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Photo Essay: Route Fifteen


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Words by Matthew Albasi, photos by Thomas Weir

 

Life has the tendency to be inconvenient.

An otherwise quick drive out of the city up 5th Street can be ruined by a blockade of orange cones and sweaty men in hard hats blocking the path north across Girard Avenue. The traffic slows further as oblivious drivers slip into the left lane and quickly speed past to bypass the long line of cars, turning the only direction they can. They quickly meet the same barricade you’ve been staring at for five minutes and now have to assert themselves into the traffic, turning right into a single lane, further slowing everything down.

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You might say to yourself, “why do they have to do this now?”

Things would be different if you were in charge. “Well, I wouldn’t block an arterial road at rush hour, that’s for sure!”

But what would you do if someone asked you to dig more than half a million pounds of steel out of Girard Avenue?

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It’s easy to hate on the trolley construction. It’s a perturbation in the system, a wrench in the machine. But you have to remember that what they’re doing is a herculean feat. Granted, it’s one our civilization is capable of doing regularly, but that doesn’t change the facts.

 

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SEPTA is currently excavating about 300 tons of steel rails and 5000 cubic yards of concrete to improve the Route 15 trolley. The track they are removing was installed in the 50s and has already lasted about twice as long as estimated. As soon as they’re finished pulling it out, they’ll bring just as much material back in. To make matters worse, they’ll do it during the middle of the summer with the sun beating down and the frequent threat of thunderstorms.

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Machinery assists with the heavy lifting, but amongst the melee of machines, workers perform many labor intensive jobs. If you look closely, you can see these small tasks: a man crouched down peeling miles of tape from the tracks, four workers standing ankle deep in wet cement pushing it into the cracks and crevices of the rails, and an operator fighting a massive, spark-spewing saw as it tears through steel.

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This handful of workers are toiling in the sun every day to ensure the lives of the almost 10,000 people who use the Route 15 trolley every day.

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Life has a tendency to be inconvenient, but not always without good cause.

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