jsc wrote:Well, I communicated with some of the philly reps (of whom there ain't enough) and their big concern right now is that the mayors office for whatever reason isn't interested in making more appointments to the CAC. I've asked several times to be appointed but the mayors office ain't interested and only he can make the appointments.
Yep. And it's been like that since the Goode administration, if not before that. Street has been worse than his predecessors, but the city has always been well short of filling all the seats it's entitled to, let alone clearing out the deadwood and making sure their appointees actually are doing something to fulfill their duties. They made a show of trying to fix it after the Inquirer ran an embarrassing story, but the Inquirer didn't follow up, and it was back to business as usual pretty quickly.
And if you're serious about applying, railfan credentials are probably going to be a negative rather than a positive in the eyes of the politicians who make the appointments. What matters most to the city is being a representative of some neighborhood or ethnic or other vocal constituency they feel they need to throw some bone to. Independent thinking is not an asset in the city's eyes.
I told them about the map on the 15 and they said they'd bring it up in their meeting, but that was last month I think. Since there's a meeting tomorrow, you can be the hero and bring it up. Those meetings seem more like love-ins to me, where everyone talks about how wonderful a job SEPTA is doing and nobody talks about things like how the subways smell like p1$$ or how the trains are the slowest of any major comuter railroad and can't even make that lesurely schedule or any of the things that keep riders away. Frankly, I don't think that topics covered in those CAC meetings are the things that keep riders away. Riders want more frequent trains, faster trains and subways that don't turn their stomachs. [snip]
CAC is not in a position to address the big issues, since the big issues require money. Nor is CAC given the resources to have a larger impact. The PCAC in New York is a good example of how a statutory riders' panel can make a difference (see some of their reports on
www.pcac.org), but even they are working on nuts and bolts customer service issues rather than bigger issues like major increases in service levels.
Also, since they're more or less dependent on SEPTA for everything, they're less inclined to be as ... uh ... forceful in their advocacy as DVARP can be.
Matt Mitchell
[whose big accomplishment on CAC was the whistles that Market-Frankford conductors used]