Author: van2025ko

All transit Division Schedules on SEPTA will change on June 18th, 19th, and 24th. Most of the changes relate to the reduction of service due to schools being closed and workers taking vacations causing lighter peak hour loads. Among the highlights, peak hour headways on the Subway Surface lines (10, 11, 13, 34, 36) have been reduced from every 4 minutes to every 5 minutes, resulting in the subtraction of one car from each line. Also, Route 11 will begin shuttle bussing on June 18th between 49th and Woodland and Darby transportation Center with buses operating to 40th Street Portal after 9 PM weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday and holidays. Shuttle buses will operate to 40th and Market Streets during all diversions as well. The reason is the replacement of rail on Woodland Avenue from Island Avenue to 67th Street. Rail is already on the road near 70th Street waiting for the start of construction.During the first two (2) weeks of construction, workers will focus on Island and Woodland Avenues where the switches will be replaced. Due to this, Route 13 service will be suspended between Darby and Yeadon, with no replacement while Route 13 cars will pull in and pull out via Route 36 tracks and 49th Street to Chester Avenue. Work will start at Island and move up to 67th Street by September. Also happening with the schedule changes is reduced service on Red Arrow Routes 108, 112, 115, and a summer schedule on Route 120. On the Frontier front, Routes 91 and 130 will see major changes to Saturday service. On Route 91, the 12:10 out of Norristown and its 12:50 return are discontinued. The 2:10 trip and its return at 2:50 will depart 25 minutes later (2:35 and 3:15). A new 9:10AM trip from Norristown to Graterford and return will be added. On Route 130, all Saturday service t o Bucks County Community College is discontinued and service will terminate at the Village of Newtown Shopping Center. Schedules are available at SEPTA’s Website and will soon be available at all major terminals, transportation centers, and Center City Stations.

The Philadelphia International Airport now has 20-25 brand new Gillig Advantages. They are being used on courtesy shuttles to the Employee Lot, Airport Terminal Shuttle, and Cargo City Shuttle. They are basically taking over the Nova RTS’ and LFS’ that previously operated the service. They are painted blue and have orange LED signs on the front, side, and rear.

Rabbit transit of York, PA has purchased 3 Ex- SEPTA Neoplans.  These three ex-SEPTA Neoplans are numbered 331-333 and are all white with Rabbit logos. Here are two photos of the Neoplans taken by Michael Buglak.

 

Ex- SEPTA Neoplans

The New Flyer 40 foot demo BRT has been spotted at 1234 Market St, Frankford Frankford transportation center, and also in West Chester. It is unclear as to exactly what SEPTA is using this bus for but it seems likely they are using them to run tests on them.  Adam Moreira managed to get the photo of the BRT demo at Frankford terminal. You could check them out here…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/aemoreira81/SEPTA/3999-R.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/aemoreira81/SEPTA/3999-F.jpg

oday there has been some major power outages on the Amtrak’s Northeast corridor reflecting in massive delays throughout the rush hour this morning. Shuttle buses were being put into service to give the SEPTA’s commenter rail lines to substitution for these delays. As of 11am power has been restored on these lines.

According to Creighton Rabs, a New Flyer DE40LF demo painted LACMTA-style orange with the new redesigned front appeared in Center City today. It is believed that this bus was being shown off to SEPTA officials to persuade SEPTA to go back to New Flyer for the next bus order to replace the American Ikarus and NABI 416.08TA fleet which dates back to 1996-1997. The replacements will be delivered in batches of 100 starting in 2008 with options in each year.

Over the past 2 months SEPTA’s in-house forces have been making much needed upgrades to the Broad Street Subway’s City Hall Station. The upgrades include the repainting of the station, New brighter lighting, and a new platform surfacing to provide better “traction”. These are temporary repairs which will hold the station over a little longer until a major reconstruction and modernization of the station can be done. Currently the reconstruction project is in the design phase and isn’t scheduled until 2009.

This morning at 11th and South Streets in Center
City, Callowhill 5009 was operating an eastbound
Route 40 trip when a car driven by a pregnant
woman ran a red light while traveling north on
11th Street.  The car broadsided 5009,
forcing it into a CVS Drug Store.  Although
it sounds much worse than it really was, there
was no major damage to the building and 5009
appears to have only suffered minor damage. 
For more information,
click here.

Recently, SEPTA has started a practice of repainting buses on a regular basis.  When buses are in for routine maintenance, some are set aside and sent to the paint shop.  Many of these buses, particularly the New Flyer fleet not going through overhaul, are being repainted into various variations of the standard SEPTA red to blue fade away paint.  5589 recently returned from being repainted and show many odd variations of the paint scheme.  The numbers were in a different font than the rest of the SEPTA fleet and like 5851, the front stripe has more red than blue.  5589, along with 5570, also have purple on the rear stripe.  These variations are not occurring to the 5400 series New Flyers going through overhaul, however.  These buses are getting the correct paint scheme.

 

 

5589

 

As described, 5589 features numbers in a font that appears to be Arial Narrow and purple made its way onto the SEPTA stripe on the front and rear as well as on the sides if you look close enough.  Photos by Joe Butler.

An Gillig low floor was spotted today on 22nd street turning left onto Market Street; it appears that ether the Philadelphia trolley works or some other company has managed to get some funds in place to buy this bus. It’s a pretty nice looking bus with the designation sign being more likely a Twinvision NA amber to say “2401 Pennsylvania” with the change that says “Philadelphia” on it. The bus sounds like it has a Cummins ISL engine. The Gillig Advantage does indeed has a pretty nice scheme on it with text on the back that says “The Philadelphian”. Perhaps its a replacement of a bluebird fleet that runs in that area… We will pass more details when it becomes available.