>Wonder if the PPD got off their ass to go do their damn job in response to the news from the city auditor finding they suck at their jobs? Wouldn't be shocked if this all they do and they hold up as the one example of them working when they called out for sucking ass.

I'd like to think that, because it would mean that we have an at least partially functional political system, which almost seems aspirational in Philadelphia.

If you have the time, and a sufficiently bureaucratic constitution, you may read the audit itself.

Conspicuously, the article in the Inquirer lacks any links to the audit. It wasn't difficult to find on the Comptroller's website, but it was annoying that I had to. I have never seen a news public report about a publicly available report and include a link to the report. I don't know why they fail their readers like this, but they are remarkably consistent in doing so.

Well, we are discussing extending a long, straight tube.

Philadelphia built and owns the Broad Street Subway, which is why the trains bear both the SEPTA logo and city seal. SEPTA leases and operates it from the city. I don't know the terms of the agreements that arrangement, but I suppose that the city could theoretically retake control and operation of the system as well as any extensions thereto. It would presumably be bureaucratically complicated. The city would need to establish a relationship with FTA to receive formula grant funding, establish a bureaucracy to operate and maintain the system and mercy knows what else.

It might be worth noting that even when the city envisioned building a system of municipal lines, it never really expected to operate them. Many of the old reports of the Commissioner of City Transit deal at length with establishing the legality and negotiating the terms of an agreement with the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company to operate the lines built by the city. Indeed, when the Broad Street Subway at last entered service, the PRT, then its success the Philadelphia Transportation Company, operated the service.

Even if Philadelphia were to do this, they would still need to cooperate with SEPTA, because of the Broad Street Subway's transfer points with the Market-Frankford Subway-Elevated. Assigning operations to PATCO is an amusing proposition, but I doubt that the Port Authority would want to assume control of a line that is entirely in Pennsylvania. (N.b. The city also built the 8th-Locust subway, originally as part of a never-built line that would have crossed the river and run over Woodland Avenue to the city line; PATCO uses that segment under lease.)

You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.

That should give you some information as to what kind of writer I am.

That was exhausting to read and intensely frustrating. I struggle to describe the impression that it gives of Captain Akhil; words like, "frivolous," and, "shallow," come to mind. I suppose that it's too 'on the nose', but he even reminded me of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Perhaps it's a merely how the writers portrayed him, but he seems like somebody who rose up through exploiting defects in the system and gladhanding, not through meaningful accomplishment and effort.

There are probably more than a few officers like him in the PPD, which seems very vulnerable to such characters and deprived or uninterested in having or using defenses and controls against them. Leadership, if I may be pardoned for stating the obvious, has a powerful effect upon the character of an organization. Leaders like Captain Akhil exacerbate and enable the police department's worst impulses and habits. Their influence presumably also extends to the Fraternal Order of Police, which is an abhorrent organization that seems to exercise more control over the PPD than any formal, notionally democratic civilian authority. The police, which is a larger social entity than just the currently serving sworn officers, seem to operate for their own interest rather than that of the public, which is a profound latent threat to society.

I always rejected, "defund the police," as rhetorically reckless nonsense and outright police abolition seems insane as something to serve the function of the police will always exist and that something is probably best kept within the state, but they are thoroughly unacceptable in their current state. They should ideally be torn down, the old cultural edifice of 'The Police' destroyed as surely as Carthage was, and be rebuilt as something quite different, but that seems politically and practically impossible.