This tool is great, I agree.

Having lived in NYC for years, I can relate to the shift. You'll get used to the lower density though.

I don't know if 15k is a good threshold personally (too low) and maybe you'll discover that by looking at census tracts and Google street view that you could settle on a neighborhood with 30k for example.

Also, I wouldn't focus on single family unattached. There was a Washington Post article from a few years ago that showed housing typologies per city and Philly I believe has both the lowest proportion of single family unattached (even lower than NYC) and the highest of single family attached (either attached on both sides or just one). We're a row home city, there really aren't that many apartment buildings comparatively and a lot of the existing apartments are in carved up row homes. Even if you don't like townhomes (attached on both sides) maybe consider twins, which are homes that are attached on one side only.

You can see population density by census tract here: https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=2566121a73de463995ed2b2fd7ff6eb7

Most of the nicer parts of South Philly are 30,000 to 45,000 per square mile (a few going above 45). Under 15,000 per square mile and close to nature and close to rail is going to be hard. I'd say Mt. Airy or Germantown, but you are dealing with Regional Rail which is relatively infrequent (not like living along the Broad Street Line or Market Frankford Line).

I've been on light rail like that, but I don't think I've ever seen a metro system with ticket inspectors though. I would be fine with that kind of system on our regional rail. Our system is kind of already set up for it. Maybe even buses and trolleys if we have a redesign. But we'd need to actually have the inspectors and enforce the fines.

> The city profits through increased economic activity, but this is not easy to measure, especially not by SEPTA.

People won't take public transit if it isn't safe and not too unpleasant. So by keeping the system and unsafe, you lose people who are going to take transit into the center city to shop or see an event. They may end up driving to a suburban mall or movie theater instead.

> Some of the funding that goes into maintaining roads should go to reducing volume/wear on those roads (i.e. get more traffic off of the roads).

Yes, I agree. But I'd like to see riders chip in some money too. More importantly, I think legislators are more prone to fully fund the system if it isn't free for everyone.

> I don't think that enforcing a nominal fare would help with the homeless/drug issue at all. Look at the corridor to the PATCO from Walnut-Locust - that's "public space" and doesn't require a fare to get in.

We certainly could kick homeless people out of transit stations/public corridors when they set up camp, but someone (surely not someone who commutes on public transit everyday) made a decision not to for whatever reason. Assuming we have the resources, it wouldn't be that hard to chase the vast majority of people who aren't using the system away. I'm not advocating for harsh methods at all, but I do think we should put up some more barriers to having homeless kept out.

Our numbers of police and transit police specifically is way down following retirements and mediocre recruiting. I pretty much never see them when I ride. And I think they've basically backed off completely in enforcing fare evasion, smoking on the platforms and in the cars and drug use. The SEPTA police chief quit recently, maybe over that issue.

I'm certainly in favor of hiring social workers, but I don't think transit stations/cars should be the place for really making an intervention in people's lives (maybe the homeless outreach place at Suburban Station, but otherwise, no).

MTA in NYC estimated that fare evasion has tripled in recent years and that they are losing $500 million a year. It certainly has to be tens of millions of dollars here. You are never going to eliminate it completely, but getting that number down significantly could have a big effect.

>we should make SEPTA 100% free because it benefits a heck of a lot of people.

My perspective is that we should make SEPTA cleaner, safer, and more frequent because THAT would benefit a heck of a lot of people. Yes, it's a tradeoff, but it's a tradeoff pretty much every good transit system overseas makes.

If we had low crime and tons of police officers to patrol the system, maybe free transit would be okay. But that just isn't realistic. And the choice isn't--or at least shouldn't have to be--let the people with mental health and drug addition issues ride around transit or don't help them at all. We could do more to take care of those people in other ways and I'm not sure how we're really helping them anyway by letting them sleep or use drugs on the train.

I think that your point is that fare evasion is a big deal and it's screwing the system out of much-needed revenue that could provide more frequent service, which in turn would draw in more riders to fund better service, and then you'd create a virtuous cycle of increasingly better transit.

I don't know if I just wasn't paying attention before, but fare evasion seems much more common on the BSL and MFL now than before the pandemic. I'm all for discount monthly passes for people who have EBT cards or who qualify for the earned income tax credit (or some low income threshold), but I don't think that we should completely turn a blind eye towards fare evasion like we are doing now. The free transit movement also doesn't make much sense for a cash-strapped system like our own. Making sure people pay to get onto the system would also keep out some of the homeless/panhandlers/drug users who are making the system, quite frankly, revolting for the current paying customers. I think higher gate-style turnstiles are pretty common on European transit systems.

Yeah, he really only won on one of three issues. It's also important to remember that this was the decision of one Democratic judge. The Pa. Supreme Court will have the final word, where there is currently a 4-2 Democratic edge, with not all the Democratic justices being fans of Krasner.

George McClellan was also from Philadelphia and also the top Union general at one point during the civil war, but not as well remembered by history (both definitely had flaws). I doubt there's a General McClellan society but what do I know.

This was the basic story of the Ira Einhorn case which got made into a TV movie, although he used a trunk instead of a freezer (much decomposition ensued before he got caught) and then fled the country.

>The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Philadelphia Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Robert J. Livermore.

I wonder if the cops investigated this whole case and just dropped off their case file with the FBI so these guys would get serious time.

Yes, that's definitely a key part of this sentence. Most people wouldn't realize that he got under 2 years so he could serve it in the county.

Well look, I know that sentences below the guidelines aren't that rare. And I can surmise that that's especially true when there's a good reason for it (like the defendant having a really tough job where they are expected to maybe have to pull their gun and maybe shoot someone). The links posted elsewhere in this thread back that up.

Thank you - that exactly answers the question. So 1 out of 13 in 2019 were below the mitigated range, like this sentence. I would imagine most cases nationally where a cop is involved they would be far below the standard recommended sentence, assuming the state has guidelines.

Edit: also, Kim Potter the Minnesota cop who accidentally pulled a gun instead of a taser and was convicted of manslaughter got a very similar sentence to this one.

Voluntary manslaughter is considered homicide but not murder under the legal definition. I realize the confusion in my earlier post now, my wording wasn't wrong but I didn't explain it clearly enough. Homicide includes manslaughter and murder (murder being the more serious crime). Murder is divided into three degrees. First is the most serious kind of intentional killing. Second degree is murder during the commission of a felony, and also requires a life sentence like first degree. Third degree is less serious and then below these you have voluntary and involuntary manslaughter that are lesser offenses.

The degrees of felonies is a separate thing from the degrees of murder. The relevance of voluntary manslaughter being a first degree felony is that the max sentence is 20 years max and 10 year minimum. The three kinds of murder offenses aren't included in the felony grading, they have their own maximum sentences.

Right, but it's not felony murder. That was my point.

He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter not felony (2nd degree) murder. Voluntary manslaughter has significantly lesser penalties - the max he could have gotten was 10 to 20 whereas it would be life for felony murder, but since he had no prior record and he was a cop doing his job (yes he screwed up but any judge would have sympathy for a cop in this position) it was guaranteed to be a lot less.

Honest question, how many voluntary manslaughter sentences are the average reddit users even aware of? People have no idea about this stuff, including probably you.

Thanks for posting this. This really should be something the US Department of Transportation should get involved in. Or maybe a lawsuit by the PA AG's office against Delaware and the other states with the bogus temporary tag system.

As I mentioned in my original post, I saw that law.com article and it's behind a paywall that I couldn't read. The point of my post is that local media isn't reporting on the trial. Isn't that worthy of discussion?

That's an absurd response when I'm commenting on the fact that the media isn't covering the trial

FDR (during the week especially) and Navy Yard (on the weekend especially) are pretty good spots. I agree with desensitizing though. I'm sure there are good instructions online but lots of training treats when you get anywhere near a car and keep doing it as your dog gets better and you keep getting closer and closer.

An interesting article on the topic. Basically the FDA is lazy about approving new sunscreen chemicals so we're stuck with mediocre stuff compared to Europe and Asia.