But the death of an 8-year-old boy under the wheels of a skidding SEPTA bus yesterday morning has turned attention to the safety of the city transit division's buses and trolleys.
"We do have this seemingly abnormal incidence of what I would consider extremely unsettling incidents," said SEPTA board chairman Lewis F. Gould Jr. ''They cause us to have to re-evaluate everything we're doing."
The number of accidents on city transit surface vehicles rose from 3,960 in 1985 to 4,384 in 1986, said SEPTA spokesman Dave Murdock. Of the 1986 accidents, he said, 842 were preventable - that is, at least partly the driver's fault - up from 780 in 1985.
But those numbers include everything from yesterday's fatality to something as minor as a hubcap getting knocked off. Murdock said he could not immediately provide numbers regarding injuries in SEPTA accidents.
"I don't have a sense of what's going on," said state Rep. Gordon J. Linton, referring to the accidents that have been featured prominently in the news in recent months. The state House public transportation subcommittee, which Linton chairs, is planning to hold hearings on SEPTA safety and management issues.
One possible factor, Linton said, is the absence of the $1 billion in capital improvements that was identified in a 1985 report by former U.S. Transportation Secretary William T. Coleman Jr. as crucial for the aging commuter rail network.
In some cases, aging equipment has clearly failed or is otherwise at fault, said Robert T. Wooten, SEPTA's assistant general manager for public affiars and management services.
He cited the accident involving two Norristown High-Speed Line trolleys on Dec. 11, 1985, near Overbrook. The first car was derailed by rocks deliberately placed on the tracks, Wooten noted, but the second car might have been warned to stop if a more sophisticated communcations system had indicated the derailment had occurred.
