December 11 schedule changes

http://www.septa.org/schedules/upcoming-rail.html


Some interesting new changes. Midday Airport-Jenkintown trains will alternate between Glenside and Warminster.

5:06 express out of Jefferson <edit: to Warminster> now 5:10 . . . and a local. Interestingly, a bunch of trains now "express" Jenkintown and Temple throughout the day, now.

So more non-peak expresses and fewer peak on the main line.

Maybe they realized they can't schedule and dispatch expresses past locals during peak periods and just gave up . . . ?

The weekday Lansdale trains have a longer running time outbound from Temple to Jenkintown than the inbound trains from Jenkintown to Temple.

And checkout the Norristown Line trains. Weekday trains take 4 minutes from Alleghaney to North Broad, the weekend trains take 10 minutes coming inbound from Alleghaney to North Broad. Yet, outbound weekend trains to Norristown have a 2 minute run from North Broad to Alleghaney.

Schedule padding? Or is there a legitimate reason like upcoming projects or track work?

I hope they add more cars to 5315, 513, and 6595. They are always packed in the morning.

The weekend Norristown trains are through-routed with Marcus Hook-Wilmington; maybe there have been chronic delays on the southbounds resulting in late departures from Center City to Wilmington. Might be worth looking to see if there's a similar effect between Darby and University City on the Wilmington line northbound; there's only a 21-minute turnaround time at Wilmington (on the present schedule), which is pretty tight even when a southbound is on time.

danquagl wrote:http://www.septa.org/schedules/upcoming-rail.html


Some interesting new changes. Midday Airport-Jenkintown trains will alternate between Glenside and Warminster.

it looks like they added more padding to the schedules as a lot of trains leave their origin station couple of minutes earlier

I am rather frustrated by the changes to the Norristown Line's morning trains. We are having two of our three current morning express trains downgraded to glorified local trains (the 7:30-ish and 8:00-ish trains from Elm Street).

Everyone:

Will the 12/11 schedule changes end the practice of turning Airport trains on the northbound track at Jenkintown on weekdays?

If so that is a good move to end what became a "bottleneck" with southbound JKT-Airport trains going against northbound service.

Turning trains at Glenside (Carmel) and extending some Airport trains to Warminster is better for service reliability.

MACTRAXX

PARailWiz wrote:I am rather frustrated by the changes to the Norristown Line's morning trains. We are having two of our three current morning express trains downgraded to glorified local trains (the 7:30-ish and 8:00-ish trains from Elm Street).

Yeah, that's a travesty. Those trains are typically packed by the time the Ivy Ridge crowd gets on.

And speaking of bottlenecks, SEPTA needs to address the weekend bottlenecks with the X:28 R3 Elwyn, X:29 R2 Marcus Hook/Wilmington, and X:30 R5 Malvern trains departing from Market East (especially when the R2 is on Track 4 and the R5 is on Track 3, which means one train has to wait when departing Suburban Station.

PARailWiz wrote:I am rather frustrated by the changes to the Norristown Line's morning trains. We are having two of our three current morning express trains downgraded to glorified local trains (the 7:30-ish and 8:00-ish trains from Elm Street).

It's perplexing. 6203 and 6221 are now ~50 mins to CC. That essentially matches timings for the NHSL and El even though they have more stops and a transfer at 69th St. I doubt many people will switch, but the NHSL's greater frequency may draw a few riders.

scotty269 wrote:

PARailWiz wrote:I am rather frustrated by the changes to the Norristown Line's morning trains. We are having two of our three current morning express trains downgraded to glorified local trains (the 7:30-ish and 8:00-ish trains from Elm Street).

Yeah, that's a travesty. Those trains are typically packed by the time the Ivy Ridge crowd gets on.

If only there were some sort of relief valve to divert some people from Ivy Ridge/Manyunk; say via 30th Street...

50 minutes is a long trip. Makes the automobile much more appealing off peak. You could get from Norristown to the city in half that time if there is no traffic on US Route 202 and I-76.

If you can pedal a bike at an average speed of 20mph, it would take the same amount of time if you biked along the Schuylkill River Trail to center city as it takes a Silverliner to accomplish the same trip.

NorthPennLimited wrote:If you can pedal a bike at an average speed of 20mph, it would take the same amount of time if you biked along the Schuylkill River Trail to center city as it takes a Silverliner to accomplish the same trip.

Granted my knees are no longer 25 years old, but having pedaled that route many times my 2¢ Is that averaging 20 mph would be pretty optimistic because of the amount of street riding involved. It's still an interesting comparison to the new schedules though.

The easy, no real work required amateur solution to fix on time performance is add running time. Slow the trains down so they can't be late. Why research, analyze or rework the schedules. Make the system even slower. No one holds SEPTA accountable anymore for poor performance or scheduling.

SCB2525 wrote:
If only there were some sort of relief valve to divert some people from Ivy Ridge/Manyunk; say via 30th Street...

It just isn't possible to build a bridge over the Schuylkill at that point