Study: Reopening PATCO 'ghost station' will cost $18.5M

The estimated cost to reopen PATCO's long-shuttered Franklin Square subway station in Old City will be at least $18.5 million, a new study says.

That's about 50 percent more than transit officials expected.

The study, requested last year by PATCO's parent Delaware River Port Authority, estimates 1,300 riders would use the station each day, but that nearly all of them would be current riders who now use the 8th and Market Street station.

The DRPA has been considering reopening the "ghost station" beneath Sixth and Race streets for years, and the agency included $500,000 in its current capital budget to reexamine the issue.

The new study makes no recommendation about reopening the station, which has been open and closed several times since it was built in 1936. It has been closed since 1979.

The cost estimated by the study is 50 percent higher than the $12 million estimate in the DRPA's budget. And the study said an additional $8 million would be needed to add improvements such as escalators and an entrance on the south side of Race Street.

The rebirth of the once-seedy Franklin Square park above the station and new development nearby has brought renewed bustle to the area and renewed interest in again using the subway station.

For more than five years, DRPA has proposed and then shelved plans to reopen the station, citing financial constraints.

John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty, the Philadelphia labor leader who last year represented Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale on the DRPA board, was the leading advocate for reopening the station. He is no longer on the DRPA board.

The Franklin Square station opened in 1936 as the easternmost Philadelphia stop on the Camden-Philadelphia rail line owned by the Delaware River Joint River Commission and operated by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co.

The station soon closed because it got little use. Increased activity on the riverfront during World War II prompted its reopening.

Closed again after the war, the station was reactivated in 1953 when the commuter rail line was extended from Eighth and Market Streets to 15th and Locust Streets. It was soon closed again for lack of use. PATCO took over the line in 1969.

In 1976, when Philadelphia was a center of the nation's Bicentennial celebration, PATCO spent $1.1 million to renovate and reopen Franklin Square station. It closed again in 1979.

The station now serves as an occasional storage site for construction crews working in the PATCO tunnel. It has electrical power to operate the dim emergency lights that remain and provide air-compressor power for rail switches.

The last time the station was used by the public was in February 2014, when police and firefighters opened emergency exits there to rescue passengers stranded on a crowded PATCO train that broke down in the subway.

Source: Philly.com