PHILADELPHIA — The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority will expand Regional Rail schedules as of Sept. 8, adding 99 weekday trains and 24 on weekends, the agency announced today (Monday, Aug. 26).
The additional trains will increase weekday service to 80% of pre-pandemic levels (up from 77%) and weekend operation to 84% (up from 63%). Ridership is currently at about 67% of pre-COVID-19 levels, SEPTA says, with the fastest recovery on weekends.
“As we continue to rebuild ridership, SEPTA is still facing a $240 million annual budget deficit, and the need for a permanent solution grows more urgent by the day,” SEPTA CEO Leslie S. Richards said in a press release. “Despite this funding crisis, we can not put critical investments in our system on hold. We must move forward with efforts to make our service more reliable for our riders who depend on us to get where they need to go.”
Among schedule changes are the return of 30-minute weekend service to Philadelphia International Airport and hourly weekend service on most other lines; additional late-night and mid-day and reverse-peak service on most line; and additional cars on select trains to address overcrowding, especially at midweek when ridership is highest.
Full schedules for all lines are available here.
The agency says it in the process of addressing personnel shortages through a “robust recruitment and training effort,” now has 189 engineers, and is on pace to meet its budgeted headcount of 213 by spring 2025.
SEPTA has also announced it will reinstate parking fees at its lots with a phased approach beginning Sept. 23, after four years of free parking. Daily parking rates will increase from $1 to $2 at surface lots and from $2 to $3 at three garages: Frankford Transportation Center, Norristown, and Lansdale. Parking at surface lots will remain free on weekends and major holidays.
Philadelphia’s commuter rail service was initiated in 1958 by the City of Philadelphia for the PRR Chestnut Hill and Manayunk Lines and the RDG Chestnut Hill ans Fox Chase Lines. Subsidy was 100% City funds.
This service restoration did not include restoring hourly weekend service to either Chestnut Hill Line.
Outside Center City, the going rate for parking at a non-SEPTA lot is free. Except, of course, for hospitals.
Good that service frequencies are rebuilding However, the numbers in the article show that transit is a hopeless economic black hole that can only be backfilled by increasingly generous federal grants (i.e. more and more federal deficit spending).
I should make myself clear. I’m not against subsidy for transit. My question is this: are the states and transit districts prepared to raise taxes if/ when the federal subsidies are cut back or eliminated. In other words, subsidize transit with real, actual tax money, as opposed to the trillions that the federals print.
Oh and BTW the going rate for transit park-rides in most jurisdictions is higher than SEPTA’s $1 to $3, free on weekends.