Revenue service on Subway-Surface diversion route

I'm not very familiar with the surface trackage through University City so maybe this is a completely off the wall suggestion. If SEPTA had the money and will (uhh, right!) would it be worthwhile to use the diversion trackage thru University City, as well as new trackage as needed, to replace the LUCY bus with a streetcar line? I envision new low floor trams similar to the Portland Streetcar.

Others can speculate on worthwhile routing but 30th St station would seem to be an ideal starting point. Would it be possible to effectively serve Drexel, Penn, with a single line or would it need to ramble around too much?

Regards,

Bob

That's an interesting question. Prior to the opening of the subway-surface extension ( from 23rd & Market to 40th & Woodland) circa 1956 and the bustitution of a significant portion of the streetcar system, that trackage saw extensive revenue service with the trackage on 42nd street serving eight different routes. All of the then subway surface routes, with the exception of 10, 38 and 31 ( at that time the subway surface routes were 10, 11, 31, 34, 37 and 38) used that trackage as well as the then all surface Route 13 ( Yeadon- Front & Chestnut via Chestnut and Walnut Streets)and Route 42 ( 61st & Pine- Front & Chestnut- running with the 13 on Chestnut and Walnut Streets). The original subway portal, for both the "El" and the trolleys was near 24th & Market.

From a financial point of view, you're looking at doubling your costs by running trolleys instead of buses, and that's not including the extra track you'd have to maintain. If the University City District or UPenn were willing to pay extra it could be done. This would probably be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

It's interesting that 50 years ago, Philly had trolleys running on nearly every major street. But with the constant pressure to cut costs, SEPTA has had to use buses instead.

The 1950's bustitution was another NCL contribution. Most of Philadelphia's streetcar routes were bustituted at that time with the exception of the subway-surface routes ( with the 13 replacing the 38, and the 36 directly replacing the 37. There was no replacement for the 31) and some of the North Phila lines ( I believe the principal survivors were 15, 23, 47, 50, 53, 56,60, 62 and a shortened 6). At this time all of the pre- PCC streetcars were scrapped ( primarily the 8,000 series 1923-26 vintage single-ended cars and the 5,000 series double ended cars of the same vintage). Even with this NCL bustitution, Philadelphia retained more streetcars than any other U.S. city.

^Exactly -- Philly kept streetcars longer than most cities because it made sense financially. People tend to forget that a 1956 bus is nothing like the buses we have today -- they were smaller, slower, and less comfortable.

From a technical standpoint, the streetcars were better performers for a system that still had very high ridership. The streetcars had big doors that swallowed crowds. They had wide aisles (more than foot wider than a bus?) that also allowed for faster loading and unloading. They also had a lot more capacity per car.

Simply put, coverting to buses would have required a lot of capital for new vehicles (at least a 1000 new buses to replace the streetcars) and would have driven down ridership and revenues and increased costs. But over time, declining ridership and rising costs I think forced the transit company to use buses more and more.

Christopher Zearfoss wrote an excellent article for Transportation Quarterly not long ago about the drawbacks to bustitution in the early 1950s -- politics often trumped economics to the detriment of streetcar lines.

Would it be possible to effectively serve Drexel, Penn, with a single line or would it need to ramble around too much?

LUCY is not your typical SEPTA bus route. It is really owned by the University City District and SEPTA is their contractor. Since the UCD is composed of the key institutions in the area, the service must meet their employees needs, and be designed accordingly. Students' needs are viewed as secondary. I suspect the cost of operating revenue service on the diversion track, instead of the LUCY service, would be prohibitive from UCD's perspective. Since a prime LUCY market is the area near HUP and Children's hosptial, you'd need to lay a lot of surface track in a hostile traffic environment in order to provide the connecting services to 30th Street which are crucial.

However, assuming the City would redesign 38th Street to accommodate rail revenue service (it cannot now because it is in the left lane and there are no islands), the diversion line might someday serve a useful market, but not LUCY's. Today, there is no one-seat transit ride linking University City's huge employment and student base, with the growing residential neighborhood in Fairmount, Brewerytown and lower North Philadelphia. Perhaps there would be sufficient demand someday to run half-hourly service on the diversion route between 41st Street & Baltimore Avenue and the vicinity of Broad & Girard. Instead of traveling into Center City and transfering to the trolleys, the MFL or bus lines, folks from Fairmount and Brewertown might ride the trolley over the diversion route direct to their jobs or to school. But since SEPTA is basically broke, any push to consider new service (even without a large capital investment) would need to spring from the City or the colleges, not SEPTA. And that does not seem to be likley.

The 43 used to be a trolley line that ran in a short tunnel under the Art Museum. It continues east along Spring Garden St through the Fairmount section of Philadeplhia. To the west, it goes over the Schuylkill river on the Spring Garden bridge.


To reach Penn, and you could turn the trolley south at 40th Street, where it would follow the old 40 trolley route, turn at Spruce St, and then return going north on 38th St.

"The 43 used to be a trolley line"

"used to be" doesn't help to define "what can be". If you are serious, then consider existing infrastructure opportunities, or just keep dreaming.

adamkrom wrote:^Exactly -- Philly kept streetcars longer than most cities because it made sense financially. ... But over time, declining ridership and rising costs I think forced the transit company to use buses more and more.

Yes, those were important factors, but as Walt pointed out the decline was made significantly worse by the actions of NCL. OK, it's not rational to claim that NCL was this evil organization that malevolently took thriving streetcar systems and turned them into bus routes. But they were an evil organization that malevolently took systems that were already in distress, distressed them further and then "improved" them out of existence, to the benefit of GM and the other partners in NCL. There's an interesting perspective at http://www.thethirdrail.net/9905/agt1.htm

Playing "what if" is risky, but it's probably reasonable to conclude that in the absence of NCL, some systems that were fully bustituted might have retained at least partial rail service, and others like Philly would have kept a larger fraction of their operations under wire.

IIRC Senator Philip Hart started an investigation into NCL back in the early 1970s. He had the misfortune to die before things came to a head (no, I'm not thinking conspiracy here) and no one was willing to pick up his crusade. There was some resolution but it was minuscule fine that didn't even amount to a wrist-slap. Maybe more like The Comfy Chair, for all you Python fans out there.

Christopher Zearfoss wrote an excellent article for Transportation Quarterly not long ago about the drawbacks to bustitution in the early 1950s -- politics often trumped economics to the detriment of streetcar lines.

Greed, as much as politics. (As Mark Twain said, "but I repeat myself")

adamkrom wrote:^Exactly -- Philly kept streetcars longer than most cities because it made sense financially. People tend to forget that a 1956 bus is nothing like the buses we have today -- they were smaller, slower, and less comfortable.

Actually, by 1956, the General Motors "old look" coach ( often described as a PCC car on rubber because of the striking similarity in appearance to the Post War Standee window type PCC car) was a "decent" vehicle. GM had developed air-suspension, which made for a smoother ride than the old spring based suspensions, and the PTC 3500 series coaches were actually significantly wider than their predecessors. The 3000 series coaches even had the same interior seating arrangement as the PCC cars, right down to the left side single seats running from the front to the mid-point of the bus. All of the post 1955 PTC GM coaches seated at least 50 passengers, and could hold 70 with a standing load, though the PCC cars could hold 90 with a standing load.

Having said this though, for the more heavily travelled lines, the buses were a poor substitute for the streetcars.