Someone I know well is going for a job interview in Emmaus, Pa., just south of Allentown, and it got me thinking about how improbably stupid it is that there's no passenger train service between Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley. Even in its current state, our run-down national rail service does manage to connect most metro areas of significant size, especially in the Northeast.
How then did we manage to lose the rail connection with this region less than 60 miles to the north? It will surprise no one in this area to hear it has something to do with SEPTA. Passenger trains continued to run on the former Reading RR line, from Lansdale through Quakertown and up to Bethlehem and Allentown, through the 1970s. The route was never nationalized, unlike most intercity lines, and was operated by Conrail under contract to SEPTA. In the early eighties, SEPTA eliminated all routes serviced by diesel locomotives after state and federal subsidies were pulled.
Upper Montgomery-Bucks County is one of the fastest growing, most traffic clogged areas in Southeastern Pennsylvania—as anyone who has driven up 309 or on the Northeast Extension can attest. Efforts to restore passenger rail service above Lansdale have been in the news lately, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Allentown Morning Call (the Morning Call's report is better). A scaled-down plan to restore trains almost as far north as Sellersville could happen.
Restoring trains all the way to Bethlehem would be much tougher. A large rail right-of-way just below Bethlehem has been turned over to recreational use as the Saucon Valley Trail—though it's leased from SEPTA, which could one day reclaim it. Some rails-to-trails projects make sense, such as Lower Merion's Cynwyd Trail, where rail restoration would be mostly redundant. This one doesn't.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Vanishing Indie Radio
We've heard a lot lately about Congress' defunding of NPR, but there's another, more troubling trend afoot in radioland. In an effort to raise money, cash-strapped colleges around the country are selling off campus radio stations to the highest bidder. Twelve have been sold recently, and another 14 are on the chopping block, according to Ken Freedman, station manager and program director at WFMU in New Jersey.
WFMU and nine other independent, freeform stations staged a minute of on-air silence April 28 to protest the sales. The most notorious is the recent sale of the University of San Francisco's legendary KUSF, which saw staffers locked out after the abrupt announcement in January that the station would become a feeder station for a national network of classical music stations. With this sale, an institution important to rock music history and a cultural bastion of the city was stripped of all local control and character (the university plans to move operations online, though in what form is not clear).
As funding for education continues to erode and colleges seek cash windfalls from selling long-held radio frequencies, outlets for eclectic, free-form music and cultural programming vanish, replaced by the sort of formula-driven fare one can find in every corner of the land—the cultural equivalent of the spreading geography of nowhere.
The KUSF situation is "a non-commercial microcosm of the the 'Clear Channelization' of the FM band," Freedman noted.
Often bidding for these frequencies are deep-pocketed religious groups, looking to replace free-form programming with preaching. Their main competition, according to Freedman, is a nonprofit group that sets up NPR feeder stations (often in areas that already have NPR), rebroadcasting news and talk produced elsewhere. To me this is telling: two monolithic cultural entities butting against each other, one from the left and one from the right, at the expense of a messy, amorphous, creative outlet for non-entrenched ideas.
This is happening everywhere. In politics, education, religion, business and the media, people seem to fear ambiguity, as if allowing some "play" poses unacceptable risks. A less insecure culture would worry less about niche audiences, targeted results and direct outcomes and want to support artistic, cultural and scientific eclecticism.
Isn't that what universities are supposed to be for?
WFMU and nine other independent, freeform stations staged a minute of on-air silence April 28 to protest the sales. The most notorious is the recent sale of the University of San Francisco's legendary KUSF, which saw staffers locked out after the abrupt announcement in January that the station would become a feeder station for a national network of classical music stations. With this sale, an institution important to rock music history and a cultural bastion of the city was stripped of all local control and character (the university plans to move operations online, though in what form is not clear).
As funding for education continues to erode and colleges seek cash windfalls from selling long-held radio frequencies, outlets for eclectic, free-form music and cultural programming vanish, replaced by the sort of formula-driven fare one can find in every corner of the land—the cultural equivalent of the spreading geography of nowhere.
The KUSF situation is "a non-commercial microcosm of the the 'Clear Channelization' of the FM band," Freedman noted.
Often bidding for these frequencies are deep-pocketed religious groups, looking to replace free-form programming with preaching. Their main competition, according to Freedman, is a nonprofit group that sets up NPR feeder stations (often in areas that already have NPR), rebroadcasting news and talk produced elsewhere. To me this is telling: two monolithic cultural entities butting against each other, one from the left and one from the right, at the expense of a messy, amorphous, creative outlet for non-entrenched ideas.
This is happening everywhere. In politics, education, religion, business and the media, people seem to fear ambiguity, as if allowing some "play" poses unacceptable risks. A less insecure culture would worry less about niche audiences, targeted results and direct outcomes and want to support artistic, cultural and scientific eclecticism.
Isn't that what universities are supposed to be for?
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Photo a No Show
Obama will not release photo of bin Laden
The right call—show it privately to high ranking members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, and maybe even a few media execs (such as Roger Ailes). Obama does not owe it to the world to release this photo.
The right call—show it privately to high ranking members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, and maybe even a few media execs (such as Roger Ailes). Obama does not owe it to the world to release this photo.
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