Route 23

Germantown Avenue

The End !

PCC Car 2785

Photo By Bill Monaghan

Inquirer Staff Writer

By Vernon Clark

Neighbors and community leaders in Mount Airy are outraged that SEPTA crews paved over trolley tracks in the center of a historic
stretch of Germantown Avenue. The tracks between Gowen Avenue and Cresheim Valley Drive were paved Friday because too many traffic accidents were taking place on that stretch, which is covered by historic Belgian blocks on both sides of the trolley tracks, SEPTA spokesman Jim Whitaker said yesterday.

The Belgian blocks had been sinking, causing the trolley tracks - which have not been used for several years - to rise above the
surface, making the road bumpy and hazardous, Whitaker said.

He noted that neighbors had reported more than 200 traffic accidents between Gowen Avenue and Cresheim Valley Drive over the last two
years.

"The street was in bad shape," Whitaker said. "For safety reasons, we had to repave it. We just paved a couple of feet over the tracks.
We are not removing the [Belgian] blocks."

Farah Jimenez, executive director of Mount Airy USA, a community-development group, said SEPTA did the work without offering an
alternative to paving over the tracks.

"Before we started giving up our historic street, we wanted to have a clear diagnosis of why we were having accidents," Jimenez said.

She said SEPTA allowed the roadway to deteriorate. "Deferred maintenance is the problem," Jimenez said. "They let things go, and
that opened up the opportunity to pave it."

Jimenez said that the roadway had been declared a historic district and that a city ordinance protects it from major changes.

While residents were concerned with safety, the restoration of the Route 23 trolley was also important to neighbors and community
groups in Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, she said.

Whitaker said that the tracks would have to be removed and reinstalled to allow a trolley to run, but that there are no plans
right now to have a trolley there. While restoring the trolley was in SEPTA's long-term budget, it has not been funded.

"We can't run the trolley now because of the condition of the track," he said. "We would have to redo the whole infrastructure. It
would take about five years."

Gene Blaum, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said PennDot was planning a comprehensive repaving
of the avenue from Allens Lane to Mermaid Lane and from Ashmead Street to near Church Lane.

PennDot's plans include the Route 23 trolley and would keep the historic Belgian blocks, Blaum said. He said that the plan was in
the preliminary engineering phase and that construction was expected in 2007 and 2008.

Itzchak Kornfeld, a Mount Airy resident who is serving as counsel for neighbors opposed to the paving, sought a court injunction last
week to block SEPTA's project. He said his efforts were rejected in court.

While SEPTA had the right to pave between the tracks, Kornfeld said, they were only allowed to go 18 inches on the sides of the
tracks. "It looks like they have gone over their boundaries," he said.

Whitaker said SEPTA had not paved outside its designated area. 

City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller said she and many of the neighbors wanted more "traffic-calming" measures, such as new signs
and reduced speed limits.

"We thought SEPTA could have come up with some other option" besides paving, Miller said. "We wanted more time to explore other options."



Contact staff writer Vernon Clark at 215-854-5717 or
vclark@phillynews.com