SEPTA Contingency Plan (Washington, Newtown, Penn: appointed, light rail, design)

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by BK_PHL_DEL

I was in Shanghai for work this past June and loved the subway there. They just dig up the ground and build the subway without giving a crap, which I wish we could do here in Philly/America.

Well, of course... They can take eminent domain of anything they want.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

If there were more riders like you, then SEPTA may not have lost as many riders as it fears it did. But if there were many more riders like you (which I doubt), those trains would have been less packed.

Well, one thing I'm not doing is going back to the regional rail. Except during weather emergencies when the transit side is shut down - or on weekends when I ride for free.

One of the nice things about this has been I found out that I can get home 10-15 minutes earlier, even all the way up in Mt Airy, taking the bus and subway. And it's a lot more flexible since it's much more frequent. There were times on the regional rail I was over an hour late due to trains cancelled with zero notification, and I was 15-20+ minutes late a disturbing amount of the time. I don't really miss anything about it, except the quieter atmospher for reading and/or listening to podcasts (which was always the main selling point anyway for me).

[inmyownwords15]

Question for you all.

I am moving into the city soon (Graduate Hospital) and I will have to commute to Ft. Washington for work. During the winter and the occasional snowstorm, how reliable will SEPTA be? I am not sure how much driving I'd like to do in the snow on the hike up to Ft. Washington. I'm a California transplant, so not too much experience in the snow. Basically, am I better off driving or taking the train? Thanks

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by inmyownwords15

Question for you all.

I am moving into the city soon (Graduate Hospital) and I will have to commute to Ft. Washington for work. During the winter and the occasional snowstorm, how reliable will SEPTA be? I am not sure how much driving I'd like to do in the snow on the hike up to Ft. Washington. I'm a California transplant, so not too much experience in the snow. Basically, am I better off driving or taking the train? Thanks

Welcome to winter! Give it some time, and you may even come to appreciate it (well, give it a good long time). Actually, its chief charm is also its chief bane: snow.

Snow usually doesn't disrupt rail service, either on Regional Rail or rapid transit. Those services run even when bus routes don't. Only the biggest blizzards shut them down.

Even though yours will be a reverse commute and thus less of a bear than heading into Center City FROM Fort Washington, I think you will still find Regional Rail less stressful once service returns to normal.

[PhilliesPhan2013]

Okay, so I rode the Media/Elwyn Line this morning like I do everyday to get to my classes at Temple. When we hit Suburban Station, the engineer came outside of the cab and announced to everyone that regular weekday Regional Rail service will resume on Monday, October 3rd! I don't see any announcements on SEPTA's website, but this is basically confirmation of a story I read earlier this week with the same return date

[PhilliesPhan2013]

I'm surprised that nobody has posted about this, but it has been confirmed by SEPTA that Regional Rail service will be restored to normal weekday schedules starting this Monday!

[Becca8377]

Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan2013

I'm surprised that nobody has posted about this, but it has been confirmed by SEPTA that Regional Rail service will be restored to normal weekday schedules starting this Monday!

I saw that, but I just moved to DC on Tuesday so I won't have to deal with any SEPTA debacles anymore

[cpomp]

When I visited the city last weekend, I actually got to sit in a Silverline V car. It was great to hear that robot lady trying to pronounce the stops.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Becca8377

I saw that, but I just moved to DC on Tuesday so I won't have to deal with any SEPTA debacles anymore

Have fun dealing with the Washington Metro's, which right now are worse.

My weekend in KC was bracketed by two overnights at my not-boyfriend's place in DC. (We flew to MCI out of DCA.) The Red Line train I boarded at Union Station was packed to the gills and sat in the stations for what seemed like an eternity while the operator issued announcements for "Transit, please board train on Track 2" (what I'm guessing was a call for the transit police to board the train).

Later, I learned that we managed to miss a track fire on the Blue and Orange lines at Metro Center that snarled service on those lines for the entire evening rush hour. (The closest Metro station to my friend's place is Capitol South, and his office is a short walk from Farragut West and an even shorter one from Farragut North.)

At least that track fire didn't asphyxiate anyone like the one earlier this year near Smithsonian did because the vent fans were turned on in the wrong direction after a stuck train filled with smoke.

WMATA right now is playing catchup with some 40 years of deferred maintenance. A God-awful safety and operating culture exacerbates things. Ironically, SEPTA's yanking of all 120 Silverliner V cars from service after the cracked equalizer beam was discovered is evidence of a safety culture superior to that at WMATA. It's not beyond the realm of imagination that had something similar happened there, it would have manifested itself in a car running off the rails, with accompanying injuries or worse.

There was a suicide by train that made a mess of Broad Street Line service at Wednesday's evening rush, but you can't blame incidents like that on SEPTA. Injuries and deaths caused by operator error or equipment defects have been much, much rarer on the SEPTA system (all three rail modes) in more than a century of operation by it and its predecessors than they have been in the 40-year history of the Washington Metro.

[MB1562]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

There was a suicide by train that made a mess of Broad Street Line service at Wednesday's evening rush, but you can't blame incidents like that on SEPTA.

I thought that was just a blind guy who accidentally stumbled onto the tracks when it was pulling into the station?