Airport Line Schedule Change

And anywhere else in the world people learn to live with the fact that a change of trains is necessary to get to some destinations!!!!

I will agree that the rollout and schedule spacing wasn't thought out and could have been presented much better, as for people who want direct service to everywhere that's easy it's called a car

I attended the meeting at the Elkins park Station on Wednesday, held between SEPTA officials and neighborhood residents.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local ... blems.html

The tone was cordial, but people were upset with the implementation of the badly needed schedule change.

First off, I support the changes made to the Airport line resulting in less direct service from the Reading main line north of Temple. It needs to be done to improve service to the airport from Center City. I say this, even though my wife will be inconvenienced next week getting to the airport for a business trip. I also enjoyed, over the years, the direct service for my travels. Even with the conditions of the cars, and the lack of enforcement of rules by some conductors, I encouraged people to make use of this service. The service worked for me. Now, it will not be as convenient as it once was, but we are still fortunate to have a good way to avoid driving to the airport.

The roll-out of the new schedules was much more of a problem. I called SEPTA service several times, pointing out issues with the new schedules. For example, which is the correct schedule? The printed Glenside schedules were wrong, the SEPTA app was wrong, the schedule on SEPTA's website was wrong. It turns out that the only correct schedule was the PDF version on the website. The problem was: How are we suppose to know this? I was even told by a ticket agent that they were told to keep the incorrect printed schedules available. How does that help us? An incorrect schedule is just as bad as no schedule.

People at the meeting complained about this and other issues concerning the station. The SEPTA representatives did a good job of recording the issues and promised to fix them. More importantly, they said that they had messed up this roll-out and will learn from it before the next schedule change.

I believe that the meeting was beneficial to both sides. The only way for SEPTA to know that there is a problem is to report it when it happens. When it receives many reports over the same issue, they may react more quickly.

Limited-Clear wrote:And anywhere else in the world people learn to live with the fact that a change of trains is necessary to get to some destinations!!!!

I will agree that the rollout and schedule spacing wasn't thought out and could have been presented much better, as for people who want direct service to everywhere that's easy it's called a car

the service to the airport is too infrequent to change trains and I'm not sure kicking people off of transit into their cars is good transit policy. Airport line trains once ran to Glenside which makes good sense unless septas railroad is in such bad shape they can't run those trains reliably. Truth is airport trains don't need to be cc only they just need to run more often

As of right now, all errors in the .pdf timetable have been corrected except for the readability bars. I did report the errors to their twitter team, who tends to be very helpful.

Suburban Station wrote: the service to the airport is too infrequent to change trains and I'm not sure kicking people off of transit into their cars is good transit policy. Airport line trains once ran to Glenside which makes good sense unless septas railroad is in such bad shape they can't run those trains reliably. Truth is airport trains don't need to be cc only they just need to run more often

And the easiest way to get them to run more often is to only run them to CC. Running only to Suburban Station, for instance, allows frequency to be doubled while using the same number of trainsets during the times the trains run to Glenside, with a headway (15 minutes) that essentially eliminates nearly all transfer anxiety.

I just realized today that the schedule also has incorrect info on what stations are accessible and have ticket offices.

But that's not what they're doing, they're just cutting trains back. That being said, even if they do run more often it still makes sense to run them beyond center city since any elimination of ridership doubles potential ridership. Moreover cutting it back only saves sets if you're cutting service. If you consider the airport line anything beyond u city it doesn't matter where they come from. Transfers are even less desirable when you have bags. That said if they were cutting it back because they were doubling service and maybe even using equipment with luggage racks people would be more understanding. Perhaps in the long run airport trains should come from lansdale. If septa can get the railroad in better shape delays should be less problematic. The commuter tunnel was built you might as well use it

This Airport Line schedule change has to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. Why not simply make Airport Line trains originate in Jenkintown? Jenkintown is a major junction with the West Trenton Line and has one of the highest frequency of trains on the entire system. Pick a set time for Airport trains to depart Jenkintown station - say the top of every hour, and then you can easily coordinate your transfer from the W. Trenton, Warminster, Lansdale, and Doylestown lines using the existing schedule. Much easier to transfer with luggage there than at any of the C.C. stations.

It might be easier to switch luggage from a train to the Airport Line at Jenkintown - if there were high platforms there.

Stevek wrote:It might be easier to switch luggage from a train to the Airport Line at Jenkintown - if there were high platforms there.

SEPTA is too busy building a palace at Levittown to deal with unimportant stations like jenkintown, or perhaps SEPTA is basing the HLP project at jenkintown on spite since they blocked the parking garage plan. who knows

Last time I checked Jenkintown was in a different county to Levittown, remember the counties are also paying for stations when they get "upgraded"

Limited-Clear wrote:Last time I checked Jenkintown was in a different county to Levittown, remember the counties are also paying for stations when they get "upgraded"

Bucks county is reimbursing septa for the Levittown station? That I didn't know.

khecht wrote:I haven't had time to do comparisons, but you can see how well trains are doing at http://phor.net/apps/septa/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hello, just wanted to let everyone know that I have updated that web page. Also the project is now open source.