DRPA staff are exploring the question at the request of Commissioner John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty, the colorful Philadelphia union boss who is agitating for spending cuts. The authority annually subsidizes the line to the tune of $20 million.
It wasn't always so. In its earliest years, Vigrass says, PATCO actually made "a little" money.
"It was the first of a new age of building rapid transit into suburbia as opposed to just connecting parts of the city," says Jackson, retired from what is now LTK Engineering Services of Ambler.
"PATCO was a landmark for the time, and its success is why you have a Metro in Washington and a big system out in San Francisco called BART," he adds.
With its then-innovative automated ticketing; sleek, elevated stations; and fast, frequent, round-the-clock service, PATCO was respected industrywide and by the riding public. It not only worked but had personality, too.
Riding those minimalist, advertising-free trains for the first time in the late 1970s, I was struck by how the Speed Line mirrored the character of South Jersey and Philadelphia. What it lacked in dazzle, it made up for in hustle; the Speed Line was a little train that could.
That was then; now, transit experts don't see PATCO as a saleable commodity. This surely says something about the economy, but it also suggests that years, if not decades, of "coming soon" improvements have taken a toll.
Of PATCO's 120-car fleet, 74 units are 42 years old, and the newest came on line in 1980. Many show their age, with greasy-looking windows and years of ground-in grime that the addition of flashy advertising can't brighten.
