Heed THIS from SEPTA : No food or drink on the RR!! What!!!

I noticed that on my trailpass this month, too. I don't think it's necessary on the RRs, or at least not on my train (R8 Fox Chase) which is always pretty clean. On the other hand, I had the misfortune of riding the El last month to go to my friend's house. Blechh!

I rode the el to school for eight years in the 90's. Maybe I'm just viewing the past through rose-colored glasses, or maybe riding the RR has raised my expectations, but it seemed dirtier than ever! The cloth seats (whose idea was that?!?) were torn up, there were various liquids spilled on the floor, and I even spotted a pile of chicken bones in the corner!

People laugh at the hard-core attitude against food and drink on the Washington Metro, but when I lived in D.C. I never saw that kind of filth on the subway cars. Maybe SEPTA thinks they're being nice by letting their passengers run wild on the system, but the crappy conditions of the MFL and BSL scare off cleaner patrons and make the system less useful as a result.

I have to at least give SEPTA credit for trying to raise the issue with the public, not that the problem ones will heed it.

The DC Metro has a great advantage in that it was "no foo, no drink" from the beginning. They never had to tackle the issue of getting people to give up their refreshments, which no matter how much people hate the trash, they will never do.

As for the El, are there really any subways left where people can eat and drink that don't look like rolling trash cans most of the time? The buses and trains I ride here in Boston are beyond disgusting most of the time, but, for Bostonians, its "You can have my Dunkin' cup when you pry it from my cold dead hands." Until we teach people to treat their whole cities as something other than a trash can, it sure feels like a lost cause.

(The unfortunate side effect is how it destroys ridership...and I guess that's wehre SEPTA has its big challenge that seperates it, at least initially, from say NYCTA or the MBTA -- no matter how dirty my train is, people are still packed in like sardines. I know that's not the case with SEPTA, which has suffered ridership losses.)

I've noticed too how it seems the el gets dirtier & dirtier every year...
My hypothesis is that the cleaning crews aren't doing their job. Is it really that hard to get a bucket w/water & detergent & slosh it around the floor for 2 minutes, then dry it off? At least clean up the chicken bones!

The old saying is, (fertilizer) rolls downhill. Always look to the top, not the bottom...

I've always prefered the BSL to the MFL because of the plastic seats. Cloth seats were a BAD idea for the MFL. It just seems like the cloth absorbs all of the filth and disgustingness of previous passengers. I would imagine that the BSL cars are a million times easier to clean because of this.

I just thought "train" was the wrong word to use when in fact el trains are the dirtiest and buses are no peach ... plus, who reads a trailpass? Not many a litterbug. Not saying they can be illiterate (necessarily). But certainly the trash is left by not the most observant ones, or else they would observe some respect in the first place.

Thanks for all the responses. Of course in an ideal world, the rules would be enforced but in a TRULY ideal world, SEPTA wouldn't even have to. I will continue to eat on the train and try not to feel guilty about the hungry neat freak next to me, because at least I'm also keeping the train cleaner than when I got there.

thegivenup wrote:I've always prefered the BSL to the MFL because of the plastic seats. Cloth seats were a BAD idea for the MFL. It just seems like the cloth absorbs all of the filth and disgustingness of previous passengers. I would imagine that the BSL cars are a million times easier to clean because of this.

I'm still amazed by that choice. The MBTA could have sent SEPTA a large pile of disgusting red cloth seat covers that were put on the last order of Red Line cars...

Maybe the car builders push this stuff to make it look like they're building a nicer vehicle than what they're replacing? Sure they look nice on the VIP special before they go into service...

I've been buying weekly zone 3s this month in preparation for my spring break. The first week's admonished riders to not take up seats with their bags and other belongings, this week's had a message about not "blocking the doors." Not sure what that means, since I've never had a problem with that on the railroad. Occassionally on the subway, but the zone 3s are aimed at regional rail.

Would be nice if the transpasses had something to the effect of "use the backdoor when exiting".

PARailWiz wrote:I've been buying weekly zone 3s this month in preparation for my spring break. The first week's admonished riders to not take up seats with their bags and other belongings, this week's had a message about not "blocking the doors." Not sure what that means, since I've never had a problem with that on the railroad. Occassionally on the subway, but the zone 3s are aimed at regional rail.

The side doors don't even close when the trap is up (for low-level platforms).

When all the stations have high-level platforms and the Silverliner Vs are in service, maybe that message about "not blocking the doors" will make sense.

When all the stations have high-level platforms

That's one huge "when".

Personally, one of the biggest problems I have with the BSL is not trash but the passengers who insist upon boarding before the passengers detraining have had a chance to exit the car. That needs to be on a Transpass sometime.

Drew

PArailwiz, you are lucky because often trains are standing room only because passengers sprawl out over the seats and don't let people in. During rush hour, this is a big problem on some routes.

RDG-LINe, I refer to the bumrushed issue as "Getting Malverned" on the way off the train, although I know that the R5 Main line passengers are not the only crowd guilty of bumrushing you as you try to get off at Mkt East or Suburban.

Well the NEWS page on Septa from yesterday, March 20, has a list of rules for riding the railroad, and while the list does include the statement that you shouldn't bring on open containers of alcoholic beverages, it does not say that eating and drinking are prohibited....... So it looks like SEPTA is causing confusion with those transpasses............

Sorry - here is the link to the SEPTA news page with the etiquette for RRD riders:

http://www.septa.org/news/pages/032006.html