Riders react to service problems

Passengers trying to adjust as rail agency works to repair trains

It’s been a little more than a month since SEPTA took roughly one-third of its rail fleet out of service, and riders and businesses across the region are adapting.

As the transit agency works to bring its Silverliner V cars back online after repairs, rail riders across the region shared their thoughts on how they’ve dealt with delays and schedule changes so far.

“Of all the lines on the system, the Lansdale-Doylestown line has had the most problems with trains being overcrowded,” said Matt Mitchell, vice president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers.

“We have been working with SEPTA to get some adjustments to the schedule and get some trains added to try and alleviate the problem, but we’re still seeing trains filling up and having to skip stops further down the line,” he said.

In early July, SEPTA announced a total of 120 rail cars were taken out of service to inspect beams in the wheel trucks below the cars themselves, where small cracks were found during inspections. Since that time, SEPTA has leased rail cars fromother agencies including Amtrak and New Jersey Transit and announced reduced service schedules as the agency plans to return cars back into service starting later this month.

Since the mechanical problems were found, roughly 25 to 30 percent fewer seats have been in service on the Lansdale-Doylestown line, and ridership has dropped by 10 to 20 percent based on parking lot counts, according to SEPTA Public Information Manager Kristin Geiger. The typical day sees 18 to 22 delays, and new schedule changes will take effect Monday, Aug. 15, and are meant to correct some delay issues, she said.

Ridership on regional rail is down, but other modes like the Market-Frankford and Broad Street lines have seen increases, she said. SEPTA expects to begin returning repaired Silverliner V cars back into service starting later this month, and agency hopes to resume a regular schedule after Oct. 1 and the full fleet is expected to be back in service by Nov. 1.

Last week, SEPTA announced it plans to start new bus routes to augment regional rail service, and one of those planned routes will pick up bus riders from the Jenkintown rail station and take them directly to the Fern Rock station, where they can board the Broad Street Line into Philadelphia. More details about that bus service will be announced in late August, according to Geiger.

How the service outages have affected riders and businesses around the region varies widely, depending on whomyou ask, when you ask and where you’re asking.

As he waited for a 10:40 a.m. train from North Wales to Philadelphia, William Daniels, of Philadelphia, thought about the next job application he’d file later Wednesday afternoon.

“I don’t like waiting for a job to call me. I just go right to the temp agency, and if they’ve got work for me all week, I’ll take it. If they’ve got work for me for one day, I’ll take it. And if I’m not at work, I’m at home filling out apps” for other jobs, he said.

Thisweek, Daniels said, a job placement agency found work for him at Merck facilities in Upper Gwynedd, so he rode SEPTA from Suburban Station to North Wales. Merck runs a shuttle bus service for employees from the train station to their complex, so Daniels hopped on — and learned when he arrived that he wasn’t needed that day, and could turn around and go home.

“I never miss a train — I’m just saying, if a train is late, or the train has a problem on the tracks or whatever, it’s not on them, it’s on me,” Daniels said.

After having a steady job for more than two decades at a catering company, Daniels found himself on the job market when that company closed and said he rides all over SEPTA’s Regional Rail wherever there’s a job.

“Wherever they got work, that’s where I’m at,” he said.

Some employers cover travel expenses, like the cost of a daily or weekly train or bus ride, and others don’t, he said. Since SEPTA’s service problems began, he’s noticed longer delays than usual and said those extra few minutes can add up when he’s late to a temporary job and another coworker has to cover for him.

“Some people can deal with it because their jobs are secure, but I’m not secure with my job. Anybody can takemy place,” he said.

“If you’re late, you’re tagged for that, even if it’s not your fault. They’ll tell you, ‘Well, catch something earlier,’ and you can tell people that you’re on the first train. It doesn’t mat- ter,” Daniels said.

Daniels said he was involved in a SEPTA bus accident several weeks ago that made him several hours late for work that day, and had a strange encounter earlier Wednesday with a man he said appeared off his medication at Suburban Station. Neither stopped him from boarding the 10:41 a.m. SEPTA train to Philadelphia — he counted every one of the 10 minutes it was late arriving — and once back in the city, he planned to interview with a local school board for another job opportunity, then look for more job listings online while standing by for an evening call from the agency.

“I’m gonna do that today and see what happens,” he said.

Regionally, the impact to tourism caused by the SEPTA service problems appears tohave been minimal, according to Dan Weckerly, communications manager for the Valley Forge Tourism and Convention Board.

“From an attendance standpoint, there really hasn’t been any drop-off at all on the tourism side. The activity on the commuter side has probably been affected, but not in a large way,” he said.

Montgomery County’s two biggest tourist attractions are the King of Prus-- sia Mall, which draws about 20 million visitors per year, and Valley Forge National Historic Park, which draws about 2.2million; both have seen numbers similar to previous years because visitors tend to drive or take buses instead of rail.

Roughly 8,000 employees work at the mall, and most either drive or take the Norristown High Speed Line to Norristown, then take shuttle buses, he said.

“The rail car situation really hasn’t had much impact on commuters, but organizationally, we have been standing with SEPTA. There’s not a lot we can do to help them, but they’re doing the best they can,” Weckerly said.

Montgomery County’s Partnership TMA, a local nonprofit that works to increase mobility and reduce congestion, has also seen only minor inconveniences to local riders. Anthony Johnson, PTMA’s mobility manager, said SEPTA stations in the suburbs appear to have been more crowded in recent weeks, but the local TMA and other similar agencies throughout the region have had few major complaints.

“We think our weekday commuters, although frustrated, have been resourceful in finding ways to use regional rail,” Johnson said.