2015 Papal visit

[nomis]

A quick google search showed no articles on the 1979.

Not to mention those plans for the Reading side garages that would really be needed for the one day.

[PARailWiz]

Keep in mind the current plan is for the Pope to only be here for the weekend. It won't be like the Phillies parade where there's a bunch of regular commuters in the way.

SEPTA will probably run a modified schedule saturday and sunday, but I very much doubt we'll see any special service off the current regional rail network.

[MichaelBug]

Keep in mind the current plan is for the Pope to only be here for the weekend. It won't be like the Phillies parade where there's a bunch of regular commuters in the way.

SEPTA will probably run a modified schedule saturday and sunday, but I very much doubt we'll see any special service off the current regional rail network.

Also, FWIW, the Phillies will be on the road (@ Miami & Washington) the entire week of Sept. 21-27 & are off on Sept. 28.

[R3 Passenger]

NJT crews are qualified from NYP to 30th Street. It may be wise for SEPTA to contract with NJT to cover the line between Trenton and 30th Street given the glut of people who will be traveling to the Parkway.

SEPTA runs four car trains between Trenton and Temple on weekends, only two of which are open and crewed. Assuming that the glut of people who would use transit to get to Philly from New York can't afford hotel or Amtrak fares, it would overwhelm SEPTA. Utilizing NJT's multilevels for this route would not only allow the crowds access to Philadelphia, but also allow for the equipment and crews normally used for Trenton service to be allocated to where they are needed (such as Newark, DE to Philadelphia for Maryland residents; assuming that Amtrak picks up the slack for the Harrisburg crowd). The benefit o for NJ residents would be a one seat ride and cheaper fares, while the benefit for PA residents would be actually having a seat or someplace to stand.

[jackintosh11]

NJT crews are qualified from NYP to 30th Street. It may be wise for SEPTA to contract with NJT to cover the line between Trenton and 30th Street given the glut of people who will be traveling to the Parkway.

SEPTA runs four car trains between Trenton and Temple on weekends, only two of which are open and crewed. Assuming that the glut of people who would use transit to get to Philly from New York can't afford hotel or Amtrak fares, it would overwhelm SEPTA. Utilizing NJT's multilevels for this route would not only allow the crowds access to Philadelphia, but also allow for the equipment and crews normally used for Trenton service to be allocated to where they are needed (such as Newark, DE to Philadelphia for Maryland residents; assuming that Amtrak picks up the slack for the Harrisburg crowd). The benefit o for NJ residents would be a one seat ride and cheaper fares, while the benefit for PA residents would be actually having a seat or someplace to stand.

Why run 4 car trains if only 2 are open? Why not run Trenton trains with all 4 cars open?

[loufah]

Why not run Trenton trains with all 4 cars open?

They always try to minimize the number of cars open. Less work and better fare recovery, I presume. Won't open a third car at Trenton unless absolutely every seat in the first two is occupied. To be fair, there are almost never more than 3 cars' worth of passengers. Only time in my experience that all 4 were needed was the Friday night after the Phillies parade, when the trains scheduled to depart Trenton shortly after 7PM and 7:30PM never showed up.

[silverliner266]

The difference between the World Series parade and this is that SEPTA will have a lot longer to come up with a plan and make arrangements to do things like borrow equipment.

[gprimr1]

This won't be the first time the Pope has visited Philadelphia...remember 1979??? How were things handled then? Would next year's Papal visit be much different than 1979?

I don't know much about the Pople in 1979, but I can say this current pope, he is very popular.

[25Hz]

Clearly they should at least look at amtrak helping increase available seats by running extra trains or longer normally scheduled trains or both. Keystone sets might be short turned at 30th or suburban or something like that. Involving the new hope and ivyland would be a fantastic idea, as both sides of the river there have a host of bed & breakfasts (a pun) and are hugely popular tourist destinations in their own right.

I know we are looking at renting out a room, but we are so far from the train that it might not be appealing to potential visitors. I know the usual sunday service will not fly, they need to run the suburban bus routes on a weekday schedule, and even add frequency if possible.

Business as usual isn't going to work this time, 1234 really needs to think big, and out of the box, or else it's going to be a huge embarrassing disaster.

And greg is right, this pope may be the most popular ever to visit the US. In bucks county there is this: http://www.czestochowa.us/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ..... which i'm sure will get a visit if time allows & has been visited by a pope before. Who knows where he will go aside from the mass, this pope seems to understand normal people, he could end up going anywhere in the region... will SEPTA be prepared for that??

[NorthPennLimited]

certainly can't use the 1979 playbook.

Trains terminated at Reading Terminal and Suburban Station back then.

I'm sure a round-table discussion with some old heads would shed some light on possible ideas on preventing the same mistakes from 1979.

[Clearfield]

SEPTA can't possibly handle an influx of an additional 2 million additional riders effectively. Neither can Amtrak. Neither can I95 or the Schuylkill Expressway or Broad Street or any transportation infrastructure.

There will simply be too many people converging on the same place at the same time.

The 4th of July event only draws 500,000 people to the parkway. This will be 4x bigger.

I'm sure that SEPTA will do the best job they can given the circumstances.

I'm also sure that some on this board will be waiting to pounce on each and every 'fail' they perceive.

No system is designed to handle that many additional riders as the costs to maintain it during non-crush periods would be too expensive to fund.

[bikentransit]

Rome does it just fine. Maybe because they have holy rollers!

[Quinn]

Rome does it just fine. Maybe because they have holy rollers!

The Pope even gets his own set of stairs for the train!

[CComMack]

One thing is for certain, the WMOF is going to have to be an "all-hands" event, and that includes asking for help from the neighboring agencies.

On an ordinary weekend in September, NJT and MARC are going to have equipment idle and available, but it's not just equipment; you need crews to operate the equipment. And that's where it gets sticky, because the crews have to be qualified both on the equipment and over the territory. In the example of running NJT through on the Trenton Line to 30th Street, NJT engineers aren't qualified west of MORRIS, and SEPTA engineers aren't qualified on the ALP-46. Both sides' labor unions will fight tooth and nail to prevent the other from getting the extra work, because they don't want a bad precedent set. And so forth. It might be more productive to run extra service from outside of SEPTAland out of Amtrak's side of the house, since we know they have standing agreements to run the Thanksgiving weekend "Holiday Specials" every year.

[nomis]

I'm sure that training of equipment can occur within the next 9 months (especially with presumable septa fleet additions with ML cars), and physical characteristics can be learned if they don't have it already. It's not like there are 0 NJT T&E that are qualified west of MORRIS / GRUNDY.