Which closed Septa Station should be reopened?

my opinion is, (and most people i talked to agreed with me), reopen frankford junction. a connection could be made with the el nearby and also the distance between north philly and bridesburg is pretty big: maybe reopening the junction could save people who live between those stations some time. that's just my input

iamapokemonlegend wrote:my opinion is, (and most people i talked to agreed with me), reopen frankford junction. a connection could be made with the el nearby and also the distance between north philly and bridesburg is pretty big...

[Expletive deleted], you "talk" to some pretty ignorant people.

You don't operate trains and stations to serve places on a map: you operate them to serve markets of passengers who want to get from one place to another. Ridership at Frankford Junction averaged 10 passengers per day in the decade prior to the station being closed.

Re Coatesville & Parkesburg: Maybe I missed this info elsewhere, but maybe someone familiar with passenger counts can tell us why service was discontinued to the population centers of Coatesville and Parkesburg, cut back to Thorndale? Were passenger counts very low at those stations?

I don't know the passenger counts, but one excuse about which I think I remember reading or hearing was that there's no nearby place to cross trains over, so there'd need to be an enormous deadhead move on each trip.
Maybe I'm imagining things, and as I think of it now it seems really far fetched, but maybe they had to go as far as Lancaster to cross over. Someone please tell me my memory's wrong, because if they had to go as far as Lancaster I can't imagine why they wouldn't carry passengers that far.

There was one trip scheduled each mid-day to deadhead from Parkesburg to Lancaster and reverse there. That was to keep crews qualified over that stretch of railroad in case the hand-operated crossover at Leaman Place was out of service. IIRC, the station at Parkesburg was out past the interlocking.

Reconfiguration of the plant at Parkesburg makes restoration of service there more feasible now that you can cross over right there, but the study done a few years ago indicated ridership would still be too little to justify extended service, unless PennDOT and Amtrak decided to have the Keystones skip those stops.

In 1994-95 Coatesville and Parkesburg had 30-40 daily SEPTA boardings each (with limited service). Thorndale is doing much better (close to 500 daily boards).

Matthew Mitchell wrote:There was one trip scheduled each mid-day to deadhead from Parkesburg to Lancaster and reverse there. That was to keep crews qualified over that stretch of railroad in case the hand-operated crossover at Leaman Place was out of service. IIRC, the station at Parkesburg was out past the interlocking.

Reconfiguration of the plant at Parkesburg makes restoration of service there more feasible now that you can cross over right there, but the study done a few years ago indicated ridership would still be too little to justify extended service, unless PennDOT and Amtrak decided to have the Keystones skip those stops.

In 1994-95 Coatesville and Parkesburg had 30-40 daily SEPTA boardings each (with limited service). Thorndale is doing much better (close to 500 daily boards).

Given the increasing crowding of Keystones and their current too-frequent stop pattern, would it not make sense to discontinue Amtrak stops at Coatesville and Parkesburg and extend SEPTA to Atglen? Coatesville's ridership is currently miniscule and its transit-dependent population could probably use better access to Philly. Plus, how many people ride Parkesburg-Lancaster/Harrisburg anyway?

M&Eman wrote:

Matthew Mitchell wrote:There was one trip scheduled each mid-day to deadhead from Parkesburg to Lancaster and reverse there. That was to keep crews qualified over that stretch of railroad in case the hand-operated crossover at Leaman Place was out of service. IIRC, the station at Parkesburg was out past the interlocking.

Reconfiguration of the plant at Parkesburg makes restoration of service there more feasible now that you can cross over right there, but the study done a few years ago indicated ridership would still be too little to justify extended service, unless PennDOT and Amtrak decided to have the Keystones skip those stops.

In 1994-95 Coatesville and Parkesburg had 30-40 daily SEPTA boardings each (with limited service). Thorndale is doing much better (close to 500 daily boards).

Given the increasing crowding of Keystones and their current too-frequent stop pattern, would it not make sense to discontinue Amtrak stops at Coatesville and Parkesburg and extend SEPTA to Atglen? Coatesville's ridership is currently miniscule and its transit-dependent population could probably use better access to Philly. Plus, how many people ride Parkesburg-Lancaster/Harrisburg anyway?

How long is too long regarding SEPTA trains, especially since there are no rest rooms? While rush hour express trains (where people can use Trailpasses or Independence Passes on the trains) would be very useful, on weekends, the "all stop" nature of the trains would make for a long ride.