May 2: Strong suburban jobs forecast | Penn Treaty Tower site up for auction | Best neighborhoods for car owners

On the heels of last week’s 2016 State of Center City report showing continued weak job growth in the city relative to the region and our peer cities, Harold Brubaker writes about a new report from Moody’s forecasting the strongest job growth in the collar counties since 2000, based on healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and professional services. 

The New Jersey Transit Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen rejected the deal that averted the transit strike on Friday, the AP reports. The union is part of an 11-member coalition that reached a deal with NJ Transit in March. Eight other unions had already ratified their contracts as of Saturday morning.  

A large riverfront parcel on Delaware Ave right next to Penn Treaty Park is going up for auction on May 11th, reports Naked Philly. The Penn Treaty Tower was once slated for this site, but the project fell through in 2008. 

What are the best Philly neighborhoods for car owners? Trulia and Parknav created a metric based on curb parking availability and the percentage of homes listed with off-street parking to find the top ten neighborhoods best-suited for car owners in seven major cities. In Philadelphia, the areas around Penn’s Landing, Oxford Circle, and Fairmount Park top the list. 

PennDOT will complete the new Sullivan’s Bridge this summer, replacing a key pedestrian-bicycle connection across the Schuylkill between the Schuylkill River Trail with Valley Forge National Historical Park, reports Dan Geringer. 

Maintenance, not innovation, is truly undervalued in modern market economies, argue Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell. “Maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, simply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations.”