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urbantravelsPHL OP t1_j61qedl wrote

Reply to comment by hdhcnsnd in FDR Park’s Southeast Asian Market will find a permanent home in southwest corner of park, city announces by urbantravelsPHL

And what about elders who want to buy a bunch of groceries that they can't get elsewhere? "Only" a ten-minute walk to the market, and ten minutes back, when you're carrying or wheeling groceries, on top of however many trip segments it takes you to get to and from NRG station or the nearest bus stop.

I take the 17 bus to FDR park pretty often. Get off at the park entrance at the NE corner and walk in. When I went to one of the walking tours about the master plan for the park, I piped up and said "I got here by bus from Center City, but when you sent out the directions to get here there were only driving directions, nothing about transit." The leaders of the tour said airily "Oh, but most of the visitors to the park come by car!"

The head of the park and the head of the Fairmount parks conservancy were leading the tour. And not even *pretending* that they wanted to encourage people to come by transit or make it easier for people to even know that's an option.

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hdhcnsnd t1_j61rc07 wrote

Yeah, for elderly and disabled this is definitely not accessible.

In general, that whole area is pretty anti-pedestrian outside of the park. It’s a sea of parking lots and highway interchanges.

That’s a real shame if the actual people administering the park are encouraging driving. That’s a poor way to get a lot of people in the park, because there simply isn’t enough space, and I don’t think anybody wants the FDR loop jammed with traffic.

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urbantravelsPHL OP t1_j625kz6 wrote

Not so much encouraging driving, I don't think, as just being passive and fatalistic about the majority of their visitors driving in. They could do a lot more to encourage transit use and orient the park toward people arriving by transit.

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