SEPTA sucks (Wall: transfer, upkeep, living in)

[skintreesnail]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

I wouldn't be so definite.

Yes, the BSL Navy Yard extension is a long shot, but there are people with some clout behind it.

The shame is that we probably will never see the Northeast subway, which really is needed.

Is the Delaware Ave. trolley still being pursued? That would provide another option to get to the Navy Yard if the BSL extension never happens.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

These are all the things I've been thinking of. Sedgwick is a good example of a station with no vending machine, no turnstile, but a reader is sitting there. What do they expect me to do with that? And why? The entire line is capped at zone 2. So, if I scan with a Zone 2, do I really need to buzz out? Will they implement turnstiles? And will the conductors still check fare on the train, and if so, why? So many strange concepts.

My understanding is that you tap in when you get to your initial train station (Jefferson Station, for instance) and you tap out when you depart the train (Sedgwick, in your case). Or vice versa. If you forget to tap out, you are supposed to be charged the maximum fare (Zone 4). If you only carry a monthly pass on your card and no travel wallet balance, I'm not sure that they could actually charge you for that though.


Turnstiles for exiting are only in place, as far as I've seen, in the Center City Zone. It'll still be annoying to tap out at heavily used outbound stations, such as Stenton, I think. But we'll all see soon.

[1ondoner]

Based on my experience with the London tube Oyster card, the balance can be negative. Such that when you reload the card, it first pays off the negative balance.

Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat

If you only carry a monthly pass on your card and no travel wallet balance, I'm not sure that they could actually charge you for that though.

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat

My understanding is that you tap in when you get to your initial train station (Jefferson Station, for instance) and you tap out when you depart the train (Sedgwick, in your case). Or vice versa. If you forget to tap out, you are supposed to be charged the maximum fare (Zone 4). If you only carry a monthly pass on your card and no travel wallet balance, I'm not sure that they could actually charge you for that though.


Turnstiles for exiting are only in place, as far as I've seen, in the Center City Zone. It'll still be annoying to tap out at heavily used outbound stations, such as Stenton, I think. But we'll all see soon.

So for those exiting in a Zone 2 on a Zone 2 line, we'll just ignore it.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

So for those exiting in a Zone 2 on a Zone 2 line, we'll just ignore it.

I'm still not sure - like 1ondoner said, it's also possible to have a negative balance. Back in the Twin Cities, they used to let you go negative for one ride. It's gonna be a wait and see, I think. It might get you when you try to add your new zone 2 pass the next month. I doubt they would put all of those fare readers up if they didn't need people to tap out.

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat

I'm still not sure - like 1ondoner said, it's also possible to have a negative balance. Back in the Twin Cities, they used to let you go negative for one ride. It's gonna be a wait and see, I think. It might get you when you try to add your new zone 2 pass the next month. I doubt they would put all of those fare readers up if they didn't need people to tap out.

Well, if I depart in a zone 2 and have a zone 2 trail pass, but the entire line ends in zone 2, they couldn't charge me for anything because I couldn't have taken it beyond its limit. What would be the point of bumping the reader?

To your point, we'll have to see what they come up with. Hopefully, it's thoughtful.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

Well, if I depart in a zone 2 and have a zone 2 trail pass, but the entire line ends in zone 2, they couldn't charge me for anything because I couldn't have taken it beyond its limit. What would be the point of bumping the reader?

To confirm you took it to a zone 2 station. Even if you know you're on a train that only goes to zone 2, and the conductor knows all the stops are zone 2, the card doesn't necessarily know what train line you're on.


SEPTA | Become a SEPTA Key Regional Rail Early Adopter

• TAP your Key Card at one of the platform Validators at your home station

• Enjoy your RIDE

• TAP your Key Card again at the Validator when you get to your destination to exit the station or close your trip

• If you forget to tap before boarding the train, ask the Conductor to tap your Key Card on their handheld device

• At Temple, Jefferson, Suburban, 30th St. and University City Stations you will tap at the turnstiles to get in and out of the paid area

It's still a ways down the road, but once everybody is over on the keycard, the last bulletpoint is going to be the frustrating part.

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat

To confirm you took it to a zone 2 station. Even if you know you're on a train that only goes to zone 2, and the conductor knows all the stops are zone 2, the card doesn't necessarily know what train line you're on.


SEPTA | Become a SEPTA Key Regional Rail Early Adopter






It's still a ways down the road, but once everybody is over on the keycard, the last bulletpoint is going to be the frustrating part.

Good point, the validator wouldn't know which train I was on, so they would charge you for a zone 4. If I start having fees show up because the validator didn't register properly, this is going to be very frustrating.

I don't even mind validating on my way out of the CC hub. I think there are enough gates to get out, especially since I can go through one of the skinny turnstiles.

[rowhomecity]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

I'm with you on the SEPTA-is-better-than-most-Philadephians-crack-it-down-to-be tip, and I recall getting puzzled looks from some people when I said the agency deserved the "Best Large Transit System" award it got from the American Public Transportation Association in 2012.

Of course, Act 89 hadn't kicked in for real yet, so SEPTA got the award for keeping the system in running order by using only duct tape and baling wire.

And even though Washington has gotten some of its act together, the contrast between SEPTA and WMATA remains stark. That city has two big problems, one of planning and the other of management.

The planning one: Apparently no one foresaw just how popular Washington's subway would become, so they made no provision for even three-track peak-direction express service, let alone full four-track bidirectional express service, on a system that is actually a hybrid like most Second Subway Era systems are: part remote vehicle storage for long-haul commuters, part urban circulator. Those long headways stem mainly from shoving three rapid transit lines (Blue, Orange and now Silver) into one two-track crosstown subway tunnel. I do understand there is now talk about building a new east-west subway tunnel in central Washington to ease the pressure, but that will be decades off at the very best if it indeed ever comes to fruition.

But some of the reason stems from the system's lousy operations and maintenance culture. People here complain, and rightly so, about once-an-hour suburban buses that miss runs (it happens - I have a friend who used to work in operations and assisted with the passenger loading and dispatching for one such route), or packed buses that blow by intermediate stops for various reasons, but here at least, you arrive alive. That should be something that goes without saying, but in Washington, that's not a given: there have been more fatal accidents on its system in the 42 years since its first segment opened than in the 111 since Philadelphia's first subway entered service - or, IIRC, the 114 since New York's much more complex and extensive subway saw its first line open. (And if the latter statement isn't accurate, the statement that Washington has had more fatal accidents per 100,000 or whatever metric you choose to use passenger-miles than any other system in the United States is.) Not even the sainted David Gunn, who turned every passenger rail system he touched to gold (or at least something better than dross), was able to turn it around, and it's only been the exposés of just how bad things were in the wake of the 2009 Takoma Red Line wreck that have even made a dent in that culture.

How is Chicago's transit system NOT "legacy"? The Loop Elevated is a National Historic Landmark, and that city has had rapid transit almost as long as New York has had it - its first elevated lines entered service in the 1880s. Most of the mainline railroads that served the city operated commuter trains into it for most of the 20th century, and the Illinois Central's electrification is about as old as the Reading's or the Pennsylvania's (most of it; the PRR was an early adopter there, electrifying the Main Line in 1915). The systems I consider "non-legacy" are the ones I refer to as "Second Subway Era" systems.

The First Subway Era began with the opening of Boston's Tremont Street trolley subway in 1897 (followed four years later by the running of the city's first elevated line through it, making the city the first in the US to have a "heavy rail" subway too) and ended with the completion of Chicago's "initial system of subways" (a deep tube under State Street that was the first of several planned subway tunnels that would have replaced the Loop elevated) in 1940. The Second Subway Era technically began here, in 1969, with the opening of the Port Authority Transit Corporation's Lindenwold High-Speed Line, but the first full-blown new system of the era was San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit, opened in 1971. In between these two eras sits Cleveland, whose one heavy rapid transit line (the Red Line) opened for service in 1955. Oddly enough, more US cities got heavy rail rapid transit (six) in the second wave than did in the first (four). The Second Subway Era, it appears, came to an end with the opening of Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard subway tunnel in 1992. That subway will eventually reach the sea as its planners hoped, but everything else LA has built since then has been on the light side.

And when it comes to light metros ("light rail transit" lines whose operating characteristics are more like those of rapid transit than those of streetcars), the imbalance is even greater: five (Boston, Cleveland, Newark, Philadelphia, Rochester (NY, closed in 1956)) in the first era (I'm counting the central-city trolley subways in Boston and Philadelphia as light metros), eleven and counting in the ongoing second one. (Of those ten, Seattle's is full-blown rapid transit in all but vehicle design and carrying capacity, and Dallas, San Diego and Buffalo - which is odd in that its line runs on the street in the downtown and in a subway outside it - come very, very close, and Dallas will join Seattle once it completes a downtown subway tunnel. I'm not quite certain how to class the light rail lines/systems in Houston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. I did include the similar Minneapolis-St. Paul system in the ranks of the 11, but I think it does have some genuine PROW rather than reserved-median running.)

Thanks for all this very detailed information!

[Nitro2985]

Does anyone know if the outer regional rail stations are going to be turnstyleless and just use the honor system that you actually tap in and out?

Right now the readers are up in a bunch but no turnstyle is in place, this is how it is for most Japanese Pasmo entry points, and it pretty substantially increases throughput for the entry and exitways.