Center City Commuter Connection
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The Center City Commuter Connection is a passenger railroad tunnel in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All of the SEPTA Regional Rail lines except for the R6 Cynwyd pass through the tunnel, which contains two stations - Suburban Station and Market East Station.
Suburban Station was the terminus of the commuter rail lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), and the Reading Company (RDG) ran trains into Reading Terminal (one block north of where Market East Station was built). The connection, the first of its kind in the United States[1], was built to allow trains to run through downtown from one terminal station to another.
R. Damon Childs (1929(?) - 1998, University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture 1953, Graduate School of Architecture 1957), was a 28-year-old junior land planner with the Philadelphia City Planning Commission when he proposed the Connection to permit run-throughs between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad suburban lines. The tracks would run under Filbert Street to link Suburban Station with the Reading Terminal near Spring Garden Street, with underground replacement for Reading Terminal as part of the renewal of Market Street East. At first the idea seemed preposterous because it required excavation under Philadelphia City Hall, one of the most massive buildings in the world, but it was nevertheless incorporated by Edmund N. Bacon into the city's 1960 Comprehensive Plan.
The connection opened on April 28, 1984 when a free shuttle service began operating between Suburban Station and Market East Station. Full service by trains from former PRR lines began on 3 September 1984. The last train from Reading Terminal departed on November 6, 1984, and trains from former Reading lines began using the new line on November 10, 1984. The old approach to Reading Terminal was then abandoned. It is still mostly present, and is now known as the Reading Viaduct.
