StrongTowns reports on SEPTA’s tabling of parking garage in Conshohocken

StrongTowns, a non-profit organization that seeks to “replace America’s post-war pattern of development, the Suburban Experiment, with a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient” recently published an article on its website about SEPTA’s decision to table and further study a parking garage at its Conshohocken station.

From the article:

Like countless transit agencies nationwide, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) has attributed its operational challenges to the failure to restore ridership decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ridership along the Regional Rail lines—which connect Philadelphia’s core to peripheral suburbs and cities as far as Trenton, New Jersey—is, according to SEPTA, “hurting the most.” 

Part of the agency’s plan to “make the Regional Rail system more useful to more riders” involved applying $10 million in federal dollars available through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program (CMAQ) toward building a parking garage. However, on April 27, 2023, as SEPTA’s board was scheduled to vote on $25 million in contracts to begin construction on the garage, the item was tabled in what activists and locals are calling “a transit win.”

Constructing the parking facility was projected to cost SEPTA nearly $50 million in total and would quadruple the number of available parking at its Conshohocken Station, located approximately 15 miles outside of Philadelphia’s center. The station’s current 118 parking spots, not counting available street parking, would balloon to 528 and each additional spot was projected to cost $117,878. 

You can read the full article here.

Photo: SEPTA