SEPTA at Its Worst

All hell broke loose this afternoon in the Subway-Surface tunnel. A carl wrecked its pole comming out of 36th St heading inbound. It had to be pushed out and was repaired at the 40th St portal complex. You think that would be the end of that right?? Nope. Apparently that car caused some damage to the overhead because when my car (9052) came through that same section, the car went dead and tied up the tunnel for about a half hour. The car behind us towed us to 30th St and dropped us passengers off there and then rode off to tow it to Woodland. All well and good but the 7 seven cars behind us were packed to the gills and couldn't accept passengers at all. So all in all more shear evidence that SEPTA can't run a transit system.

Eric

What's your solution...convert the subway-surface LRVs from trolley poles to pantographs?

No just upgrade the overhead to the 21st century. The operator told me he had complained about that spot in the tunnel for 2 months and they did nothing about it. I think that's a bit rediculous now don't you?

I mean if you haven't notice the overhead for the LRVs and the tracklesses are just horendous. If you to any location with special work (ie 49th/Woodland, 73rd/Elmwood, Woodland/Island) for about 2 hours you'll see about 4 trolleys dewire navigating through those intersections which is an abomination.

That happens quite a bit on other systems too. Not that it's excusable; deferred maintenance never is. Nor should deferred maintenance ever be used as an excuse to institute a permanent bustitution...

I'm not saying pave that tracks over and send the hybrid buses to Elmwood. Trust me I am probably the biggest light rail advocate on this board. All I'm saying is SEPTA should do a better job and maintaining its infrastructure.

There were alot of other people who could share your woe today. Amtrak had a track closed near North Phila today because of a down wire, and in Baltimore another wire came crashing down.

Our whole system is really in poor shape. How many months to the election?

I wonder about that downed wire in Philly...

Yesterday, I was riding the R8 CHW back out towards CH when the train did something I've never seen it do before -- it lowered its pantographs. What was astounding was that it lowered them all the way to the ground :D . Two pantographs pulled right off the top of the train while we were crossing the Schuylkill River. We definitely left a trail of debris, and there was speculation that there were problems to the catenary, but we never heard for certain.

So in short, you can't necessarily blame the downed wire near North Phila on "the system", but more likely can be blamed on poor maintenance of their Silverliner II's by SEPTA.

ps. I must admit I was very impressed with the crew -- they gave us all the information they had, as soon as they had it. WHat I'm not impressed with is the decision by SEPTA to keep us out there (mind you, a silverline without AC gets pretty darn hot) until the next R8 came along rather than send out another train -- a 20 minute ride from center city turned into a 2 hour fricassee.

What I don't understand is how yesterday in the subway-surface debacle, is why SEPTA didn't send a line car down there to repair the wire hanger so it wouldn't happen again. I mean two wire mishaps in the site of a half hour is rediculous.