on the

22 right hand side who are more interested in

23 open air green space and amphitheaters. And

24 we look, some of our other concerns are here

25 about water and sewer. Then I look, some of

2 our other concerns are talking about the

3 gaming. But there's also a major component of

4 this water front, you know, and neighborhood,

5 a part of this neighborhood that survives on

6 the industrial aspect. And you know, there

7 hasn't been any plan to state who goes where

8 and how do we blend them all together.

9 And these are just some of the

10 demographics now that, you know, State

11 Representative Keller, State Representative

12 Taylor, State Representative Lederer face

13 every day and we're just trying to get out

14 there and get a feel.

15 Why don't you pull that mike a

16 little bit closer.

17 We're going to change the tape here.

18 Okay. Ready? Let's go.

19 We're just going to let Chuck finish

20 answering that question then we're going to go

21 right over to New Kensington.

22 MR. DAVIES: PennDot is involved in

23 the Food Distribution Center project as the

24 Representative said.

25 MR. DOUGHERTY: Just speak louder.

2 MS. GOODWIN: Little bit slower,

3 just a little slower.

4 MR. DAVIES: You're all going to be

5 disappointed in what I have to say.

6 We are involved in the Food

7 Distribution Center project, of course. There

8 is a temporary and a permanent phase to this.

9 We have been working with the people who are

10 building the new center at -- in their new

11 location. We have been working out the

12 alignment with them. I'm a bit taken aback

13 by, you know, any sentiment that, you know,

14 that somehow this is not going to work for the

15 site. We thought we had every point of view,

16 you know, in the area that had an interest

17 that had come forward, you know.

18 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: I'm not

19 worried about a point of view. You're traffic

20 people. You tell me how you do another 4,000

21 truck movements over this temporary road,

22 which I believe will be a permanent road, all

23 right. You're getting 4,000 truck movements

24 and we just had the MPO say that rail spur,

25 we're going to have to do something with it.

2 You're putting 4,000 trucks over six at-grade

3 crossings. And you're saying we're not

4 supposed to say anything about that, that's

5 good? How are we getting ready to capture

6 this new freight when that road goes right

7 down in the middle and we are no longer be

8 able to expand South Port?

9 That's why we're here, to get

10 answers. And I know you're going to tell me

11 you're not going to give me the answer I want.

12 But you're traffic people. How do you do

13 that? How do you build a road that doesn't

14 take care of the problem?

15 MR. DAVIES: Like I said, it's a

16 temporary solution. A bridge of this size --

17 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: How much

18 does that temporary solution cost?

19 MR. DAVIES: I don't have costs for

20 you, Representative.

21 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: How much

22 does the road cost?

23 MR. DAVIES: Let me just say this,

24 that the bridge --

25 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: No, we're

2 here to get answers, would you please give me

3 an answer?

4 MR. DAVIES: The answer is this, the

5 bridge that goes over the tracks, that goes

6 over the wetlands, that gets you to the

7 location of the new Food Distribution Center

8 is a very complicated thing to build and it's

9 going to take time. It's going to take time

10 to permit, it's going to take time to acquire

11 all the clearances --

12 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: Is this a

13 new bridge in addition to the temporary road?

14 MR. DAVIES: Yes.

15 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: How much

16 will the new bridge cost?

17 MR. DAVIES: Estimates vary, it's

18 probably going to be about $75 million

19 dollars.

20 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: $75 million

21 dollars. And that's how far away?

22 MR. DAVIES: If I had to estimate a

23 time here, it's just an estimate, I would say

24 we are at least four years away from

25 construction.

2 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: I believe

3 that is not a good use or good solution to

4 what we are trying to capture in the future.

5 I'm for the Food Distribution

6 Center, we want to keep it here in

7 Philadelphia, I don't believe we should build

8 a road that is really -- it will hurt what

9 we're trying to do in the port, it will hurt

10 trying to capture. We just heard the MPO say

11 these at-grade crossings are bad. How do we

12 do it? These are one of the questions we got

13 to get answers here. I think that is flawed

14 and will always be flawed. We better take a

15 long, hard look at that. I would like the MPO

16 to get involved and take a look at that too.

17 I think what we're doing is wrong and we got

18 to sit down and get better plans than we have

19 now. This is another square peg in a round

20 hole. You're just jamming that road down

21 there. We better take our time and do this

22 the right way.

23 MR. DOUGHERTY: Now, again, that is

24 a hardcore industrial conversation. But if

25 you -- in the intermediate, all the truck

2 traffic flow will be -- that's going toward

3 Center City will be probably coming up

4 Delaware Avenue, correct?

5 MR. DAVIES: Yes.

6 MR. DOUGHERTY: Okay. So when we

7 sit here and we start to talk about how does

8 the industrial aspect connect with the gaming

9 aspect, connect with the open air space,

10 amphitheaters and green space and things along

11 these lines. It's nice to have a park where

12 our kids can go and walk and take in this

13 beautiful view. But to add a significant

14 amount of truck traffic and pollution and all

15 the entities that go -- peripherals that go

16 along with that and to say in the intermediate

17 there's no place to dump that.

18 And these are conversations and

19 questions I know from our Civic Association at

20 the time we address to our leadership in the

21 political community and say, Hey, we don't

22 have a problem with you reworking the Fruit

23 Produce Center, we know a lot of people make

24 their living, we know the access to this type

25 of product keeps the cost down in this

2 community. But we also -- there has to be

3 other avenues. They just can't make a

4 political decision or a quick decision based

5 on what's in front of you that time.

6 You might have -- you know, it's

7 what neighborhood screams loudest. And at the

8 end we don't want to send it through the Broad

9 Street corridor, we don't want to send it up

10 through the Passyunk, the back-end corridor,

11 then we just dump it on Delaware Avenue

12 because there's really no one down there

13 screaming.

14 So again, you know, I know sometimes

15 you get lost in these conversations here

16 because we're talking about the impact and the

17 amount of dollars and jobs that the industrial

18 industry still brings to a lot of our

19 community, there's still a much larger picture

20 that eventually transcends all of us because

21 this traffic is going no place but on Delaware

22 Avenue.

23 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: Let me for

24 one second while I'm on the thought, I'll lose

25 it if I don't, the temporary road that's being

2 built and the $75 million dollar bridge which

3 will turn into a $150 million dollar bridge,

4 do we have a Federal match for those monies?

5 MR. DAVIES: To my knowledge it is

6 not going to be used.

7 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: So we're

8 not -- if we do it, if we go through the MPO

9 and get on the TIP and have the MPO put us on,

10 am I correct in saying that the state would

11 only have to put up 20 percent of the money

12 and the feds will put up 80 percent of the

13 money to build these highways or bridges?

14 MR. DAVIES: It's actually not

15 intended to be a state highway.

16 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: If we go on

17 the TIP, if we go through the MPO and get them

18 to put us on their plan, and will the Federal

19 government then share 80 percent of the cost

20 if we go that route?

21 MR. DAVIES: It's a possibility,

22 Representative, but --

23 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: But we're

24 not doing that. We're going to say the state

25 taxpayers are going to pay an additional

2 $75 million dollars upwards to get -- and how

3 much is the state paying for the Food

4 Distribution Center now?

5 MR. DAVIES: The Center itself, I

6 don't have that figure.

7 REPRESENTATIVE KELLER: That's

8 somewhere between $75 and $100 million

9 dollars. So we're going to pay $75 and

10 $100 million dollars to build a facility and

11 then just to get at that facility we're going

12 to spend another $75 or $100 million dollars,

13 almost 100 percent of what we're putting into

14 the facility. I don't think it makes sense.

15 There's not a better way to do this?

16 Hubbida Hubbida. Thank you very

17 much.

18 Marie.

19 REPRESENTATIVE LEDERER: There's one

20 aspect that we didn't touch on, the almighty

21 buses that come along with the casinos.

22 Nobody talked about access and egress for the

23 large number of buses that will be using the

24 casinos. So that's another aspect that needs

25 a great deal of planning.

2 When I talked to some of the people

3 in the casino industry they told me there

4 aren't going to be any buses. You and I know

5 better than that. There has to be a plan.

6 MR. DOUGHERTY: We also, while we

7 have Marie here and there's some, again, some

8 of the questions and concerns that came from

9 the people that are here today, where there's

10 some speculation on Richmond Street might be

11 moved to Delaware Avenue from Susquehanna

12 through Allegheny Avenue and possibly reopened

13 that way, that ramp. Is there any input we

14 can get on that?

15 MR. DAVIES: That is actually part

16 of the preliminary plan that we have to

17 relocate Delaware Avenue and part of Richmond

18 Street toward the river. And that's all going

19 to be done in part with the widening of the

20 viaduct. Delaware -- I'm sorry.

21 MR. DOUGHERTY: Some people are

22 having some difficulty. Maybe we are having

23 some difficulty with your mike, maybe we can

24 move this over here.

25 MR. DAVIES: Better?

2 MR. DOUGHERTY: Just speak into it.

3 MR. DAVIES: Sure.

4 It's a difficult thing to describe.

5 I have a sketch that we could look at later if

6 you'd like. But, yes, the preliminary plan is

7 for Delaware Avenue to move approximately 30,

8 40 feet in the direction toward the river and

9 to connect with the portion, that piece of

10 Delaware Avenue behind the Anderson Yards

11 north of Allegheny.

12 MR. DOUGHERTY: Okay. Is everybody

13 understanding and hearing that?

14 We are talking about the specific

15 ramp.

16 We apologize for this. We'll work

17 on this during the next break.

18 REPRESENTATIVE LEDERER: There seems

19 to be a plan to, at that intersection, the

20 cut-off, to close off Beach Street and give

21 that part of Beach Street to the casinos.

22 That shows on one of the PennDot maps. I'll

23 supply you with that. I don't have it with

24 me. But why would we give a city street to

25 the casino?

2 MR. DAVIES: The plans so far have

3 not been developed with the casinos in mind.

4 I remind you that the I-95 project has been

5 underway for some time. And Girard Avenue

6 interchange has been under design for some

7 years before anybody was talking about gaming.

8 So, you know, we have not made any, you know,

9 adjustments or accomodations for gaming.

10 The thing that we have done recently

11 is last summer asked DVRPC to give us a

12 revised traffic projection that accounts not

13 only for gaming but all the development in the

14 Girard Avenue interchange area so that we can

15 better plan for conditions as they exist.

16 Naturally, each one of those is going to be a

17 snapshot at the time it's taken.

18 But as far as the question, are we

19 accommodating a casino plan with this feature

20 and that feature on the Girard Avenue

21 interchange? The answer is no.

22 MR. DOUGHERTY: How about a

23 temporary ramp at Girard Street right now, is

24 that still in discussion?

25 MR. DAVIES: That has never been in

2 discussion, in fact.

3 MR. DOUGHERTY: It's strongly

4 rumored then.

5 MR. DAVIES: That is only a rumor.

6 It is untrue. There is no temporary ramp

7 included in our plan. None of the casinos has

8 come forward with an idea for a temporary

9 ramp. There is no funding for a temporary

10 ramp. It's not on the table.

11 MR. LEVINS: I have a question that

12 really touches on a lot of the questions that

13 were just raised here. And, you know, I

14 realize all businesses and government agencies

15 have to have a strategic plan that goes out

16 ten, 15 years. And it's very clear that you

17 have not -- neither Ted, perhaps, the Planning

18 Commission, or PennDot, has really taken into

19 consideration the changes that really no one

20 could have seen perhaps five years ago. And I

21 know businesses have to adjust their plans.

22 And, you know, is there a history

23 with your organization to make those kinds of

24 adjustments to accommodate perhaps increased

25 container opportunities and obviously the

2 casinos. Are you doing that? Are you

3 thinking about that? Obviously, your plans to

4 date have not captured those new developments.

5 MR. DAVIES: The casinos have each

6 made a short presentation to the district

7 office. And they have outlined, sketched

8 very, very briefly their plans, what they

9 would -- how they would connect, you know,

10 into their locations in terms of traffic. But

11 it's only been that, you know, it's just been

12 very brief, very much of an outline. And you

13 know, we haven't made any adjustments to what

14 we're going to do because obviously all this

15 is up in the air.

16 And so, you know, in reacting to the

17 casino proposals on the I-95 corridor in

18 particular, you know, there is just no

19 reaction on our part because obviously we

20 don't know what's going to happen. And every

21 time an engineer puts pen to paper it starts

22 costing money.

23 MR. RUBEN: Can I just briefly

24 follow up on that or --

25 MR. DOUGHERTY: Yeah, Matt, just let

2 me go to --

3 MR. RUBEN: Absolutely.

4 MR. DOUGHERTY: Yes, ma'am.

5 MS. THORPE: I don't know if we can

6 speak or not. Are we allowed to speak?

7 MR. DOUGHERTY: You're allowed to do

8 whatever you like.

9 MS. THORPE: Or can we just write

10 things?

11 I am Sarah Thorpe, I live in

12 Fishtown. And I can probably speak for a lot

13 of people in my neighborhood when I say that

14 we are actually pretty outraged that this can

15 happen to us. We understand that planning

16 takes a really long time from PennDOT. But

17 these casinos are coming, they're going to be

18 licensed in December and within six months

19 they're going to have 1,500 slots open to the

20 public.

21 And that was legislation that was

22 pushed through by the state, we understand

23 that, but PennDot needs to be working with the

24 legislation on this casino issue. We can't

25 have something happen in June when casinos

2 open with 1,500 slots and thousands of cars

3 coming down our street and no plan to take

4 care of it.

5 We've been screaming about this

6 since April and nobody seems to listen to us.

7 People keep saying, We're working on it, The

8 casinos have done preliminary sketches. Well,

9 where is some action on this? Our

10 neighborhood is going to be a mess in eight

11 months and nobody seems to be doing anything

12 about it.

13 I'm sorry. I'm just outraged. I'm

14 trying to control my temper right now. But,

15 you know, we just seem to not be able to get

16 any answers from anybody about how is this

17 going to work when these things open next

18 June.

19 MR. DOUGHERTY: Don't hold your

20 temper, that's why we're here. Okay. That's

21 what the whole focus of this morning's

22 symposium and tomorrow's follow-up piece is,

23 is that State Representatives are not getting

24 answers. Legislation is being pushed through.

25 The question I asked, I opened up,

2 Foxwoods will be dead set in the center of

3 Pennsport Civic Association. If you walk to

4 the dead center of it make a left and head

5 toward the water you're going to walk in the

6 front door of Foxwoods.

7 Not only Foxwoods, but all of the

8 other proposals have -- basically beyond

9 Girard off-ramp, have used the Washington

10 Avenue/Reed Street as their access and egress,

11 correct? Correct.

12 Every point, every bulletin, every

13 meeting, every 15-year, 12, 15, 30-year plan

14 has nothing on it that says we're going to

15 take that ramp and go into the water front,

16 we're going to open that ramp up.

17 There is nothing. Is there anything

18 anywhere in the game plan? I haven't been

19 able to see it. No one I've asked has

20 supplied anything. The answers continually

21 are, they're quick meetings, they're quick

22 meetings, they're quick parking reviews,

23 they're quick studies. There's nothing that

24 says anything, you know, that will -- this is

25 not a quick proposal, this is a lifetime

2 adjustment for each one of these

3 neighborhoods.

4 You just heard the State

5 Representative, and it all comes down that,

6 you know, we talk about -- he talks about

7 squeezing a square peg into a round hole.

8 Okay. We put $150 million dollars to

9 create -- move the industry, which is needed,

10 but we put another $150 million dollars, and

11 because there's no plan, there's no foresight

12 to it, instead of getting matching funds, we

13 just put it on the state taxpayers. Okay.

14 And again, the reason we're here is

15 that the neighborhoods are crying out for some

16 sort of input and plan. We want input into

17 the plan, but we just want someone to layout a

18 plan. So that's the concept here.

19 And again, there's no -- you have no

20 idea, there's nothing in any one of these

21 quick meetings about taking that off-ramp at

22 Reed Street and doing anything with it, right?

23 MR. DAVIES: Maybe what I ought to

24 do is talk about what we are doing on 95.

25 I'll work my way down to there, but just bear

2 with me for a second here.

3 PennDot needs to reconstruct I-95

4 for the entire distance through the City of

5 Philadelphia, okay. I'm, by training, a

6 bridge engineer. The structures on I-95 are

7 in bad condition. Many of them are in very

8 bad condition. The state of Pennsylvania

9 ranks either 46th or 49th in terms of bridge

10 condition nationwide. That's bad. Nobody

11 wants to be there. A large component of that

12 is I-95. 30 percent of the bridge deck area

13 in the five county district of PennDot is on

14 I-95.

15 Now, to solve our problem here we

16 have to reconstruct I-95 and the bridge

17 conditions are driving that. So nobody has to

18 worry about our sort of forgetting about this.

19 If we don't do this those bridges are going to

20 start to be weight restricted or closed.

21 We've had up at the State Road viaduct before

22 it was reconstructed, frankly, some close

23 calls. We've had main load bearing member

24 failures. That's bad. We've put $150 million

25 so far into the reconstruction of 95 and we

2 have about $900 million that's still

3 programmed. And that only gets us to Vine

4 Street.

5 Now, south of Vine there is nothing

6 programmed. But much of that is elevated and

7 much of it is in poor condition so it has to

8 be done. So I guess what I'm telling you is

9 that one way or another we're going to work

10 our way down to Reed Street. It may not be as

11 soon as you want, but we don't have any

12 choice, really. It's going to have to be

13 done. It certainly has to be programmed

14 within the next ten years.

15 And the reason it hasn't been

16 programmed already is because we have a TIP

17 that is enormous and underfunded. We have

18 over 550 projects in the district right now

19 that we're working on, many of which are

20 not -- most of which are not funded. And it's

21 just a huge pile of stuff to work through the

22 system in terms of design and permitting and

23 all the steps to go through to get it to

24 construction. So we're getting there, but

25 it's a huge, huge job.

2 Now, in terms of south of Vine

3 Street, it does have to be programmed, it will

4 have to be reconstructed. We are going to do

5 a temporary surface treatment type and

6 critical structural repair type project within

7 the next year, but that's really only a

8 stopgap type thing. And the real

9 reconstruction is probably going to take place

10 after 2026, once we're finished north of Vine.

11 MR. RUBEN: Could I just piggyback

12 on that for a second and piggyback on what

13 Sarah was saying a moment ago?

14 The communities in the Central or

15 North Delaware have formed a Casino Unity

16 Coalition and it consists of approximately

17 nine organizations which in total serves

18 something like 200,000 taxpayers in this part

19 of the Delaware.

20 And Representative Lederer mentioned

21 the 3,000 condominiums going in, and the

22 number may be even higher. We don't know

23 where the casinos are going to go, but we know

24 that there is going to be at least one on the

25 river and there very well may be two.

2 The casinos' traffic studies are

3 inadequate, to say the least, but they contain

4 traffic counts and they contain numbers and

5 there are generally accepted professional

6 guidelines to count traffic for residential

7 units. And there are generally accepted

8 guidelines to count traffic for the square

9 footage of commercial space that goes along

10 with those residential units. And there are

11 generally accepted guidelines to count traffic

12 for increased freight related vehicles.

13 So my question is, who can serve,

14 not only the communities in the South, but the

15 communities that have gotten together in the

16 north around casino issues and, of course,

17 around related traffic and planning issues?

18 Can PennDOT or anyone else assign someone to

19 sit down and take all of these traffic counts

20 and just paint us a picture of what we are

21 supposed to expect and what the level of

22 service will be in different areas of Delaware

23 Avenue?

24 I understand and appreciate you've

25 got a lot on your plate. But if someone gave

2 me $50,000 I could hire a traffic person

3 tomorrow and get a study done in three to six

4 months that would tell us, here is the picture

5 of what you can expect. And I think in some

6 sense all we're asking for is paint us the

7 picture. There are counts, and the casinos

8 are undercounting, but at least they're in the

9 basic neighborhood. And you can -- no one has

10 added these things up and no one has taken

11 responsibility for adding these things up.

12 And I would think that since the

13 casino law is a state law and is seeking to

14 take control away from the city for

15 everything, that PennDOT, as the state traffic

16 agency, could assign a traffic person to count

17 up these traffic counts and paint us a picture

18 and brief the communities on it.

19 MR. DAVIES: I think I mentioned

20 earlier that the project manager for the

21 Girard Avenue interchange project has asked

22 DVRPC for updated traffic counts that will

23 take into account not only the casinos, but

24 other development, condominiums, as best as

25 they can figure everything that's going on.

2 So we are updating our numbers from

3 what they were seven or eight years ago when

4 the project started.

5 MR. RUBEN: Well, we'll be more than

6 happy to give you numbers that we have because

7 we see all these development projects come

8 through our community zoning as to other

9 groups in our coalition. And we will be happy

10 to give you that. Just -- I will give you my

11 e-mail and we'll give it to you this week.

12 MR. DAVIES: That's fine. And

13 obviously, you know, during the course of that

14 design there are going to be public meetings,

15 there's going to be communications, and

16 there's going to be plenty of time for that

17 dialogue to take place.

18 MR. DOUGHERTY: We've got a couple

19 other.

20 REPRESENTATIVE TAYLOR: Could you

21 just say who is the project manager for

22 Girard?

23 MR. DAVIES: The project manager for

24 Girard is Elaine Elbick, she is in our

25 district office at King of Prussia. My name

2 is on the website in the district office, if

3 you can't get ahold of her, you can get ahold

4 of me.

5 MR. DOUGHERTY: Mr. Brooks.

6 MR. BROOKS: Mr. Dougherty, I just

7 want to thank this group for pulling this

8 committee together. I guess when my son asked

9 me if I was going to be at the soccer game

10 tomorrow and I told him no, I had to go to

11 work, he goes, Well, why do you have to go to

12 work? And I had three -- a couple of reasons.

13 And I'll just share them with you. One right

14 now.

15 For 11 years I lived at 106 Watkins

16 Street, Front and Watkins Street. And I

17 watched Watkins Street -- I watched Front

18 Street transition from a neighborhood

19 thoroughfare to a highway as Delaware Avenue

20 and Christopher Columbus at the southern end

21 got more and more crowded I started to see

22 more and more cars move onto Front Street.

23 It's one of the reasons that prompted our move

24 from that neighborhood.

25 But just another quick aside, and I

2 know I'm not going to be here for that

3 discussion, I guess when I originally bought

4 the house I didn't know I was going to have an

5 indoor pool every time it rained. And my

6 basement -- I'm literally one house off of

7 Front Street, whenever there was a substantial

8 rainstorm we get six inches of water in the

9 basement. I partly blame the home owner I

10 bought it from for not disclosing it. I

11 partly blame my home inspector for not

12 pointing that out. So I wore my former

13 resident of Pennsport hat today. And I still

14 have tons of friends in that neighborhood. I

15 feel their pain.

16 The other hat I want to wear is, my

17 wife was born and raised in Fishtown/Port

18 Richmond area. It's actually a no man's land

19 of a neighborhood, they should call it flat

20 iron on Thompson Street between Huntington and

21 Lehigh. And it's just blocks from State

22 Representative Taylor's office.

23 And my in-laws still live there

24 today at 2635 Thompson Street. And

25 unfortunately, the way the economy works

2 today, it's a double income family, my wife

3 and I both work and my in-laws have to watch

4 my kids, love watching my kids.

5 But yesterday was a classic example,

6 getting back to that traffic issue. While my

7 older two, my ten year old and seven year old,

8 are able to stay in the neighborhood, the

9 neighborhood we live in now in Northeast

10 Philadelphia and stay with friends there, my

11 twins, my four-year-old twins were at my

12 in-laws and nearly had a tragedy yesterday

13 when cars speeding north on Thompson Street

14 nearly came on the sidewalk and hit my kids.

15 When the police showed up on sight

16 it pained me to overhear that they were using

17 Thompson Street, okay. And that section

18 there, if you're not aware of what that

19 section of the city is like, it's narrow,

20 one-way streets that were never designed to

21 become de facto highways, but because there

22 was back-ups at 95, because there was back-ups

23 on Delaware Avenue where it transitions into

24 Richmond Street people make that decision to

25 cut through the Port Richmond Plaza and use

2 Thompson Street and Aramingo Avenue as

3 north-south traffic. And that's just going to

4 get worse.

5 And I recognize the challenge facing

6 PennDot and the Delaware Valley Planning

7 Commission as well as the legislators here

8 today on how you're going to deal with this

9 issue. And I don't have convenient answers.

10 I just wanted to share that, that rank and

11 file people are experiencing them every day.

12 But one way to deal with the

13 issue -- and everybody is hammering the

14 planning, the P word, planning. I'm not going

15 to deal with that today. But another way to

16 deal with that is look at non-traditional

17 transportation methods, ways of getting people

18 north and south along Columbus Boulevard,

19 Delaware Avenue and Richmond Street that does

20 not rely on vehicular traffic.

21 And to that end I would ask our

22 state legislators to continue to apply

23 pressure to folks like the Delaware River Port

24 Authority who have shifted their focus, and

25 also to our legislators in Washington D.C.

2 That my third hat that I wear is the

3 Acting President of the Penns Landing

4 Corporation. A half decade ago we were really

5 aggressive in a project that I was involved in

6 intimately because it's important to me was

7 non-traditional, green friendly, non-pollutant

8 transportation along the water front. We were

9 really successful and mining the Federal

10 government in the water shuttle systems.

11 One of the things we were able to do

12 was revamp and transform the failing River Bus

13 into the Riverlink Ferry that served east-west

14 access. And we were able to secure Federal

15 dollars for north-south water shuttles, but

16 we've run into a brick wall in that Federal

17 dollars have dried up and to some extent the

18 assist we had at the DRPA has dried up. We've

19 got a half a dozen boats ready to hit the

20 water and ready to start serving. But a half

21 dozen 30-passenger boats aren't going to solve

22 this.

23 If we can get the commitment from

24 the Federal government to find ways to move

25 people north and south that's not strictly

2 based upon putting more cars on Christopher

3 Columbus Boulevard and Delaware Avenue I think

4 will go a long way to help solve this problem.

5 So again, thank you. Thank you for

6 your time and thank you for putting this

7 together.

8 MS. GOODWIN: John, I have a

9 question.

10 MR. DOUGHERTY: Yes, Rene.

11 MS. GOODWIN: I want to make sure

12 that I understood correctly something that you

13 said. I understand clearer now than I ever

14 did before the importance of the

15 reconstruction for safety issues of I-95.

16 Now -- and I heard Mr. Dougherty mention Reed

17 Street, and you also addressed that, sir. Am

18 I to understand that regardless of whether or

19 not we get Foxwoods it is an inevitability

20 that there is going to be a ramp at

21 Reed/Dickinson Street or did I misconstrue

22 that? That's part one.

23 And part two is, the casino

24 applicants have been inappropriate in not

25 supplying communities with copies of their

2 various reports. I know on the 16th,

3 Foxwoods, for example, is submitting

4 additional information. It would be so nice

5 to have access to that. But of course we're

6 only the residents. However, PennDOT, as the

7 key agency, the key entity to oversee the

8 entire traffic and transportation issue, at

9 least in terms of the roads, do you, sir, get

10 copies of those reports? And if not, how

11 arrogant of the casinos to expect you to do a

12 job that's not only reconstructing a major

13 highway, but trying to at the same time

14 address the changing needs of this entire

15 city?

16 That's sort of rhetorical, but the

17 first one about the ramp I really would like

18 an answer to. Thank you.

19 MR. DAVIES: What I meant to say

20 was, is that it is definite that the viaducts

21 in South Philadelphia that carry I-95 will

22 need to be reconstructed within the next 20

23 years. That has to be done.

24 MS. GOODWIN: That means Reed

25 Street?

2 MR. DAVIES: That would mean Reed

3 Street. Now, whether or not there is a ramp

4 there is another matter. It is conceivable,

5 all right, it's conceivable, that the casino

6 would say, Well, we'll build one right now at

7 our expense, if they can get the Federal

8 government to -- if the FHWA would approve it,

9 it is a limited access Federal highway, and

10 they have an interest in that, then it might

11 be able to be done.

12 MR. DOUGHERTY: One of the questions

13 that I will piggyback on the back of that is,

14 is PennDOT meeting with the State Gaming

15 Control Board to discuss the casino proposals?

16 MR. DAVIES: Each of the casinos has

17 tried to make a presentation to us so that

18 they could tell the Gaming Board they've

19 coordinated with us. Okay. So they come in,

20 they show us a few cards. The day before

21 yesterday Foxwoods was into the office, they

22 left a stack of papers, traffic projections

23 and our traffic people are looking them over.

24 They've seen them for the first time.

25 I'm not trying to characterize their

2 approach or anything. This is just what's

3 happening. So that's where we are. We are,

4 you know, we are receiving this information,

5 we are not -- we are not in any way -- PennDot

6 is not in any way in control of this process.

7 We're not some integral part of the licensure.

8 MR. DOUGHERTY: If you don't mind,

9 you're telling me that PennDot is not meeting

10 with the Gaming Control Board at all? I mean,

11 you're not telling -- well, not about just

12 traffic, about infrastructure?

13 MR. DAVIES: I'm the guy who is in

14 charge of designing District 6. I do not know

15 if the secretary is meeting with them. I

16 don't know if the executive staff in

17 Harrisburg is meeting with the Gaming Board.

18 I don't know the answer to that question.

19 MR. DOUGHERTY: You do know that so

20 far, basically you get a meeting, okay, the

21 State Gaming, they come in, they give a

22 proposal and hasn't been in depth to what

23 you're normally accustomed to? You're looking

24 at something that's going to change the face

25 of the water front for years to come on one

2 hand in a real quick time frame. And on the

3 other hand, you're telling us that we have a

4 15 to 30-year game plan that will eventually

5 work through, we got $900 million dollars, and

6 we'll eventually get to Reed Street.

7 MR. DAVIES: Be clear about that,

8 that $900 million only gets you to Vine.

9 MR. DOUGHERTY: Only to Vine, okay.

10 But what my point is, is that, if we want to

11 force feed something, okay, we're capable.

12 And obviously, when we have seminars and

13 symposiums and things along these lines and

14 these questions get asked and these questions

15 are answered, the result to that, the response

16 we get is Senate Bill 826 -- or 862. Well,

17 826 will probably come next. Okay, 862.

18 Okay. So, okay, just -- how about,

19 we also have with us here, we have Charlie

20 Denny from the Streets Department. And one of

21 the questions, Charlie, that came from, you

22 know, a community meeting -- and by the way,

23 this has been very good and we appreciate you

24 taking the time in coming down here today and

25 answering these questions like this or at

2 least attempting to. And hearing, you know,

3 some of our concerns and taking them back.

4 And I also want to let people know

5 that after we break in 15 minutes or so we

6 will then get into, you know, some serious

7 questions about the infrastructure and water

8 and sewer issues that are not only relevant to

9 casino expansion and things along them lines,

10 but have also have been issues that we believe

11 that when we started to tie up 90 acres of

12 land with big box development, things along

13 them lines, the 100 blocks of certain

14 communities right on the flip side of these

15 development projects have, as you heard, been

16 gathering a lot of water, I refer to as

17 aquarium-like basements.

18 Okay. Let me just take the one

19 question here then we'll go back to the

20 Streets Department.

21 You know, about all the ancillary

22 development, Columbus Commons, Pier 70, you

23 know, traffics and things like that. Also,

24 there was a question that kind of transcends

25 both yourself, part of common usage in the

2 case of cities of First Class, the

3 Commonwealth provides the funding for signage,

4 stripping, traffic, columning, while the city

5 implements it. Is there a coordinated effort

6 going on between the city and the state in

7 reference to, you know, discussions about this

8 type of stuff that will be needed for, not

9 only water front development, but gaming in

10 particular? That's a question that was asked.

11 MR. DENNY: Let me start out, my

12 name is Charles Denny, I'm with the Streets

13 Department, I'm the Assistant Chief Traffic

14 Engineer. The Traffic Engineering Division is

15 responsible for the movement of people and

16 goods on the city highways, primarily through

17 the -- our traffic controls, stop signs,

18 traffic signals and markings.

19 We do work with PennDOT on various

20 projects. We come up with projects that we

21 want to do and develop and we look for

22 funding. The funding goes to both PennDOT and

23 the DVRPC. We try to get our projects on the

24 TIP so that's how most of the projects we have

25 are funded. We do do some of the smaller

2 things in terms of installing signals and stop

3 controls.

4 What was the rest of that question?

5 MR. DOUGHERTY: There is cities of

6 First Class, there is a common usage of, let's

7 say, how the custom of usage is that

8 you coordinate on signage, traffic, those

9 things along them lines. And the fact that we

10 not only have all this development that has

11 basically -- and again, you know, I'm here as

12 just a, you know, one of the initial people to

13 form this, but here as the President of the

14 Pennsport Civic Association and, you know,

15 Matt and the rest of the activists here can

16 represent their area.

17 But there has been a significant

18 amount of traffic in that area since, for no

19 better word, the Ikea development, so. And

20 gridlock more than anything. Today if we left

21 here, 45 minutes to get