Resumption of rail service just a pipe dream

At a special meeting of Borough Council on June 7 that I helped initiate, SEPTA’s Deputy General Manager Robert Lund, Assistant General Manager Francis Kelly, SEPTA board members Skip Brion and Kevin Johnson gave Council a very thorough report on the status of resumption of rail service to West Chester. Bottom line - it’s not going to happen despite community support and the work of the Rail Restoration Committee.

Community support alone can’t ante up the anticipated $390 million to $500 million to make it happen or is it in any way part of SEPTA’s future plans. I asked Mr. Lund if I wrote him “a check for 500 million dollars (I had one in my wallet) what would he do with it?” He made it clear it would be used elsewhere in the SEPTA network, not here and with limited funding, they have a $4.6 billion dollar backlog of infrastructure projects before they would consider rail service here. We are considered a “low priority”, not part of their twelve year plan and despite rosy assumptions, there is no accurate way to predict long term ridership and therefore profitability.

The Borough had budgeted $9,000 toward a feasibility and economic impact study of a resumption of rail service. The County agreed to a grant of $11,000, then the mayor requested an additional $6,000 from the council for an additional study.

I, along with Bernie Flynn and Lisa Dorsey voted against the approval of the additional $6,000 because the Borough doesn’t have it and the likelihood of the railroad being rebuilt was zero. Unbelievably, Borough Council voted to approve it anyway.

Despite what SEPTA told us, the mayor still wants to proceed with the impact studies… for a railroad that will not exist! That’s $26,000 of taxpayer money - yours and mine! I don’t think so. It’s Disney thinking. The mayor thinks rail service is essential; it’s not and SEPTA agrees.

The Borough needs a new street sweeper at $260,000 while both the Running Store (a Borough property) and the Borough Building need new air conditioning units for about $15,000, none of which was budgeted. To spend Borough funds on a rail study for a non-existent railroad given the facts above is frivolous and irresponsible. Ardent proponents of resumption of service appear unable to comprehend that the line will not be rebuilt and may not know that when a railroad shuts down, it almost never opens again. I get it. Throughout Chester

County there used to be multiple rail lines… they are all gone.

An alternate plan proposed by the mayor and Rail Restoration Committee is to fix the tracks just enough to allow the West Chester Historic Railroad to go beyond Glen Mills to Middletown (Wawa) with a price tag of seven million dollars. With what I’ve learned about railroad reality the last few months I can’t see that happening from a financial, infrastructure and regulatory perspective. In addition, our train may interfere with SEPTA operations at Middletown.

On June 9, Bill Rettew of the Daily Local News wrote an excellent article on the June 6th Special Borough Council meeting.

I urge you to read this article and you can listen to the meeting recording on the Borough website.

I love trains, always have. I’ve walked the West Chester line between here and Glen Riddle over the years, though not all at once. I know the rich history of the line. The line ran in our backyard at Gladstone Station in Lansdowne when I was a kid. I built a brass scale model of the yellow Plymouth locomotive on Market Street for our garden railroad. I’m disappointed the line won’t be part of our future, but I also deal in reality… not Disney thinking.

Braceland