October 24: SEPTA strike looms | Office sales doubled in first half | The math of Park n’ Rides

Michael Noda says there could be a SEPTA strike as soon as Monday.

The PR fight between ride-sharing companies, like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, and traditional taxi fleet owners is getting nasty, with competing campaigns playing on public fears of sexual assault by taxi drivers.

Commercial real estate, especially office space, has been a cold patch in the otherwise hot Philadelphia real estate market, but Finance & Commerce is reporting that things are looking up as office sales more than doubled in the first half of the year, to the highest peak since 2006.

The higher commercial yields are what’s bringing in higher value retail like Century 21 and some of the other big brand name stores that are opening in Center City this fall.

Inga Saffron looks at the tension between infill development and community gardens in West Philly.

Blogging yesterday’s big Daiily News feature on neighborhood change in Philly, Liz Spikol flags Temple professor Carolyn Adams saying that Philly has seen very little displacement of low-income homeowners resulting from appreciating land values in neighborhoods undergoing reinvestment. 

Transportation consultant Jarrett Walker explains the math of what makes Park n’ Rides near frequent rail transit stations such a poor choice of land use for local governments and transit agencies: “Really great transit generates high land value around stations. Free parking presumes low land value around stations.”

A reminder from the Post-Gazette that Philly doesn’t get all the money from its own red light cameras. Here are 6 projects in Allegheny County that are being funded by Philly’s red light camera revenue. 

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