(The following story by Brian Scheid appeared on the Bucks County Courier Times website on June 29.)
PHILADELPHIA — After years of budget shortfalls and a crippling strike, SEPTA is in the midst of a very nice problem.
Skyrocketing gas prices have created a surge in ridership on the transportation authority’s buses, subways, trolleys and, particularly, commuter rail lines.
There are so many new passengers that SEPTA officials plan to announce in early August a “major shift” in all transit services, which will include more frequent regional rail service and, likely, expanded bus routes, according to Richard Maloney, a SEPTA spokesman. He said the details of that plan were being worked out, but new schedules and expanded service would likely go into effect in September.
For now though it seems that demand cannot keep up with SEPTA’s supply.
According to the transit agency’s latest figures, ridership throughout the five-county system has jumped 5 percent since July and the number of riders on regional rail has shot up about 11 percent over the same time last year. That means SEPTA has almost 2.8 million more riders now than it did a year ago, an all-time high for SEPTA, according to Maloney.
On the regional rail lines though, some of the busiest trains are regularly standing room only at peak travel times in the morning and early evening and the authority could not add more rail cars if it wanted to.
All of SEPTA’s 348 regional rail cars are in service and 120 new cars won’t begin arriving until late 2009, Maloney said.
“We have literally scoured the world looking for cars,” Maloney said. “The other major cities are going through the same thing. No one has enough equipment. Everybody’s scrambling and trying to find new cars.”
On Thursday, SEPTA’s board of directors approved a new agreement to lease eight rail cars from NJ Transit, which is transitioning to a fleet of new, double-decker cars, to temporarily ease overcrowding on regional rail lines. The cars, which will be leased for two years at a cost of $10,000 a month, or $1,250 per car, will be used on three regional rail lines: the R5 Thorndale/Paoli line, and the R3 West Trenton and R7 Trenton lines which pass through Lower Bucks.
As an additional “stop gap” measure, SEPTA has altered its maintenance program for regional rail car fleet. Maintenance on those cars is only being performed on weekends, instead of weeknights, Maloney said.
Matthew Melzer, a spokesman for the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said high gas prices have driven up public transit ridership numbers up throughout the country. He said more local, state and federal money needs to be spent to help public transportation systems expand to accommodate the growing number of passengers.
“The infrastructure can’t keep up with demand,” Melzer said. “The amount of funding available for building and adding to public transportation is just not as robust as it needs to be.”
According to the American Public Transportation Association there were 2.6 billion rides made on public transit between January and March of this year, a 3.3 percent jump over the same time period last year. During the same quarter this year, vehicle miles traveled on roads throughout the country dropped 2.3 percent, according to the association. There were 10.3 billion trips taken on American public transportation in 2007, the highest number in 50 years.
Maloney said “almost all” of the SEPTA’s recent spike in ridership can be attributed to high gas prices, especially on regional rail lines where commuters have a significant distance to travel.
On Friday the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded was $4.15 in the Philadelphia region, according to AAA numbers. A gallon of regular was $2.99 a gallon in this region at the same time a year ago, according to AAA.