Brace yourself, Delco.
We're about two weeks away from the arrival of Pope Francis to cap off the weeklong World Meeting of Families.
The good news is that the county is ready. Yesterday they rolled out their plans to handle crowds expected on that weekend. You can get the details here. And also at the county website here. The bad news is that everyone is likely going to be inconvenienced a bit by all this, especially if you happen to live near one of the regional rail train stations that will be used to ferry the crowds into and out of the city.
That's not good news for us here in beautiful downtown Primos. The Media-Elwyn line runs right beside our building and the station is a block away. We're used to seeing people jockeying for prized parking spots along both Cottonwood and Mildred avenues each day as they make the mad dash to catch the R3 into the city. That won't be happening on the pope weekend, however. Both those little streets are expected to be closed.
We won't even have access to our front parking lot. We're basically turning that over to Upper Darby and county officials, as well as SEPTA for a command center.
Yes, there will be a National Guard presence in the county that weekend. No, they're not instituting martial law. The 280 Guardsmen mostly will help with traffic control around the key transit sites.
One of the most interesting developments - at least to me - is that officials aren't really sure just how many people are going to show up trying to get into the city.
At this point, Delco has decided it's much better to be safe than sorry.
That's probably the way much of that weekend is going to go.
Ready or not, the pope is coming.
Sounds like Delco is ready.
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