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| Re: Silverliner V problems... From an email I got (1401670) | |||
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Re: Silverliner V problems... From an email I got |
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Posted by TransitChuckG on Tue Jul 12 05:19:49 2016, in response to Re: Silverliner V problems, posted by TransitChuckG on Mon Jul 11 13:11:34 2016. newsletter@dvarp.org11:37 PM (5 hours ago) Reply to mail Lots to report today, and we hope you'll send us some reports of your own. The first day of the improved SEPTA schedule was a step backwards in some ways. Two of the three leased trainsets were in service: an NJ Transit train on the Trenton line and an Amtrak train on the Paoli line. The third one: a MARC train to be used on the Wilmington line, wasn’t ready Monday morning because inspection and crew training hadn’t been completed. The absence of the MARC set contributed to a morning that was missing several scheduled trains, including the “clean-up” set that was supposed to run from Glenside. As a result, nine trains were overcrowded to the point where they couldn’t pick up all the waiting passengers. Four of those were on the Lansdale line and at least one more was on Warminster making for a miserable commute on the Reading side. At least the wait for the following train wasn’t as bad it as it was last week. Lansdale riders had still more problems in the afternoon: the 5:10 was cancelled, leaving the following train badly overcrowded and 45 minutes late by the time it got to Doylestown. . Trying to get ahead of the situation, SEPTA called a press conference this afternoon, where we were able to get some answers about what happened today and what SEPTA is doing to try and improve commuter service. We have a variety of sources, both official and unofficial, providing information for you. Today’s schedule had 574 trains running systemwide, compared to 549 in the modified Saturday schedule run last week. The normal weekday schedule has 788 trains. Most of the difference is in the rush hour, so it’s a really significant difference. Besides the rush hour woes today, there were problems over the weekend too. A source tells us that 21 trains were cancelled Saturday because of crews being unavailable. I raised some questions about crewing at the press conference, and learned that SEPTA has not yet set up new crew run assignments: they’re still working from the runs assigned for a short-term weather emergency, augmented by crews called off the extra board. So besides the new schedules still reflecting the weekend running times instead of the time it really is taking when trains are so crowded, they aren’t yet fixed from a crewing standpoint. I asked whether we could expect more revisions to the schedule July 18 or July 25 to fix these problems and further refine the plan to match shifts in ridership, the reply was “don’t hold us to that.” We’ll keep urging SEPTA to get the job done. One more problem became apparent today: the real-time information that is more essential than ever because of the interim schedules had more than a few glitches. We saw trains on TrainView that weren’t actually out there on the tracks, and other trains reported under the wrong numbers. Between the pass-ups, the TrainView trouble, and the cascading delays, it would be a big help to get specifics of all the problems, which will help SEPTA track down causes and fix things sooner. For the next few days, please e-mail us at mail@dvarp.org with a report on how your trip went: where you boarded, what time, whether the train was standing room only, whether the train was able to pick up passengers at all the scheduled stops, and whether it was showing up correctly on TrainView and Next to Arrive. Even if you have a routine trip with nobody having to stand, that’s useful information to us. If you help, we can crowdsource a good report that will provide some on-site data presently unavailable, and help SEPTA give us more realistic schedules sooner. Finally, we got an update on the investigation of the cracks in the equalizer bars. Metallurgical tests are underway, and once the results are it, SEPTA can decide whether or not it will be safe to keep using the trucks without cracks. If it is, that will be a big relief: not enough to get more than a small group of Silverliner Vs back into service, but enough to give us a little breathing room. Matthew Mitchell Commuter Rail Committee Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers |
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