Matthew Mitchell wrote:
How do you get 690 boards? North Philadelphia is 149 in that report and North Broad is 176. Both are well above the danger zone though. The key thing is that at both stations, nearly all the ridership is reverse-commute.
that's total boards and deboards. the times that I use the stop (the few times when one of the few stops there meets my schedule-it's easily the fastest way to the northern suburbs) I'll often opt for Suburban Station on the way back if it's late at night...or the train I catch INTO the city doesn't stop there.
Matthew Mitchell wrote:
No, the context I was speaking of there was transitizing the Chestnut Hill lines with transfers to the subway. I'm OK with limited peak-direction service at those two stops as long as the reverse peak trains are serving them well, which they mostly are. And I'll gladly take the proposition that the net public benefit of serving a reverse-commute rider is greater than that of serving a peak direction rider.
obviously serving reverse commuters there off peak is the most important reason to stop mainline trains there. OTOH, it would be foolish to not stop off peak trains there simply because there are no commuters. transfers from the subway to che are quicker and faster than any other way of getting from the broad st corridor to NW Philly. It might be the same for CHW if the swampoodle jct were built.
dited to add:
transitizing: if by that you mean light rail service with connections to the subway, which is what I'd think you meant, I'd assum that ideally the route would tunnel under the nec and provide a below grade connection...or perhaps more realistically, run on the surface for the "last mile" to get to broad street. in either case, current ridership numbers would not be a good indicator of demand. It seems likely some ridership from other bus routes (23, HXH, etc) would transfer to this equally cheap, much faster ride to the subway.
Matthew Mitchell wrote:
That's not true at all. We're the ones defending city riders on the RRD by doing things like calling out SEPTA on fare policies that particularly hurt those riders.
the city routes like che and chw need to be part of the city division. in some ways, on weekends, they already are since transpasses work...but none of them stop there and frequency of lansdale trains is atrocious at that stop, frequency of manayunk-norristown lines is piss poor as well.
Matthew Mitchell wrote:
That said though, it's hard to justify delaying a trainload of 500 peak riders to pick up one more at North Broad, especially considering it then complicates the dispatchers' job by requiring that train to be on 1 track or 4 track every day. And considering the relative cost recovery rates of the different lines, it's hard to fault SEPTA's commitment to those lines (Cynwyd is another story though).
I don't think it's that hard to justify standardizing stopping policies on a couple routes. I understand not stopping inbound trains from the main line.
Matthew Mitchell wrote:
Where's the market there? Fox Chase and Hill East are the two lowest lines in reverse commute travel, while inbound boards at North Broad are just 26 a day.
you're missing the point. it's not simply about reverse commute but about mobility. with better frequency off peak you know have a much faster way to use septa to get around the cit..that's where the market is. and as noted, city demographics are shifting fairly rapidly...rather than worrying about "where's the market" you should probably worry about how to tap into a growing market and begin to utilize one of the wasted assets on the system. the transfer is easy but fares on rrd and God awful stopping patterns at north broad make that difficult. as you noted, che doesn't have much of a reverse commute, so who are you inconveniencing by increasing mobility?
