King of Prussia Rail Map: Here's What the Line Looks Like

SEPTA has announced a finalized route for the proposed Norristown High Speed Line extension to King of Prussia. Planners chose a route taking advantage of PECO (electric/gas utility) and Pennsylvania Turnpike right of ways, avoiding any close contact with residential areas, before skirting the King of Prussia Mall on the way to a terminus next to the Valley Forge Casino.

Nowhere in any of the news reports (or on SEPTA's website promoting the project) can one find a decent map illustrating the route, so I created one.

King of Prussia Rail: Click Map to Enlarge

In order to mitigate local opposition, the route relies heavily on the Turnpike right of way, which surely helps drive up the cost (estimated at 1.2 billion). At this price, the pros and cons of such a project need to be carefully reckoned.

King of Prussia Rail: Pros

As SEPTA points out, the line would link the region's three major economic hubs: Center City, University City and King of Prussia (not to mention the Main Line). It would alleviate traffic and pollution in one of the most congested road corridors in the Northeast and be an economic boon for the area, cutting travel times and enabling a one-seat ride for shoppers, employees and residents. In addition to the mall and casino complexes, the line would provide access to the Chester Valley Trail, one of the most important of the Philadelphia Circuit Trails

King of Prussia Rail: Cons

The price, obviously. As pointed out by a community group, the station locations do not easily benefit  local residents as none outside the immediate mall area are pedestrian-friendly. Construction on and along the Turnpike will be an extended headache while the line gets built, and the line may encourage even more intense development along the edge of Valley Forge National Historic Park. (While coming tantalizingly close, the line does not facilitate pedestrian/bike access to the park due to Gulph Road and Route 422.)

Another factor to consider is that elements of the existing Norristown High Speed Line could prove the weakest links in a very expensive chain. It was just four years ago SEPTA was doing emergency repairs on the century-old Bridgeport Viaduct to replace rotting timbers. As SEPTA notes, an extensive rehabilitation project is still needed on the bridge—just the most high-profile of a number of issues resulting from decades of deferred maintenance on the underfunded rail line.

For King of Prussia Rail to succeed, SEPTA as a whole must be healthy. Perhaps SEPTA hopes KOP rail would make the NHSL (and the system as a whole) too big to fail.

On Both Sides of the Abortion Debate, the Key Question is One of Rights

As the pro-life movement has evolved, it has undergone a paradigm shift from a morals-based argument against abortion to a rights-based one, arguing for protections for the unborn in language pioneered by progressives in the Civil Rights and anti-war eras and carried forward through organizations such as Amnesty International and the ACLU.

This is roughly the point made in a fascinating New York Times piece, How the Pro-Life movement Has Promoted Liberal Values.

Left unmentioned is the thorny question—for pro-life and pro-choice advocates alike—of when, exactly, the unborn acquire rights. This question has always been on the table and is indeed baked into the fabric or Roe v Wade, which established a sliding-scale rule for when the state’s interest in protecting a fetus trumped a woman’s right to privacy under the 14th Amendment.

Seeing the debate this way makes the pro- and anti- argument one of degree rather than fundamental difference. To a conservative Catholic, the human rights of an embryo become operative at the moment of conception; to liberal justice Harry Blackmun, author of Roe v Wade, they are operative at the point of viability; to some, they are operative at a baby’s first breath. But in all cases, there is the question of human rights, the appropriateness of their application, and their relationship to the rights of the mother—to privacy, to life (when continuing a pregnancy is life-threatening), to having a say over when and with whom to have a baby.

The rights question, while putting the debate on equal terms, underscores why there can never be universal consensus on abortion from a moral, ethical, religious or legal standpoint in the same way there has always been for, say, infanticide. This is why there should never be a constitutional amendment banning abortion, as it would enshrine in the Constitution the beliefs of some religious factions to the exclusion of others, which is itself inherently unconstitutional.