How many more studies do we really need to run? Service drives demand, I can't take trips that aren't there. I stopped using regional rail because the headways were so bad I could make 3 round trips into center city in the time it took for another train to arrive on the weekends, and that was the R5!
I would also like to say maybe SEPTA should actually promote the fact you can pay with credit card on regional rail now, I saw it on the train the other day. Or better yet, put out a keycard machine on the railroad. If Amtrak can do it at Paoli and Ardmore, I think SEPTA can at least deploy one unit past Zone 3 on regional rail.
Anyways, looking at the ridership report for Q2 from April to June,
https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads ... p-APTA.pdf, it's bad. Ridership has reduced by if I'm reading this right -37% on Regional Rail, -35% on light rail, and -52% on commuter rail for a net negative of nearly -28.58% across the board.
Across the bridge NJ transit has seen a dive of 47% on commuter rail, but only a a reduction of about 20% of their ridership in the same time frame, and LIRR at a reduction of -33.61% commuter rail and Metro north at -33.61%. Frankly it looks like without the office workers, I don't know if commuter rail is going to survive in it's current form. I realize that this report only has the time frame to June of 2021 and not with the reopening of schools during September, but unless SEPTA embraces a truly regional rail rapid transit style system...It's not looking good
Anecdotally my large company is embracing the hybrid model of work, 3 days on 2 days off for most workers with exceptions for new hires, and from the way the traffic has been in the area it would appear that most companies are following that sort of model. I'm not sure how SEPTA could even adapt to a model like that in SEPTA's current form