2 Doylestown flag stops to go on weekends

Weekend Station Service Removal
Beginning Sunday December 18, 2011

Due to low ridership, there will no longer be Saturday or Sunday service to Link Belt and New Britain stations.

Customers at New Britain can use nearby Del Val College Station on the Delaware Valley Campus off Butler Avenue or Chalfont Station (Main Street and Sunset Avenue) to access Lansdale/Doylestown weekend service.

Customers at Link Belt can use the nearby Colmar Station (Bethlehem Pike and Walnut Street) to access
Lansdale/Doylestown Line service.

What's wrong with flag stops? If nobody's seeking to use the station, it doesn't cost the train any time, and it's not like the stations are staffed.

I didn't realize that New Britain had such low ridership. If anything, I would think Fortuna would become a flagstop.

Well, here's average WEEKDAY ridership:

Link Belt: 47 on, 50 off
New Britain: 54 on, 51 off

Nearby stations:

Colmar: 277 on, 306 off
Chalfont: 105 on, 122 off
Del Val Coll: 62 on, 58 off

Eddington and Angora are even worse than Link Belt, so I wonder why those stay?

Guess that million dollar high level platform at Link Belt didn't do much to generate ridership.

jfrey40535 wrote:Guess that million dollar high level platform at Link Belt didn't do much to generate ridership.

LOL.... Ya think?

Good thing we have planners who are so austere with prioritizing projects.

50 years ago this was the time of year we would take a family trip on a Saturday to the Terminal then to Wanamaker's. It was so easy to park at New Britain. I guess with the malls moving out into the outer reaches of exurbia no one does that anymore.

I was one who sometimes used New Britain weekends. I'd take my bike on the train from center city, get off at New Britain and bike the rest of the way to Peace Valley park and rent a sailboat for an hour or 2. The last time I think I did so was September 2002, so go ahead, blame me for not maintaining the ridership.

jfrey40535 wrote:Good thing we have planners who are so austere with prioritizing projects.

Oh sure; only a bunch of MENSA members could have been in charge of such "skillful" financial triaging.

What's wrong with making flagstops out of these two during the weekends? Anyone at 1234 got a life-threatening allergy against flagstops, hmmmmm? The lack of such consideration makes me think that deliberate malice or amazing stupidity was a prime ingredient here. I'm way too inured to SEPTA's ways to be terribly upset by this turn of events, but I am quite curious. The role of Link Belt's expen$ive new high platform in these calculations just baffles me even further.

SEPTA recycled one of their favourite excuses: "not cost effective". But building the high level platforms was.

Well, a flag stop is a FLAG stop, meaning a voluntary stop by passenger demand. If no one is present, then a stop will not be needed. The irony is axing a flag stop defeats the whole purpose of the request only basis.

R36 Combine Coach wrote:Well, a flag stop is a FLAG stop, meaning a voluntary stop by passenger demand. If no one is present, then a stop will not be needed. The irony is axing a flag stop defeats the whole purpose of the request only basis.

Printing the "F" next to the timetable indicator is extremely costly. It's far easier just to print a "-".

Even with the service to both stations eliminated, how much longer will the travel time for a Doylestown to Center City train journey be when compared to the Reading 6 or 7 decades ago.

Based on the SEPTA rationale, one wonders whether there would be any weekend service above Lansdale if Doylestown was not the Bucks County seat.

Bill R. wrote:Based on the SEPTA rationale, one wonders whether there would be any weekend service above Lansdale if Doylestown was not the Bucks County seat.

That will happen as soon as they HLP the rest of the branch.

I think the real reason for this move is due to the fact that the Doylestown sub is offline.

I'm convinced this is part of SEPTA's plot to promote Colmar as a Park & Ride to take pressure off of Lansdale. It seems SEPTA wants to build up ridership at Colmar and Chalfont and eventually get rid of Link Belt (and its fancy new HLP) and New Britain, which might enable them to speed up the branch and win back Doylestown ridership that drives to Warminster or Fern Rock.