Pope's visit to Philadelphia and Amtrak's 30th Street Station

Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
jimhudson said:
My only comments: Who paid for all of this foolishness?

Anyone ever hear of Seperation of Church and State?
Click to expand...
The same people that pay for everything! All of us!Jim, you need to calm down a bit or you will be old before your time! Nothing you can do about this kind of thing, so why get all worked up?
 
SEPTA allowed hysteria to rule their planning. As a result, commutes were disrupted for lots of weekend workers. Which wasn't necessary at all because traffic was actually lower than what the regular schedule can handle on the weekend. :p If they'd kept all the suburban stations open, the lines would have been a lot shorter as people would have been distributed between different stations.

Meanwhile, the hysterical paramilitaries were wandering around showing off their paramilitariness for no particular reason, but were mostly harmless.

Atrios's assessment (he's a native Philadelphian):

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2015/09/12-trillion-pilgrims.html

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2015/09/whats-it-all-about-then.html

It killed the weekend restaurant business:

http://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2015/09/26/pope-francis-philadelphia-restaurants/

Mystic River Dragon said:
The cynical theory (and my favorite): The secret service wanted a city to bully and show off its power and thought that Philly would put up less resistance than DC or New York.
Click to expand...
You might be right. I'm surprised that Philadelphia didn't put up more resistance. DC ("Taxation without Representation") *always* resists; perhaps being an occupied territory with no representation tends to make them more instinctively hostile to such stuff. NY has been weirdly compliant with insane security gibberish in recent years, more so than (say) Los Angeles.

P.S.: Trainorders discussion of the failure created by the "security" plans, mostly from abyler, who was there, and who had complained to SEPTA in advance and been blown off:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3853920
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jimhudson said:
My only comments: Who paid for all of this foolishness?

Anyone ever hear of Seperation of Church and State?
Click to expand...
When it comes to the "who paid for it" factor... Some folks in the area are a bit perturbed as the City Schools that are in serious serious need of funding and people are pulling the well we can pay for all this BS but we can't pay for our schools????

As for how the local business' faired.. Business owners are also perturbed.. Many business' sales were down 50% or MORE! Many business' closed early both days of the weekend. They were told by the Mayor that they would benefit from this. With Mayor Nutter stating an estimated $390 Million would be pumped in to the local business' over the weekend. Interestingly enough like every politician today at a News Conference Mayor Nutter goes to the "I never said that" excuse.

I was never really of a fan of Michael Nutter and even more so now.
 
jis said:
At least out of the pain of doing an Olympics one gets a bunch of infrastructure. Philly basically got not much that is lasting, other than good feeling out of this, at some significant cost.
Click to expand...
The event (WMOF) paid at least some, and the mayor says almost all the city's costs. The contract calls for reimbursement of police, other city services and a rental charge for the Parkway at an estimated $12 million with the final value determined by invoices submitted to the WMOF by November 1. All the temporary structures for the event were provided and erected by the WMOF. The total cost to the WMOF is estimated at $45 million. I don't doubt that the city, states, and federal government will be on the hook for some of the expenses, but it is not 100%.
 
Jim,

Unfortunately in this case there is no separation of church and state: the Pope is a religious leader AND a head of state (albeit a miniscule one). The public transportation brouhaha was also unfortunate; from what I've heard from acquaintances I'd guess the attendance would have been at least double if regular SEPTA service had been running. To have to visit a Catholic church to get an event ticket PLUS visiting a SEPTA ticket office in advance is a very high hurdle to jump just to satisfy one's curiosity!
 
Thanks to all for the responses! I do understand how the system works!

My biggest concern is showing favoritism to one religion over another @_Govt expense ( Christianity is a minority in today's world)while the various Governments are claiming they're broke and the right wing wants to gut social programs ( and Amtrak!) so as to fund more wars and a bigger security state!

I know the planning for Philly was a Keystone Kops operation, why didn't they just do the whole thing in Washington or New,York in conjunction with a "State" visit as opposed to a strictly Religious event in Phily @ tax payers expense?

In this case, it really is both the principle of the thing and the money!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jis said:
At least out of the pain of doing an Olympics one gets a bunch of infrastructure. Philly basically got not much that is lasting, other than good feeling out of this, at some significant cost.
Click to expand...
Perhaps, but the Olympics are a 2-week long event (or longer, if you count the Paralympics). This was a 2-day event. [The WMOF that preceded the weekend Papal visit doesn't really count, as that was basically a run-of-the-mill conference that large cities like Philly host all the time.]

Imagine the public outcry if lasting infrastructure improvements were made to satisfy the needs of a 2-day event. And what's worse, imagine if those infrastructure improvements were tailored to the specific Papal visit events rather than day-to-day transit needs.
 
MikefromCrete said:
Philadelphia seems to be "over planning" for this event. I don't think they will be getting the big crowds that are anticipated. People will say, "I'm not getting involved in this mess." There are way too may restrictions being put in place.

Chicago hosted Pope John Paul II during Jane Byrne's administration as mayor and the whole city didn't shut down.

Philadelphia is either headed for a disaster or will be a laughing stock when only a few thousand people show up.
Click to expand...
Looks like Mike had it right.
 
jimhudson said:
My biggest concern is showing favoritism to one religion over another @_Govt expense
Click to expand...
That's not what is happening here. The Pope is also a head of state, and any other religious leader of any denomination with a similar popularity would be treated the same way. The fact that he's Catholic really has nothing to do with it.
 
Good points Ryan, but the key word you used, popularity, helps my point about religious favoritism @ Govt expense.

I have no problem with Head of State Dog and Pony shows, happens all the time in WAS and NY.

But what if the Supreme Leader of Iran wanted to shut down a US City to conduct Prayers, or the Kooky for Life Atheist from North Korea wanted to put on a similar rally?

Same difference no?
 
I had to look up WMOF that PRR 60 mentioned as paying some of the costs. ... Doubted Google would list it...but it did: World Meeting of Families
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The event went well, and people from all over the world had a great time. Was it perfect? No. But it was not a "fiasco", nor a "disaster", it didn't make Philly "a laughing stock", and "septic" seemed to fun just fine. None of the outrageous doom-and-gloom, end-of-the-world predictions that appeared on this thread came true. Amen.
 
Bob Dylan said:
Thanks to all for the responses! I do understand how the system works!

My biggest concern is showing favoritism to one religion over another @_Govt expense ( Christianity is a minority in today's world)while the various Governments are claiming they're broke and the right wing wants to gut social programs ( and Amtrak!) so as to fund more wars and a bigger security state!

I know the planning for Philly was a Keystone Kops operation, why didn't they just do the whole thing in Washington or New,York in conjunction with a "State" visit as opposed to a strictly Religious event in Phily @ tax payers expense?

In this case, it really is both the principle of the thing and the money!!
Click to expand...
Hey, Jim, how come you changed your name? Afraid of backlash?
 
northnorthwest said:
The event went well, and people from all over the world had a great time. Was it perfect? No. But it was not a "fiasco", nor a "disaster", it didn't make Philly "a laughing stock", and "septic" seemed to fun just fine. None of the outrageous doom-and-gloom, end-of-the-world predictions that appeared on this thread came true. Amen.
Click to expand...
Agreed. If the city hadn't planned what it did, and there were a few more people, the same people and others would be complaining that the city failed to prepare for every eventuality. Several hundred thousand did show up for the Papal Mass at Franklin Parkway, so it's not like they didn't have large crowds at hand.
 
What happened was that the city lost vast amounts of business that weekend, and lots of people couldn't get to work. The locals all got out of town if they could. All totally unnecessary.

If the goal was to make as few people as possible visit, mission accomplished.

If they'd run a normal SEPTA schedule, it would have gone fine, and people would have had a better time. The insane "close most of our stations" plan from SEPTA didn't even make sense -- that's simply not how you deal with large crowds. If you're competent, you spread them out between as many suburban stations as possible.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top