July 4th Weekend

Sean@Temple wrote:I just returned from the elton john concert and I had the worst trolley experience of my life. 22nd street station was packed and getting restless as no trolley appeared for over 10 min and when they did they just zoomed past full. When they did stop people pushed and struggled creating very dangerous conditions in attempt to get on. This only resulted in slowing up the trolley as the would stand in the stair well, keeping the doors open.

The last time I went to Center City for the fireworks was in 2001. I also made the mistake of trying to catch the trolley at 22 St Station. The crowd of people stretched out all along both Market and 22 Sts. After several minutes of non-movement, I gave up and ran to 30 St to catch the El. The only reason I made it back to West Chester was because the Red Arrow buses were held for a whopping 10 minutes on their last runs.

Yeah, like that's going to work...

It's interesting how Elmwood could've added extra cars for Live 8 but not for the 4th.

That said, the problems at 22 St after the July 4 Parkway fireworks seems to be an annual occurance.

SEPTALRV9072 wrote:Would have been nice if they had all 8 push-pull trains running.

That would assume that (a) all 8 AEM-7/ALP-44 engines were available and (b) that someone at 1234 Market would've had a clue on how to operate a railroad. I'd say it's doubtful on both counts...

jfrey40535 wrote:SEPTA should have had every P/P coach with center doors on it out there. Would have greatly sped up boarding times. They also could have boarded at suburban on track 0 where there is a platform on either side to allow double the boarding capactiy (granted only helps on the PRR side).

They only have 10 center-door coaches out of about 35-40 push-pull coaches; none of the 10 are cab-cars.

jfrey40535 wrote:It doesent take a rocket scientist to figure out that between 10-12 and 5-7 tbat mobs of people would be moving in and out of CC. Should have been easy on at least the R6, R5's and R2Wil/R7 Trenton to run at least 30 minute service with maybe a few 15 minute headways somewhere.

The Paoli line ran its usual 30 minute headways on Saturdays; I don't see why SEPTA couldn't have borrowed a few trainsets from NJT and or MARC (IIRC, MARC usually stores a train or two at 30 St on weekends) to at least accomodate the NEC branches (R2 Wilmington and R7 Trenton).

Overall they could have done better, but I even heard the head of service planning say that he had no idea this many people would be taking SEPTA down. Roads were closed---duh! Get your heads out of your a&$es guys!

This is what passes for leadership at 1234 Market. BTW, do you mean the head of operations?

jfrey40535 wrote:Would be nice if the R5 made a few Thorndale trips as on holidays it only goes as far as Malvern. The Trenton (R7) should be beefed up too in case people from NY decide to come down for the concerts.

For as long as I've lived down in this area (10 years), SEPTA hasn't really given a rats a** about Chester County. Why should they start now? Exton, Whitford, Downingtown and Thorndale sit vitually unused while people who could easily use those stations are forced to go to Paoli or Malvern, causing those stations to overflow.

That said, ALL RRD lines should operate on a modified/enhanced Saturday schedule on 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and New Year's (for the Mummers) instead of a Sunday schedule. And yes, that would mean 30 min on the R5 Paoli and a few other lines during peak travel times prior to the parades/events on the aforementioned days. It would also help if the stations were open for ticket sales during those same periods so as not to overburden the train crews.

Thanksgiving 2003 was a prime example on the Paoli Line. The train that I was on was crowded even with a longer train. The train was delayed because the crews had to sell tickets instead of collecting pre-paid tickets, which would've made a lot more sense...

Bill R. wrote:... (again) no one will be held accountable, and the whole situation will be dismissed as having been too overwhelming to deal with.

No, it will be dismissed as the fault of not giving SEPTA management enough money.

Running a weekday schedule with modified hours would have been too much hard work for management to figure out. Aren't union work crew schedules decided months in advance? I'm not saying that SEPTA management couldn't do anything, since there was definite lack of planning and contingency plans here. If SEPTA were a private enterprise, someone would at least by issuing a public apology saying that they messed up. But since SEPTA is a quasi-governmental agency, they just pretend like it never happened. Hey, it's "good enough for government work." PRIVATIZE SEPTA!

Matthew Mitchell wrote: No, it will be dismissed as the fault of not giving SEPTA management enough money.

Traditionally, management is paid a salary and they're supposed to get the job done no matter how many hours they work or how much they're paid, and there's a bonus based on a performance review.

In the Philadelphia Daily News:

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/new ... 062962.htm

an article concerning the Bizzaro world of SEPTA. Maloney says they did great. Talk about spin...

From what a conductor told me, the big problem on the RR, as it always is, was manpower. They simply did not have enough, so I'd be willing to bet there was equipment sitting in the yard with no one to operate it. I heard of conductors being forced to work 10 car trains by themselves. Needless to say some folks got a free ride. That's probablly why all the P/P's werent operating.

Maybe if they relaxed the 6-day work week schedule and made the job a little more friendly to those of us with families it wouldn't be so hard to increase the labor pool. Then again, SEPTA probablly figures they're saving money by paying overtime instead of more in health benefits.

Then again, there is no shortage of bus drivers....how strange!

I had to use SEPTA during these days, except I was going in the opposite direction of the crowds (Outbound in the morning inbound late night). From what I observed, SEPTA did use every piece of equipment available. All of the yards that I saw were empty, even the Overbrook maintenance facility was pretty bare. Manpower was the main issue, mostly with the conductors as mentioned before.

As noted before, SEPTA just made bigger trains instead of adding more frequency. The result of longer consists with hourly headways resulted in longer then usual loading times delaying the trains and the inability to collect fares. In fact, I saw many people riding, not only in the vestibules, but straddling between cars. Very surprised nobody was injured.

For the evening outbounds, SEPTA just threw away the schedule and ran trains as damage control; basically replicating the same actions as one would do if they were drowning. They blamed higher then expected patronage, why this was a surprise escapes me, and they actually thought that their anarchy plan worked efficiently.

If the idiots at SEPTA implemented their weekday PM rush hour schedule for that evening, there would not have been that long of a delay in getting people out of Suburban Station.

During Live 8, I had to take an inbound train from Malvern to CC at 9 PM. I waited almost two hours. But, outbound, there were only two trains. How can this be sufficient for their busiest rail line?