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Originally Posted by Charlotte485
Charlotte is doing the worst by far. There’s several articles on it too.
This source below is great to generate a graph on the ridership of various transit agencies. You can see how much transit has recovered and what the ridership numbers are.
https://transitapp.com/APTA |
The team behind the Transit app have to be the best technogeeks devoted to making transit better for everyone in the country. I recommended the "Best of Philly" award we gave the app in 2017. (It certainly beats SEPTA's own app for user-friendlieess and functionality, though you can't yet purchase fares through it the way you can using Transit in some other cities.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by SonySegaTendo617
I hadn't researched SEPTA as much. But I'm sure the transit in the Philly area, probably would be decent. And I bet commuter rail also would be decent, as well.
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I not only ride SEPTA every day, I've written about it quite a bit, as I have transit and transportation in general, mainly for
Next City. One of the things I say about SEPTA is that "it's not as bad as its detractors crack it down to be." Leaving aside the appearance of the stations, or the return of homeless encampments to some of the entrances and concourses, the system on the whole does a good job of getting people around Philadelphia reasonably quickly and efficiently.
I think one of the reasons why people tend to dump on SEPTA is because many transit fans are rail-centric —*and Philadelphia got only one-sixth of all the rapid transit lines the City Councils said should be built back in 1913, after the city, dissatisfied with how long it took the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company to build the city's first subway line (1902-07), decided it should do the job itself. It then promptly took
seven years to complete the first line it built, though World War I materials shortages did contribute somewhat to the longer build time. Once work resumed on the second line — also begun in 1915 but shut down two years later for lack of funds — resumed in 1925, work on the initial segment was completed in a relatively speedy three years. That line, btw, is one of only two four-track subway lines not located in New York; the other's in Chicago. It operates local and express service from the start of the service day until 9 p.m. six days a week (no express service at all on Sundays except for special trains to sports events in South Philadelphia, at the line's southern end).
But still, our city's relatively skeletal rapid transit system is held against it by many. I usually tell people, "If you really want to get around Philadelphia, learn the buses."
Quote:
Originally Posted by masssachoicetts
MTA- New York City
MBTA- Boston/Providence
MARTA- Atlanta
CTA/RTA- Chicago
BART- San Francisco / San Jose
WMATA- Washington DC
SEPTA - Philadelphia
LACMTA - Los Angeles
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Now, what the letters stand for:
MBTA: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (usually referred to as simply "the T" after its easily recognized logo)
MARTA: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (there's a mildly racist joke about what those initials "really stand for")
CTA: Chicago Transit Authority, which was what the band we know as Chicago called itself before the real CTA sued to stop them from doing so
RTA: Regoinal Transit Authority (of Northeastern Illinois), the umbrella agency that oversees the CTA system oin the city, the PACE suburban bus network and Metra regional rail
BART: Bay Area Rapid Transit, which operates only the rapid transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Separate agencies operate mass transit in the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, San Mateo County and San Jose, hence the reference to "balkanized" transit in the Bay Area
WMATA: Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority
SEPTA: Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
LACMTA: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, usually called "Metro"
And, of course,
MTA: Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York, the 800-pound gorilla of American mass transit agencies
Quote:
Originally Posted by thedirtypirate
Ironically the only part of SEPTA I see that I would describe that way is near the concourse between PATCO and SEPTA where hobos hangout. The entire concourse under city hall really should be more of a priority though. It's a relic of a different time and is dingey.
One thing that makes SEPTA unique, is every regional rail line runs through a series of stations in and around downtown. It's one of the closest things in the United States to a European-style S-Bahn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Bahn
SEPTA is also is linked together with NJ Transit which is nice because it takes you to both Newark Penn Station and NYC Penn Station which you can travel in various directions from. In theory, you can get on and off commuter trains plus a subway trip from Newark, Delaware to New Haven, CT. I have done to it from Philly to Bridgeport, CT a few times. In a country that isn't big on rail travel, it's a pretty interesting experience imo.
Just putting it into google maps, it actually surprises me the estimated time on the regional rail from Newark, DE to New Haven, CT is only 45 mins longer than the Acela from the same stations. That's kind of sad Amtrak isn't better. |
Regional Rail has much more potential to serve the region than SEPTA has exploited to date, and lots of advocates, not to mention some inside the agency itself, are pushing to change the way SEPTA runs it in order to realize that potential:
Reimagining Regional Rail | SEPTA
A companion planning process seeks to rationalize the bus network so that it provides better and more frequent service:
Bus Revolution | SEPTA
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Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan2013
When taking into account the extent to which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania underfunds its transit systems, SEPTA is doing pretty well. Unlike other transit agencies, the system is not falling apart. There has been a big push to pursue capital renewal on its existing assets, which has led to a greater degree of reliability on a system which has certain assets that date back to the 1850s. Furthermore, SEPTA has not had a major accident resulting in a fatality since before I was born in 1995. The worst thing that has happened at SEPTA in recent years was the removal of Silverliner Vs from service back in 2016. Finally, SEPTA offers what few other US transit systems offer: some degree of late-night and 24/7 service.
I've been taking SEPTA for as long as I've been alive. I grew up taking the El and 52 bus in West Philly, and now I commute to my office in Center City from my home in Northwest Philly via the Regional Rail. I also live car-free, so I'm an experienced bus, trolley, trolleybus, and subway user. IMO, the only SEPTA mode that has grown consistently worse is the El. This is not only due to the people who ride it (primarily from Kenisngton), but also duality e to the near-daily occurrences of equipment breakdowns. Other than the El, I usually have a pleasant ride on SEPTA.
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The fortunes of US mass transit agencies seem to rise and fall over time.
Boston's MBTA was considered one of the class acts of American mass transit when I attended college there in the 1970s. Today, America's first subway is probably its most decrepit.
In the 1970s and 1980s, New York held that title, until a $12 billion repair program brought it back to good health. Now it's reaching the point where it needs another one of those.
In the 1990s, it was the CTA that was in sad shape. There was one incident where a train on one of the kinds derailed
while stopped because the rails slipped out from under it. Then that system got a huge infusion of money for repairs.
Washington's dirty little secret was that WMATA was really a construction company more than it was a transit system operator. It had a horrible safety culture and even worse maintenance, and the 2009 Takoma crash on the Red Line, where a train at speed plowed into the back of one that was stopped, killing dozens, revealed all the termites in the woodwork. (That wasn't the first crash on the Metro, either: the first fatality accident occurred in 1982, and there have been five major collisions, 17 derailments (including the incident in 1992 that led to the first fatalities on WMATA Metrorail) and several smoke incidents, including one that killed a passenger, in the system's 46 years of service.) It still took a couple of years after Takoma for WMATA to really get serious about cleaning up its safety and maintenance act. The 7000-series problem aside, the system is now generally safe to ride; it's a shame many fewer people are riding it.
By comparison, that 1993 wreck
TheProf mentioned above — I was riding the trolley subway to work when it happened, and we had to be evacuated through the tunnel to the nearest station because nothing would be moving for quite a while — was only the second fatality accident on Philadelphia rapid transit in the 86 years from its opening up until then, and there hasn't been another one since then (the first was in 1961). There was one other wreck on Regional Rail in the late 1990s that killed an operator and injured about a dozen passengers.
In 2013, the American Public Transit Association named SEPTA the "Best Large Transit System" in the country. I told those who were scratching their heads at the honor that SEPTA won it because it kept the system in working order using no more than duct tape and baling wire.
PhilliesPhan2013: It's been a minute! You need to come visit me in my new digs on Germantown's nicer west side. Drop me a line.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VitoM2000
Yeah, why are the CTA's train cars small?
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Becaiuse the tracks and tunnels are designed to handle cars no longer than (I think) 40 feet, and the tunnel dimensions are also narrow. From the late 1940s until the late 1960s, the bulk of the CTA's fleet of 'L' cars consited of PCC trolleys that had been destined for Chicago Surface Lines before that company abruptly shut down streetcar service in 1948. The PCCs were refashioned into rapid transit cars.
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