CLARIFYING THE COUNCIL HEARING PLAN Friday's Daily News reported that Philadelphia City Councilman Wilson Goode, Jr. was planning to hold public hearings within City Council's Transportation and Public Utilities Committee regarding what the Daily News said was "SEPTA's plans to make deep service cuts in the city transit division." This afternoon, an aide to Councilman Goode clarified to me what the hearings were about. The hearings would not focus on the deep and draconian service cuts that SEPTA is planning, but rather on the "Philadelphia Transit System Lease" between SEPTA and the City of Philadelphia. (A story on the KYW NewsRadio web site clears up some of the confusion.) As part of the resolution, Councilman Goode is seeking subpoena power (as permitted under the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter) to force SEPTA to cooperate. While the service cuts may be a factor behind the scheduling of the hearings, Councilman Goode appears to be putting a lot of pressure on SEPTA by using the lease agreement as some sort of leverage to pressure SEPTA into scaling back some of it's cuts. Resolution 030230, which was introduced last week, has yet to be scheduled for hearings as yet.

STUPID TRANSIT PLANNING TRICKS From the people who brought you the South Jersey LRT fiasco comes word that the Atlantic City Bus Terminal will be torn down and replaced with a new facility - 6 YEARS AFTER IT WAS BUILT! The Press of Atlantic City reports that New Jersey Transit has reached a deal with the Casino Redevelopment Authority to vacate the current bus terminal at Atlantic and Michigan Avenues, which opened in 1997, with a new facility to be located a block away at Atlantic and Ohio. The site of the current facility will now become a $60 million retail and entertainment complex. The CRDA will fund the $7.8 million costs for construction of the new terminal, which will be built starting this summer with an anticipated opening date of January 2004. Far be it for me to question the logic of the State of New Jersey, but didn't anybody think about something like this in 1996 when the old terminal was slated to be replaced?