Passenger Trains > "Dear SEPTA Regional Rail Customer"

SEPTA explains to its customers what the plans are to improve Regional Rail service.

http://www.septa.org/service/rail/improvement/message.html

Not a word about severe crew shortages, but room to boast about bi-level rail cars.

I'm kinda surprised that I have not seen any comments about the extensive article TRAINS published last month about SEPTA. The article was not only thought provoking but certainly invoked some comments from readers. Maybe this forum doesn't read TRAINS?????

Happy Holidays to all.
​Jim
Hatboro, PA

I do not read Trains magazine.

Yea, 

They figured out how to fix on time performance by grotesque schedule padding. Look at the new December 11th schedule for the Manayunk/Norristown Line. Weekend Inbound trains have 10 minutes to run 1 mile from Alleghaney to North Broad Station. Outbound trains do it in 2 minutes. 

Once they get the equipment repaired and back into full service, who is going to run trains 7 days per week with a crew shortage? 

It's ashame. Up until about 6 or 7 years ago, the railroad ran pretty smooth. Delays over 5-10 minutes were rare. Now it's more common to watch the train monitor boards downtown and see all the late trains in red, and just a few on-time trains in green numbers. 

They have a lot of fires to put out before they can restore ridership confidence and begin considering how to tackle increasing or planning expanding service. 

Don't even get me started on snow days........

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> I do not read Trains magazine.

However I do!

Trains magazine has always been anti-union. The difficulty here is that SEPTA's problems and issues are both management -who sets policies, makes the rules, and hires the labor- and labor, who reacts to those management activities and actions. Ignoring and/or making light of one at the expense of the other only makes the situation worse.