(The following story by Walter F. Naedele appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on May 12.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA was late for its own party.
More than a year late.
But as if no one would notice, the transit agency yesterday hung banners proclaiming: “Celebrate 100 years. 69th Street Terminal and Route 100 Norristown High Speed Line.”
“We didn’t celebrate last year,” SEPTA spokesman Felipe Suarez said in a Friday interview, “because we were in the middle of a fight for funding . . . for mass transit.”
Which SEPTA won.
So, party on.
The famed terminal opened on March 4, 1907, just across the city line in Upper Darby.
It was the western terminus of one of the city’s rapid-transit lines and the eastern end of the Route 100 trolley line to Norristown.
In an interview at the event, SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said last year’s state legislation “provided the probability of dedicated funding, perhaps for another decade.”
“That’s the first time we ever had that.”
So yesterday there was a four-block parade, speeches, and free pretzels, hot dogs and soft drinks for the first 1,500 passersby.
And SEPTA general manager Joseph Casey told a small crowd in the terminal’s main hall that “every day we take you where you need to go.”
For the occasion, there was a 12-panel display of photos and explanations marking moments in SEPTA history.
One of the earliest photos was of a road running through a forest in the early 1900s, with a man walking down the otherwise deserted thoroughfare.
A caption explained that that road was West Chester Pike and, to the right, that the section of forest was where the 69th Street Terminal now stands.