New Levittown Station

On a recent trip to the Philadelphia area I used the Levittown Station. I was surprised to see that the ticket office is a separate temporary-looking structure next to the new station building itself.

Why would a permanent ticket office not have been included in the original design and construction of the station itself ? Does SEPTA intend to eventually discontinue staffed ticket offices at the few outlying stations that have them?

Head-end View wrote:Does SEPTA intend to eventually discontinue staffed ticket offices at the few outlying stations that have them?

Correct. Conshohocken opened without a ticket office as well. I'm not sure about Claymont since DELDOT does their own thing.

Because they've been intending to get rid of the agents for years. The original expectation was shortly after key went live as there wasn't a plan to let the cards be sold by the agents at all. The Edens contract (company that staffs all ticket offices) has been on a yearly extension ever since.

They did the same agentless waiting rooms with the Secane rebuild and new Wawa station. Why they don't just put in a temporary cubicle instead is beyond me. SEPTA installed card readers to let people in the waiting room doors but that system was never activated afaik. SEPTA also put those help call boxes for people to ask info but they seem to be staffed by some 3rd party that give wrong info.

Similar to paper schedules SEPTA keeps trying to ditch them entirely but due to rider complaints they end up hanging around albeit heavily scaled back.

Thanks guys. I hope SEPTA will at some point install Key Vending Machines at Levittown and Langhorne. Otherwise how will passengers be able to get Key cards at those stations where they now buy them from the ticket agents? Limiting access to purchasing by only having the machines at Center City stations seems ridiculous to me. Or is that just par for SEPTA?

Back when the Key^tm was coming online, I asked specifically to one of the representatives that was touting the machine to me at 30th Street about outbound deployment and they stated there was no intention of deploying key machines at outlying stations. Something about it costing 10,000 dollars per machine and the cost was too much for SEPTA to bear. All I asked was would they deploy a machine at Bryn Mawr or Paoli, which was wild to me as Amtrak somehow figured out how to have ticketing machines at Paoli and Ardmore and had a key machine at all the Major bus terminals and the Airport. Yes I have had a key card expire and couldn't get a replacement until I was at the Airport, why these things have 3 year expiration for a function I want to opt out of is baffling, but that's for the Key thread.

Other thing that may be keeping them is possibly SEPTA has monthly pass parking, used to be that I had to go in at 5 am to get one of the 10 passes for my station, you could only buy those passes with a monthly pass which I think was one of the last paper passes issued. Even if they got rid of the pass that system would need to change to something else and I'd hate it to be some lottery thing

When your Key card expires at the end of three years, do they charge you another $4.95 for a new one?

Gone quite off topic but
No plans for more vending especially with mobile being "soon". It isn't just the upfront cost of the machine but the failure rate of the remote ones (they use mobile networking) and staffing to restock (1 tech guy and 2 police).
The fee structure for the new parking is already in the tariff if you want to look.
Yes, $4.95 plus the minimum balance of $0/1/5 depending on location for the physical key. Some customer service can do $0, vending has $1, everywhere else is $5 afaik.

Head-end View wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 6:58 pm Thanks guys. I hope SEPTA will at some point install Key Vending Machines at Levittown and Langhorne. Otherwise how will passengers be able to get Key cards at those stations where they now buy them from the ticket agents? Limiting access to purchasing by only having the machines at Center City stations seems ridiculous to me. Or is that just par for SEPTA?

Apologies in advance for utter, unmitigated cynicism ...

Some of this is par for SEPTA. They seem to always opt for the cheapest, most user-hostile approaches possible. I have very un-fond memories going back to the BOB (Big Orange Box) machines; they were limited to taking $1 bills because SEPTA cut corners with bill-readers that couldn't be upgraded whenever the Treasury issued newer fives, tens, etc.

And limiting where customers can buy less-expensive payment methods has a long history dating back to redlining token-sales outlets and the hated RRD on-board surcharge. They agreed to put TVMs at the airport only after years of complaints from people who'd just arrived and were forced to cough up cash for everyone.

I have no way of knowing how widespread the mindset still is at 1234, but when the Key was first being discussed I raised the accessibility issue at a couple of public meetings. One guy who I'd become acquainted with came up to me afterwards and said there were people in Revenue who wanted to restrict access as a kind of back-door fare increase. I spent some time analyzing fare-collection reports and estimated that at the time, the RRD surcharge and cash-fare transit payments amounted to about $2 million in "found money".