| Philadelphia
Infrastructure
Philadelphia
is served by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation
Authority, or SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit,
trolleys, and trackless trolleys throughout Philadelphia,
the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester,
Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer
County, New Jersey and New Castle County, Delaware. The city's
subway system, first opened in 1907, is the third oldest in
America.
One of
the seven SEPTA Regional Rail lines, Route R-1, offers direct
service to the Philadelphia International Airport.
Philadelphia's
30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's
Northeast Corridor, which offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA,
and New Jersey Transit lines.
The PATCO
provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont,
Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees),
and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street
between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th Streets,
and on Market Street at 8th Street.
In addition,
China Airlines provides a private bus service to John F. Kennedy
International Airport from the Holy Redeemer Church in the
Philadelphia Chinatown to feed its flight to Taipei, Taiwan.
Airports
Two airports
serve Philadelphia: the Philadelphia International Airport
(PHL), straddling the southern boundary of the city, and the
Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), a general aviation reliever
airport in Northeast Philadelphia. Philadelphia International
Airport provides scheduled domestic and international air
service, while Northeast Philadelphia Airport serves general
and corporate aviation. As of March 2006, Philadelphia International
Airport was the 10th largest airport measured by traffic movements,
and was also a primary hub for US Airways.
Roads
Interstate
95 runs through the city along the Delaware River as a main
north-south artery. The city is also served by the Schuylkill
Expressway, a portion of Interstate 76 that runs along the
Schuylkill River. It meets the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King
of Prussia, Pennsylvania, providing access to Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania and points west. Interstate 676, the Vine Street
Expressway, was completed in 1991 after years of planning.
A link between I-95 and I-76, it runs below street level through
Center City, connecting to the Ben Franklin Bridge at its
eastern end.
Roosevelt
Boulevard and the Roosevelt Expressway (U.S. Route 1) connect
Northeast Philadelphia with Center City. The Woodhaven Road
(PA Route 63), built in 1966, serves the neighborhoods of
Northeast Philadelphia, running between Interstate 95 and
the Roosevelt Boulevard (U.S. Route 1). The Fort Washington
Expressway (Pennsylvania Route 309) extends north from the
city's northern border, serving Montgomery County and Bucks
County
Interstate
476, commonly nicknamed the "Blue Route" through
Delaware County, Pennsylvania, bypasses the city to the west,
serving the city's western suburbs, as well as providing a
link to Allentown and points north. Similarly, Interstate
276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River Extension,
acts as a bypass and commuter route to the north of the city
as well as a link to the New Jersey Turnpike to New York.
However,
other planned freeways have been canceled, such as an Interstate
695 running southwest from downtown, two freeways connecting
Interstate 95 to Interstate 76 that would have replaced Girard
Avenue and South Street and a freeway upgrade of Roosevelt
Boulevard.
The Delaware
River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia
area across the Delaware River to New Jersey: the Walt Whitman
Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and US
30), the Betsy Ross Bridge (Route 90), and the Commodore Barry
Bridge (US 322). The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route
73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New
Jersey's Route 73 in Palmyra, Camden County, and is maintained
by the Burlington County Bridge Commission.
Philadelphia
is also a major hub for Greyhound Lines, which operates 24-hour
service to points east of the Mississippi River. Most of Greyhound's
services in Philadelphia operate to/from the Philadelphia
Greyhound Terminal, located at 1001 Filbert Street in Center
City Philadelphia. In 2006, the Philadelphia Greyhound Terminal
was the second busiest Greyhound terminal in the United States,
after the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. Besides
Greyhound, six other bus operators provide service to the
Center City Greyhound terminal. These are Bieber Tourways,
Capitol Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, Susquehanna
Trailways, and the bus division for New Jersey Transit.
Rail
Since
the early days of rail transport in the United States, Philadelphia
has served as hub for several major rail companies, especially
the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania
Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street
Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated
out of Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention
Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter
rail systems in the area, known collectively as the Regional
Rail system. The two systems today, for the most part still
intact but now connected, operate as a single system under
the control of the SEPTA, the regional transit authority.
Additionally, Philadelphia is linked to Southern New Jersey
via the Port Authority Transit Company subway system.
Philadelphia
is one of the few North American cities to maintain streetcar
lines. In addition to "subway-surface" trolleys,
which are so called because during the years when the city
was served by over 2000 trolleys and more than 65 lines, these
were the "surface" cars that ran also in the streetcar
subway, the city recently reintroduced trolley service to
the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15, considered by some a "heritage"
line, although the use of rebuilt 1947 PCC streetcars was
primarily for budgetary reasons, rather than as a historic
tribute.
Today
Philadelphia is a hub of the semi-nationalized Amtrak system,
with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston
Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg
and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 30th Street also serves as a
major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's
former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. 30th Street is Amtrak's
third-busiest station in numbers of passengers as of fiscal
year 2003. It is also a terminus of New Jersey Transit's Atlantic
City Line.
Telecommunications
Southeastern
Pennsylvania was once served only by the 215 area code, beginning
in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the "Bell
System" went into effect. The area covered by the code
was severely truncated when area code 610 was split from 215.
Today only the city and its northern suburbs are covered by
215. An overlay area code, 267, was added to the 215 service
area in 1997. A plan to introduce area code 445 as an additional
overlay in 2001 was delayed and later rescinded.
Philadelphia
is now also served by Wireless Philadelphia, a citywide initiative
to provide Wi-Fi service. The Proof of Concept area was approved
on May 23, 2007, and service is now available in many areas
of the city.
Source
of Article:
Wikipedia.
(2008). Philadelphia. Retrieved May 16, 2008 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia#Infrastructure |
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