“Passengers gather on the sidewalk to board a bus near 30th Street Station.” | Photo: David Maialetti, for The Inquirer
- Inga Saffron considers the prospect of Philadelphia getting a “civilized waiting area” for its short-haul bus passengers, now confined to the drab open-air stretch of JFK Boulevard immediately west of 30th Street Station. While Amtrak is planning an 11-bay, $17 million terminal on Arch Street, between the station and the Cira Centre, that project would have to wait for PennDOT’s reconfiguration of adjacent ramps for I-76 and I-676, which very well may be a decade away. So why not a temporary canopy and small enclosure in the meantime?, she asks. “If we can do pop-up beer gardens, we can do a pop-up bus station.”
- As the City nears the end of a one-year pilot program of street view capture software from the firm CycloMedia, Plan Philly discusses one of the tools to come out of it: an inventory of Philly’s nearly 112,000 street trees. The dataset, to be available for public use starting August 5, will help Parks and Recreation reach its goal of increasing the urban tree canopy to 30% of the county’s area, says Mark Wheeler, Chief Geographic Information Officer for the Office of Innovation and Technology.
- Technically Philly reports that the planned Microsoft Innovation Center, set to open this fall in the Science Center at 3711 Market Street, has been rebranded the Microsoft Reactor Philadelphia. Details are sparse as to what the switch actually means, but the only other Reactor—in San Francisco—bills itself as a “community hub for making connections, resources and talent more accessible to local startups and the developer community.”
About the author
Stephen Currall recently received his BA in history from Arcadia University. Before beginning doctoral studies, he is pursuing his interest in local history, specifically just how Philadelphians engage their vibrant past. Besides skimming through 18th century letters, Steve is also interested in music and travel.
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