SEPTA's Suburban Busway

Just heard about this today and can't find much info on it...

SEPTA's Route 103 bus runs on a paved former Red Arrow trolley right-of-way through the town of Ardmore with three stations/stops along the dedicated route: Merwood Road, Ardmore Junction (connection with the 100-Norristown High Speed Trolley) and Belmont Ave.

SEPTA Map/Schedule of Route (shows "SEPTA Private Busway"):
http://www.septa.org/service/sched/pdfs/103.pdf


Google Earth Satelite Photo

Anyone know anything more about it? pictures?

It is the remenents of when the 103 used to be a trolley route durring the Red Arrow days. It was paved over and is now used for buses. I hear it gets a little tight when the buses have to pass each other and they have trouble with people tresspassing. Not sure what else there is to tell.


Sean@Temple

Back in the Red Arrow days there were four trolley lines out of 69th Street. Two remain today as the Media and Sharon Hill lines. The other two went down West Chester Pike - there's still a stub that's now used for car storage. One branch went all the way to West Chester while the other split off and terminated at Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore. The West Chester branch was closed down in stages starting in 1954 but the Ardmore branch lasted until the end of 1966. IIRC the Red Arrow was actually given some kind of tax incentive to replace the Ardmore line with buses. Anyway, a portion of the ROW was paved over to become what you see labelled as the "private busway". Some of the bus shelters along the route actually date back to the trolley days.

I looked for some pix but couldn't find much - there's one nice shot at http://206.103.49.193/pw/htm/pw010.htm

Theres not really to much to say about it. Basically, after the West chester trolley was bustituted, they kept the ardmore trolley going, mostly because the Red Arrow shops where just beyond where it split from the west chester route.

I really have no concept why it was not simply made a road, beyond the fact that it had not been a road when the trolleys ran on it. There are two other stops not shown on the service map, one at Oakmont (at eagle road), the other at county line road. all the designated stops have brick shelters much like the older style P&W stops. The old loop is now parking lot, and there is a pizza place in what I take to be the old station building there.

The route came in really handy when I was in high school, as I could catch the 103 half an hour later than my school bus, and still beat the schoolbus to school. course, that was back when tokens cost a bit less and you could get them at discounts through the school. It was worth it to spend an extra half-hour in bed instead of sitting on a yellow bus.

Like the present situation with Routes 23 & 56, bustitution of the Red Arrow trolley lines was not universally favored. After West Chester was bustituted, and especially after the 1958 abandonment of the 69th Street- Westgate Hills portion, which had outlasted the Westgate Hills- West Chester Portion by four years, Red Arrow President Merritt H. Taylor became increasingly ennamored of the idea of eliminating ALL of the trolleys. He couldn't eliminate Media & Sharon Hill, because the rights of way for those lines had been acquired through the use of "Eminent Domain". Under this concept, as applied to the Red Arrow ( actually the P&WCT- Co.) whenever that land is no longer used for railway purposes, it will revert to its original owners. This is why you still have rail operation on Routes 101 & 102. This problem didn't exist with the Ardmore Line ROW, so Taylor bustituted it and substituted his private "busway". He was hoping to do the same thing with the Media & Sharon Hill Lines, keeping the rails and running one franchise rail trip per day over each line, with the rest of the service to be provided by buses. This didn't sell, so the only "busway" on the former Red Arrow system is the Ardmore busway.

There were two other attempts at Red Arrow bustitution. Remember the so-called "Hy-Rail" (their spelling, not mine) bus that had a second set of flanged wheels so it could run either on a road or rails? IIRC one idea was to keep tracks on the private section of the Ardmore line. Hy-Rails would take streets up to the rail ROW, drive onto it, lower the flanges and head to Ardmore. Presumably they also would have been a foot in the door to bustituting Media and Sharon Hill ("we're already running buses so why do we need the rails anyway ...") I can't find out too much more info about the Hy-Rails but I seem to remember that there were at least a couple of reasons they didn't pan out. The dual-mode hardware was pretty unreliable, plus the buses were too light to get decent traction in bad weather.

Also, a proposal to pave over the P&W was actually floated when rail service was shut down during the time between the Bullets' demise and the CTAs' arrival. One of the operators told me SEPTA gave up the idea because UMTA had paid for a lot of upgrades to the tracks and signals. If the line were "de-railed" they expected to be reimbursed for everything, even down to spikes and fish plates.

One of the "Hi-Rail" plans was the plan to run them over the Media & Sharon Hill lines, as a substitute for conventional trolleys, but still qualifying those ROW's as "rail" so that they could be retained. This plan also included running the "railbuses" all the way into Center City, which is something the Taylors had wanted to do for most of the 20th Century. When the PTC's objections eliminated any possibility, at that time, of running into Center City, Taylor scrapped the rail bus idea. He had actually gone so far as to order 40 of the hybrids from GM. He cancelled the order, however, before any units, other than the leased No. 410 were built. ( No. 409 was a conversion of an existing GM "over the road" bus)