If you are running for Mayor, and you don’t have an agenda that includes bus lanes, transit signal priority, and bus shelters, then you have no plan for helping public transit riders in this city.
Category Archives: SEPTA
Sauce for the goose: if free transfers on SEPTA are good enough for 11th and 12th Streets, they’re good enough everywhere
The service planners at SEPTA have been very busy bees for this year’s Annual Service Plan revisions, and that work shows in the sheer plethora of adjustments they have proposed, from suburban bus reroutings, to the extension of bus routes to the Delaware River waterfront. But the crown jewel of their work this year is …
Pittsburgh is the competition. Let’s steal their best idea: free student and faculty transit
Last spring, I waxed rhapsodic on the similarities between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, while calling for strengthening the transportation ties between the two cities. But today, I want to recast the Steel City as villain, not hero. Let’s take the Yinzers, for the moment, as our municipal rivals for our most precious resource: human capital. Because …
Knowledge is power, especially on bad days
Quick thoughts on SEPTA’s response this morning to the fire in Kensington across from York-Dauphin Station that shut down the El: Obviously, the root cause of the mess was an enormous fire on someone else’s property that SEPTA could not have prevented, but since “Large Fires in Kensington” seems to be the new normal, at least until …
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Twitter helpdesks are too valuable to be turned off so early
I’d like to write an enormous longform piece on how, in the first five weeks of this year, SEPTA and PATCO have been handling the disruptions of winter weather, for better and for worse. In lieu of the time to crank out the 10,000+ words the subject could take, let me take some time this …
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Looking back, looking ahead: New Year’s roundup 2015
In the last night of the year, five things we’ll remember from 2014: The year of citizen action. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much when Conrad Benner launched a change.org petition to get SEPTA to run the subways overnight. But it worked, and now another petition has sparked progress on a second front, in …
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December schedule change will carry first fruits of #SEPTAWILM campaign
Back in July, Wilmington-based grad student David Curtis launched an online petition asking Delaware for increased SEPTA Regional Rail service to Wilmington. This week, we are seeing the first results of that show of public support with two new trains to Delaware each weekday. It’s a very promising start. Curtis and I both estimated the …
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The TWU deal resolves nothing, and that’s fine
When in doubt, punt. The two year contract signed by TWU Local 234 and SEPTA at 11:00 last night is a truce, not a peace treaty. It includes a 5% raise over the two years of the contract term, which is higher than what management was offering and lower than what the union was demanding, …
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Strike Warning cancelled: DEAL IMMINENT
The Inquirer’s Paul Nussbaum is currently tweeting photos of elected officials and SEPTA executives congregating in advance of what appears to be an imminent announcement of a contract agreement. More as it comes over series the tubes.
SEPTA/TWU Strike Kremlinology
The steady drip, drip, drip of signs and portents leaking out of this week’s round of negotiations between SEPTA and its biggest union have finally ended in a press conference that fills me with despair for entirely non-strike-related reasons. The key bit is this: There will not be a strike next Monday. Election Day on …
Sic Transit Philadelphia 