SEPTA's poor performance in today's snowstorm

Who here had difficulty commuting this afternoon? With all the schools and the workplaces closing early, passengers volumes were clearly piling up on the platforms. But SEPTA clearly wasn't prepared for this storm. Trains filled up too fast, and I saw conductors turning down passengers and trains bypassing Temple U station. Some of us had to take Doylestown Line trains up to Fern Rock to transfer to West Trenton or Warminster trains, as they were all passing by Temple. In short, I feel that SEPTA really let down a lot of student commuters, particularly the ones who live on the northern ends of the ex-Reading lines. It seems they felt more intent on maintaining the number of cars on each train, and keeping up with their timetables than providing reliable service.

I feel like weather forecasters need to step up, not SEPTA. They've consistently underestimated every snowfall this year. There are parts of Delco with almost 9 inches already; 6 in Bucks and last night they were estimating 4-8 for the metro area for the entire snowfall ending 3AM tomorrow (now forecast to end about 5AM).

I don't know enough about how SEPTAs been running today but thus far this year, there have been very few snags attributed directly to them (except the junk push pull failures on WT).

It's not SEPTA's fault when the Center City stations are inundated with commuters outside of peak times. SEPTA only has so many conductors and engineers available to run trains.

Its really unfair to blame SEPTA. They had no way of predicting when the offices were going to empty out en masse. A friend of mine works downtown and she was notified at 12 that they were closing at 1. SEPTA is like a freight train, it takes a good deal of time to ramp up/down service. They can't just call crew members in and roll the trains.

This brings up an interesting question: Does SEPTA have an emergency preparedness plan where they would be needed on short notice to move a mass amount of people? We saw this a few years ago when the Phillies had their parade downtown. It crippled the system.

Passenger extra discharging passengers at Langhorne and train 5386 will be picking up for further travel north.

Two 4-car IV trains arrived at West Trenton in quick succession, one at 2:52 on the inbound track and the other shortly after 3:00 on the normal outbound track. As the 2nd train was going into the yard, the first one came back out to take on passengers. But instead of going forward toward Philadelphia, it backed into the yard, apparently to take on another crew member. Finally, we got underway, the scheduled 2:55 departure leaving around 3:10 or 3:15. We made a quick stop at West Trenton to take on at least one more person who had just arrived.

After I got off at my station and while I was clearing off my car, I saw an inbound Silverliner IV train breeze through without stopping. This was ptobably the other IV that I saw at West Trenton. They probably knew they were going to be a deadhead and thus decided to add an assistant conductor to our run.

I posted in the delay section the operations people did not do a great job today. The early rush should have been expected and consists could have been adjusted with yard crews tacking on to trains at 30th St, Temple or Wayne Junction. 2 and 3 and 4 car trains were no where close to enough, while 5, 6 and 7 car trains sat in the yards.

The SLIV's had fine snow short out traction motors and the V's had doors frozen again.

Where were they going to get all these yard crews from, and calling guys in to help would be a non starter, they would have just as much difficulty getting in as people were having getting home, remember they have strict FRA laws on when crews can move trains, guys might be on the mandatory downtime to be compliant to work later trains.

Also I think people forget the prediction was originally 4 to 6in, as the day went on that got to be as high as 10 to 15in depending on who's weather reports you watch, had people really know how much we were getting I'm sure half of them wouldn't have gone in today

As soon as i saw the snow earlier all i could think was "oh boy, RRD is gonna explode today..."

For once, i hoped i was wrong... so much for that.

And as for the snow depth, you add daytime to night ammounts, adds up to between 10 and 16 inches.... we're getti ng about 1.5-2 inches per hour since it started, we have over a foot now out there, how do i know, i just shoveled our patio, deep fluffy light snow that blows all over like dry instant potato flakes.

Can't really fault SEPTA for being caught without the capacity to move a rush hour crowd at noon; there's just no way to ramp up with less than two hours' notice on most lines. Some lines (*cough* Wilmington *cough*) are even worse than that.

One failure that's less forgiveable is the failure to tell people stranded at UCity and Temple to retreat to Center City as they were bypassed by train after train of SRO passengers. The crowding on platforms at Market East and Suburban is one thing, but people who were waiting for three hours for a train to stop for them in the blowing and drifting snow are going to be heard from. God knows how people managed trying to get out at stations like Overbrook or Fern Rock.

It will bear remembering in the future that increased frequencies off-peak will result in increased resiliency in similar situations. Half-hourly headways can clear platforms at Market East in a way that hourly headways can't.

Again I have to ask, does SEPTA have a plan for short notice service ramp-ups?

Round the clock frequent service would be a nice fix, but that would seriously bloat operating costs, and given that all commuter stations are full after 10am, would they really draw enough riders during the day to justify 2-3 trains an hour?

As I mentioned in another thread, i made a recent trip to Boston and rode the Fitchburg line. One thing I noticed immediately was the infrequency of service. Outside of the very small peak hour window, service was once every 2-3 hours during the day. Given the low density of that area, that's to be expected. However, given that SEPTA's drive up market is maxed out at 10am, where are the other riders coming from? I also find it rude that after morning rush is over, SEPTA locks down their train stations, so if you're a walk up rider on a day like today, you're freezing on the platform and risking frostbite at your favorite station, be it Ft. Washington, Langhorne or Overbrook. They're all locked. Not very attractive.

They have the ability to cut and combine consists with relative simplicity, why the do not use this to their advantage in short-term situations is beyond me. You could even use one of, or both of the diesels to move the silverliners in a pinch if the power draw from the catenary was gonna be too much. To park everything in outlying terminals overnight for AM rush, and towards the middle of the system for PM rush leaves no flexibility.

"Hmm we might have an early PM rush today, lets tack some cars on and shuffle some equipment" .... an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But hey, this is the system where one train's crew has no idea where any other trains are even on the same line, so i'm not expecting much next time this happens, and it will happen many more times this winter i can assure you. And this isn't the tain crew's fault or responsibility, it's all at the top.

25Hz wrote:They have the ability to cut and combine consists with relative simplicity, why the do not use this to their advantage in short-term situations is beyond me. You could even use one of, or both of the diesels to move the silverliners in a pinch if the power draw from the catenary was gonna be too much. To park everything in outlying terminals overnight for AM rush, and towards the middle of the system for PM rush leaves no flexibility.

"Hmm we might have an early PM rush today, lets tack some cars on and shuffle some equipment" .... an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But hey, this is the system where one train's crew has no idea where any other trains are even on the same line, so i'm not expecting much next time this happens, and it will happen many more times this winter i can assure you. And this isn't the tain crew's fault or responsibility, it's all at the top.

What??? Last night's 4" snow prediction doesn't suggest an early rush.

scotty269 wrote:

25Hz wrote:They have the ability to cut and combine consists with relative simplicity, why the do not use this to their advantage in short-term situations is beyond me. You could even use one of, or both of the diesels to move the silverliners in a pinch if the power draw from the catenary was gonna be too much. To park everything in outlying terminals overnight for AM rush, and towards the middle of the system for PM rush leaves no flexibility.

"Hmm we might have an early PM rush today, lets tack some cars on and shuffle some equipment" .... an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But hey, this is the system where one train's crew has no idea where any other trains are even on the same line, so i'm not expecting much next time this happens, and it will happen many more times this winter i can assure you. And this isn't the tain crew's fault or responsibility, it's all at the top.

What??? Last night's 4" snow prediction doesn't suggest an early rush.

Yea, but NWS had 8 daytime total at 1-2 inches per hour, and another 4-6 inches after sundown on top.

25Hz wrote:Yea, but NWS had 8 daytime total at 1-2 inches per hour, and another 4-6 inches after sundown on top.

This leads to the question - With all the different predictions flying around (channel 3,6,10,NWS, etc.) Whose prediction does SEPTA use? One would think it would be the "Official" one from NWS.