July 26: Real-time transit info | Wells Fargo blasts Philly lawsuit | 20th and Wharton construction

Water, air, and fire in today’s morning roundup:

Wells Fargo has filed a motion to dismiss Philadelphia’s lawsuit that claims the bank violated the Fair Housing Act by targeting minority borrowers, the Legal Intelligencer reports. The bank contends that the city’s arguments have at least six degrees of separation between “any allegedly discriminatory loans and the city’s claimed injuries,” and, without a clear connection, the liability “could stretch to any remote yet imaginable aspect of ‘economic and social life’ in a never-ending causal chain.”

Reading Terminal has installed screens showing real-time SEPTA and PATCO info, Jason Laughlin reports. SEPTA is investing about $11 million to modernize its real-time data systems; the agency shared at its January capital budget open house that it hopes the upgrades will be complete by 2020.

After the fire: Ori Feibush has begun construction on 11 homes adjacent to his project at 20th and Wharton, Billy Penn’s Mike Dent reports. Feibush says that “he doesn’t expect the arson to be any kind of turning point in the neighborhood” and that it instead created a lack of supply that immediately drove housing prices up roughly $50,000. In May, WHYY’s Bobby Allyn reported that Feibush believed that “upwardly mobile white folks who grew up outside of the city” were responsible for the fire in Point Breeze.

NJDEP has closed three beaches and issued advisories for 31 more due bacteria in water samples exceeding the state quality standard, reports Justin Auciello for WHYY. Auciello writes that some waterways are typically susceptible to higher bacteria levels after rainfall and associated storm runoff, which the region has seen quite a bit of recently.

Across the pond, the U.K. government announced today that it will ban the sale of new diesel and gas cars and vans by 2040, reports foreign NPR correspondent Joanna Kakissis. The government issued the ban in an effort to improve air quality and reduce the number of highly polluting cars.