EVEN ROCKY'S block isn't immune from Philadelphia's ongoing abandoned-property problem.

SEPTA regular Laura Herbine of Lansdale noticed the change on all the electronic boards at Suburban Station Sunday. They named the Regional Rail lines by destination only, without the usual "R" and number, such as R3 or R4.

SHORTLY BEFORE 4 a.m. on the first day of June, a desperate man came running from Dauphin Street, through a weed-choked, unfenced, vacant lot and onto Dakota Street, near 30th, pursued by men with guns.

After July 25, Alea Adams won't call her train from Thorndale to Suburban Station the R5.

BISHOP Kermit L. Newkirk is frustrated. From his perch at Harold O. Davis Memorial Baptist Church, in Logan, on the edge of the infamous "Logan Triangle," his view features more than 35 acres of empty lots edged with overgrown weeds, concrete barriers and piles of garbage, chip bags, soda bottles, old tires and sofas.

Is going solar proving too daunting - with too many installers to choose from, reliability hard to judge, and prices all over the place?

After slashing a third of the $2.4 million budgeted for cleaning, greening and maintaining thousands of vacant lots, Mayor Nutter said yesterday that the city never planned to eliminate the program, as many community activists had feared.

With the addition of Northwest Philly, RecycleBank is now available city-wide. And David Biddle, the city recycling coordinator, says he won't settle for anything less than 100 percent…

Philadelphia's BigBelly solar trash compactors - public receptacles located curbside throughout much of Center City and beyond - are more of a big bust than anything else, the city controller said Monday.

The newly painted city trucks had a hopeful slogan: "Philly's traffic lights are all turning green."