(rshsdepot) Paoli, PA

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From the Chester Daily Local.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 

Paoli Transportation Center: ‘Catch 22’ on steroids  
THE NEED FOR A NEW CENTER AT THE SUBURBAN HUB OF THE R5 LINE AN ONGOING  
PROBLEM  
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer  
Rena Coyle drives to the Paoli train station several times a week from her  
home in Newtown, Delaware County, to take the Amtrak to New York City.  
She works near Penn Station in the Big Apple.  
Timewise, taking the train is about the same as driving, but dollarwise, it  
is half as expensive, she said.  
“I love it,” Coyle said of the train. “I was a die-hard driver. Now the 
whole  family has hung up their keys. I’m a convert.”  
Advertisement Coyle did her 2007 taxes on the train, and she does work and  
catches up on personal odds-and-ends. She travels with a cell phone, laptop  
computer and a Blackberry. She’s wired, making the train her off-site office.  
While the train ride is a dream, the nightmare is the well-worn Paoli train  
station. With the daily commuter parking lot across busy North Valley Road,  
Coyle said, she has fallen rushing across the street and injured herself on the 
 way to the station in the morning.  
The need for a new transportation center at the suburban hub of the R5 line  
is an ongoing problem looking for a solution.  
Plans for a new Paoli Transportation Center, one with a new station,  
passenger amenities, office buildings, a bus station to serve transfer riders, a  
taxi stand and an on-site parking garage — all to be located in the nearby Paoli  
Rail Yard — started in 1992.  
The problems are in the numbers: two rail systems, two townships in two  
Congressional districts looking to develop one former Superfund site, the Paoli  
Rail Yard.  
And there are no shortages of descriptions from involved parties.  
Hugh J. Murray Sr., township manager in Willistown, called the project a  
17-year “fiasco.”  
Mark Cassel at the Transportation Management Association of Chester County,  
said the talks were in a “sensitive stage.”  
John P. DiBuonaventuro, a new Tredyffrin supervisor, refers to the situation  
as a “very delicate equation.”  
“Everyone agrees this is the No. 1 transportation project,” said  
DiBuonaventuro, who attended a Feb. 26 meeting for the project.  
The stakeholders — the rail lines, citizens, townships and business community 
 — want results and the developer has to make the economic equation work,  
DiBuonaventuro said.  
DiBuonaventuro said he is encouraged by the energy and willingness of the  
parties.  
The rail yard, a former Superfund site, finished remediation in 2002.  
SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority), Amtrak, Conrail  
and American Premier Underwriters (successor to Pennsylvania Underwriters) had 
 primary responsibility for the cleanup that cost $10 million in state  
environmental and transportation funding.  
BUSY STATION  
While SEPTA and Amtrak share the rails along with some passengers and some  
stations, Amtrak owns the Paoli train station.  
At Paoli, some 80,936 people boarded Amtrak trains in 2006, a little more  
than an average of 220 a day. And 1,214 weekday commuters boarded SEPTA R5  
trains headed for Philadelphia in 2007, up from 1,128 a decade before.  
Despite the ridership numbers, when it comes to building a new transportation 
 center at Paoli, SEPTA is just along for the ride.  
“This is primarly an Amtrak project,” said Felipe Suarez, SEPTA spokesman.  
Rob Powelson, president of the Chester County Chamber of Business and  
Industry, finds that a poor excuse.  
How many people use that station to ride SEPTA? Powelson asked. The R5 is the 
 busiest line in the SEPTA’s rail system.  
“Chester County deserves a first-class transportation center,” Powelson 
said.  “I use that station. The parking, in an affluent area like that, is almost  
laughable.”  
As for Amtrak, the Keystone line is its most lucrative.  
“It is time for Amtrak to fish or cut bait,” Powelson said.  
State Sen. Andrew Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland, would also like to see 
 Amtrak dig in.  
“The best way to move forward with this is to get Amtrak to the table and get 
 some direction out of Amtrak,” Dinniman said. “Get the governor and the  
secretary of transportation involved to get Amtrak to the table.”  
Amtrak is working on a new zoning plan with the townships, said Karina  
Romero, manager of media relations at Amtrak.  
“We are moving forward and had a very positive meeting (Feb. 26) to discuss  
zoning  
issues and how to proceed with the project,” Romero said.  
MEETINGS CONTINUE  
Stephen A. Aichele, who started attending Paoli Transportation Center  
meetings as a citizens’ representative in 1995 after he left the Tredyffrin  Board 
of Supervisors, was at that meeting, too.  
“There are a lot of moving parts,” Aichele said of the discussions.  
The goal is to stop some of the parts from moving and get the parties on the  
same page, said Aichele, a real estate lawyer and chairman of Saul Ewing.  
For years nothing could be done until the rail yard was remediated. Now the  
parties are meeting in smaller numbers and Aichele believes the project is 
back  on track.  
But “the facts need to get down on paper,” Aichele said. “The parties need 
to  engage in useful ways. The more facts on the table, the more useful the  
engagement.”  
To develop the transportation center, Amtrak brought in Westrum Development  
Co., a Philadelphia-based developer with a reputation for taking contaminated  
sites in affluent areas and turning them into upscale developments.  
Westrum is willing to put $217.1 million into the project, according to Tim  
Stevenson of PennDOT, one of the parties involved in the meetings. (Westrum  
referred questions to the property owner, Amtrak.)  
Bruce Looloian, Amtrak systems vice president, said the meeting gave everyone 
 a better understanding of what needed to be done.  
The problem now is the zoning. Of the two townships, Willistown has the more  
restrictive zoning that is presenting a problem for the developer.  
Murray, Willistown’s manager, said the building that was proposed for the  
project was 75 feet tall. In Willistown, which has 30 acres of the project, the  
zoning height limit is 35 feet.  
Ronald T. Bailey, executive director of the Chester County Planning  
Commission, is getting impatient.  
“Amtrak owns the property and they are not going to put one penny into the  
project,” leaving the developer on the hook, Bailey said. So for the developer, 
 “it all hinges on making the project pay for itself. Willistown adopted new  
(more restrictive) zoning. Amtrak had a new demand and a year and a half 
later,  there is still no agreement.”  
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE  
State Rep. Carole Rubley, R-157th, of Tredyffrin, would like the see both  
townships work with the developer and write a joint ordinance.  
Thus far, there has been a “total lack of communication,” Rubley said.  
U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-6th, of West Pikeland, said there has been  
significant money appropriated through three funding cycles that would have  helped 
with engineering and design of the transportation center. But without a  final 
plan, there is nothing to fund, he said.  
“Hopefully this will shake loose shortly,” Gerlach said, adding that if  
federal money is not used, the funding lapses and the money goes away.  
Because of delays, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission is now  
making unavailable $1 million that was to be used to redesign roads in Paoli.  
The money, provided through PennDOT’s Transportation Improvement Program, was 
 supposed to fund engineering studies to determine how the roads around the  
transportation center should be altered, according to Mimi Gleason, Tredyffrin 
 manager.  
DVRPC officials last week said the money is being pulled because it appears  
unlikely the project will begin this year.  
Squaring off Paoli Pike at Route 30 has long been part of the transportation  
center plan.  
To accomplish that, Matthews Paoli Ford would have to be relocated.  
George Steinmetz bought the dealership six years ago, knowing the business  
would need to move.  
Thus far, “no one has contacted us,” Steinmetz said. “We’re focused on our  
business.”  
The dealership will worry about moving “when we have to cross that bridge,”  
he said.  
Though the project has no shortage of parties pulling for it, Gary Smith,  
president and chief executive at the Chester County Economic Development  
Council, is not one of them.  
He thinks the time has passed for Paoli.  
“We don’t need it anymore,” Smith said. “We don’t need a major, major  
transportation intermodal center in Paoli.”  
Paoli is as busy as it is going to get and it is handling it, he said.  
There should be plans to build that super station at either Downingtown or  
Thorndale, places that have the room to build, places with booming growth,  
places that will need their own transportation center in five or 10 years, Smith  
said.  
“The cost to do it at Paoli would be astronomical,” he added.  
Michael Boyer, manager of the office of long-range planning and congestion  
management at the DVRPC, does not like the sound off that.  
Paoli is the hub. To build the rail center in Downingtown or Coatesville  
would be to futher sprawl. The key to a transportation center is putting it in  
an existing community, Boyer said. 



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