Where's the Trolley on Route 23--SEPTA's broken promise

I noticed up and down both 12th and 11th Streets in Center City tonight green stickers plastered everywhere that say "Where's the Trolley---SEPTA Promised" With a picture of a PCC on it.

Who's putting these stickers out and where can we get them?

I take it there are alot of Chestnut Hiller's watching the 15 opening and wondering why they got the short end of the stick as the last of the non-refurbed PCC's were given away like candy at X-mas.

It's a form of wheatpasting. Someone, usually with a political agenda, goes out and plasters posters in highly visible places in the dead of night to make their point. With cheap laser printing and cheap label/sticker stock, anyone at Kinko's can do it.

It should be easy to print some out on a laser printer and some sticker/label stock. I don't think anyone is going to own up to doing it since it's probably illegal.

Too bad they didn't cover the front door of 1234 Market with them.

They probably should target residents along the 23 route to put political pressure on SEPTA. Most people who work at headquarters probably don't take the 23.

Nice shot. Thanks for providing the picture for everyone!

Thanks.

jfrey40535 wrote:I noticed up and down both 12th and 11th Streets in Center City tonight green stickers plastered everywhere that say "Where's the Trolley---SEPTA Promised" With a picture of a PCC on it.

Who's putting these stickers out and where can we get them?

I take it there are alot of Chestnut Hiller's watching the 15 opening and wondering why they got the short end of the stick as the last of the non-refurbed PCC's were given away like candy at X-mas.

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Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:51:59 +0000
Subject: [Philly_Traction] Where's The Trolley? on Sep. 1


The White Paper working group has been very busy over the summer, coming up with ways of getting the message out, about Philadelphia's trolleys. In addition to the White Paper itself, there's a tri-fold brochure being distributed, as well as a green oval sticker.

We're calling the effort "Where's The Trolley?", the simple idea being that Philadelphians have gotten used to waiting a long time for a Route 15, 23, or 56 but thirteen years is ridiculous... SEPTA promised, back in 1992, that running diesel buses on these routes was just temporary, and Philadelphians intend to hold them to their promise.

So far, many schedule racks on Route 23 buses have been stuffed with "Where's The Trolley?" brochures, bus stops adorned with green "Where's the Trolley?" oval stickers, and the beginnings of a door-to-door campaign to distribute brochures is under way also.

The rumored Route 15 start-up ceremony tentatively scheduled for September 1 might be a great place for us to get the word out.

So... Calling for volunteers... Is anyone on this list interested in meeting in front of the Zoo on Sept. 1, and handing out "Where's The Trolley?" brochures? The more of these we can distribute, the better. Contact me if interested,

Mike Sz.

Download the "Where's The Trolley?" brochure here:
http://www.phillytrolley.org/WheresTheT ... ochure.pdf

Bill

Great brochure. What time did you have in mind to distrubute?

Very nice brochure!

One question--I noticed this in the brochure:
"All West Philadelphia subway/surface lines must be upgraded with new equipment and protected from abandonment."

I'm all for new equipment, but where did this "abandonment" issue come from? Is there any evidence to suggest that this is a threat?

Until SEPTA can figure out a way to run buses in a tunnel, I don't see how they could eliminate the S-S routes. That's one reason the lines have survived so far.

Unless of course SEPTA did something really lunatic like bustitute as far as 40th Street and dump everyone on the subway (for an extra transfer charge, natch!). I guess I wouldn't put such an idea past the mildewed minds at 1234...

The stupid thing is even SEPTA's own stats show that trolley/light rail/streetcar/whatever it's called today is cheaper than buses, though for some reason, not much. They're far above a lot of other w.r.t. operating costs. Go figure.

I won't even go into the abysmal 1st life of a transit bus (maybe 10 years), vs the 1st life of a streetcar. And with rebuilds...Heck, the PCCs are STILL running in a lot of places...

One of the reasons that the life-cycle costs are closer than you might think is that the purchase price of a new rail whatever car is much more than for a bus. Partly it's the nature of the beast and partly it's that there is not really a standard trolley in the same way there is a (semi) standard bus. Can we all say "PCC", boys and girls?

Plus, the owner of the trolley is responsible for all of its associated infrastructure, while the bus pays fuel taxes into the general pot for road repairs, sharing funding with truck and car owners and having the work done by some gov't authority. Let oil hit $100 a barrel, have PennDOT pay for putting up trolley poles, and make SEPTA responsible for a prorated portion of road repairs on its bus routes. Then run the numbers again.

SEPTA has let things go on for so long now that they have an argument that they will not be able to obtain enough streetcars/ LRV's to restore rail service to the 23 alone ( in 1947, the first 100 of the all-electric PCCs were needed just for the 23), let alone adding the 56. They're disposing of their remaining PCC's ( the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, in my
present "neigborhood" is a fortunate recipient of several of them). I'll leave it up to others here to opine on the question of whether this is what SEPTA intended all along ( to delay so long that serviceable cars would become unavailable).

Those brochures are awesome. I compliment whoever designed them! I bow to your superior graphic design skills!

-[otto]-