New Routes

Southwest Airlines plans to announce as soon as this spring new routes from Philadelphia International Airport, using five additional departure gates in Terminal E that it expects to have by Oct. 15, chief executive officer Gary C. Kelly said yesterday. But Southwest service here also will shrink a bit after March 10, when it stops flying between Philadelphia and Hartford, Conn., according to information on the airline's Web site. The airline, which has 65 flights daily out of Philadelphia, has made no announcement about abandoning the route.

A planner for SEPTA gave members of the Greater Bustleton Civic League a look last week at the latest in mass-transportation service for the Northeast. Work that began on SEPTA's Northeast Philadelphia Transportation Improvement Program (TIPS) a decade ago is now beginning to pay off, Joseph Tiernan told 35 members at a meeting last Wednesday in the auditorium of the Bustleton United Methodist Church, 9707 Bustleton Ave. "All that's needed now is a little help from Mr. Casey to find a permanent funding base, one not dependent on the fare box," Kiernan said.

Don't be surprised if you notice more cyclists this summer in Philadelphia. On Friday, the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities announced new north-south bike lanes in central Philadelphia as part of a six-month pilot program to allow easier access for cyclists on 10th and 13th Streets and Fairmount Avenue. The new routes - which will replace a traffic lane on each road - will run from Spring Garden Street to Lombard Street on 10th Street, and from South Street to Spring Garden on 13th.

SEPTA will hold a public hearing Tuesday on its proposal to discontinue the heavily traveled "C" bus routes and replace them with two new routes. The C bus runs on Broad Street from Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia to Cheltenham and Ogontz Avenues on the Montgomery County border in North Philadelphia. A separate C spur route runs between Broad Street and Rising Sun Avenue to Nedro Avenue and 11th Street in the Olney section of North Philadelphia. The proposed change would create a Route 4 to operate between 11th Street and Nedro Avenue to AT&T station at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia.

USAir will begin daily nonstop service to Seattle and San Diego from Philadelphia on June 9, the airline announced. It will be the only nonstop service to those cities from Philadelphia by any regularly scheduled airline. For both the new routes, the round-trip economy air fares were initially posted at $530. But watch for fare discounting, which commonly accompanies the introduction of new routes. In the past, USAir has offered such discounts, and a spokeswoman said these routes, too, would be considered.

TOMORROW, SEPTA will hold a public hearing regarding bus Route C. Their plan is to eliminate Route C in its entirety and to create two new routes out of it. The "Cheltenham" division of Route C would be rebranded as Route 4, and the "11th and Nedro" division of Route C would be re-branded as Route 16. The reason for this change is to eliminate confusion between the two distinct branches. Currently, Route C operates from the Cheltenham and Ogontz Loop, in Cheltenham Township, to the intersection of 15th & Market Streets, in Center City.

Last Thursday's editorial in the Daily News urging SEPTA's talented, devoted and hard-working general manager, Jack Leary, to resign represents a classic case of misguided piling on. At the outset, let me start by making clear that SEPTA's handling of the tragic case involving Shareif Hall, a 4-year-old boy who lost his foot apparently due to an improperly maintained SEPTA escalator, cannot be defended. It was a bad case, apparently handled poorly by numerous divisions and responsibility centers within SEPTA.

Dozens of times a day, someone walks up to a SEPTA agent and asks a simple question: Do you have a suburban transit map? The answer is equally simple. No. "When I tell them the new one isn't out," says SEPTA cashier Nylan Collins, "they say, 'Can you sell me an old one?"' (For answer, see above.) There hasn't been a new SEPTA map showing suburban bus and rail routes since 1989, and that one went out of print in 1995. Since then, patrons trying to sort out the R2 from R2D2 have been out of luck.

US Airways asked for government approval yesterday to fly nonstop between its Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C., hubs and Mexico City, the second time the airline has tried to make money serving Mexico's capital. The application to the U.S. Department of Transportation said US Airways would start flying to Mexico City from Charlotte by October and from Philadelphia by early 2004, if U.S. and Mexican authorities give it the routes. Such applications usually are approved. US Airways flew the Philadelphia-Mexico City route for about 18 months in 1995 and 1996 before abandoning the effort because it was unprofitable.

The "beam-me-up" technology known among Star Trek fans is not yet available to commuters, but transportation expert Joseph W. McMahon says there are some down-to-earth solutions to suburban transportation problems. Telecommuting, for example, is practiced in places such as California's Silicon Valley where much of the workforce is computer-intensive. Employees usually work from home, transfer their work via computer modem and spare themselves a commute, said McMahon. His transportation engineering company, McMahon Associates Inc. in Willow Grove, was hired by a recently formed group called Partners for Transportation Action Transportation Management Association, or PTA/TMA, to look into transportation problems in Eastern Montgomery County.

PHILADELPHIA Goodbye to C bus? SEPTA will hold a public hearing tomorrow on a proposal to discontinue the C bus routes and replace them with two new routes. The C bus runs on Broad Street from Pattison Avenue, in South Philadelphia, to Cheltenham and Ogontz avenues, on the Montgomery County border. A separate C spur route runs between Broad Street and Rising Sun Avenue to Nedro Avenue and 11th Street, in Olney. The plan is to create a Route 4 to run between 11th Street and Nedro Avenue to AT&T Station at Broad and Pattison.

TOMORROW, SEPTA will hold a public hearing regarding bus Route C. Their plan is to eliminate Route C in its entirety and to create two new routes out of it. The "Cheltenham" division of Route C would be rebranded as Route 4, and the "11th and Nedro" division of Route C would be re-branded as Route 16. The reason for this change is to eliminate confusion between the two distinct branches. Currently, Route C operates from the Cheltenham and Ogontz Loop, in Cheltenham Township, to the intersection of 15th & Market Streets, in Center City.

SEPTA will hold a public hearing Tuesday on its proposal to discontinue the heavily traveled "C" bus routes and replace them with two new routes. The C bus runs on Broad Street from Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia to Cheltenham and Ogontz Avenues on the Montgomery County border in North Philadelphia. A separate C spur route runs between Broad Street and Rising Sun Avenue to Nedro Avenue and 11th Street in the Olney section of North Philadelphia. The proposed change would create a Route 4 to operate between 11th Street and Nedro Avenue to AT&T station at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia.

New Egypt's Emily Bausher is a tough pitcher to beat under the best of circumstances. Give her a 9-0 lead in the first inning and the task becomes the softball version of Mission Impossible . That was the situation for Gloucester in Monday's state semifinals at Rancocas Valley's athletic complex. The Lions surrendered nine runs in the first inning and fell, 10-0, in a game that was shortened to six innings by the mercy rule. "We never had an inning like that all year," Gloucester coach Dave Light said.

Don't be surprised if you notice more cyclists this summer in Philadelphia. On Friday, the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities announced new north-south bike lanes in central Philadelphia as part of a six-month pilot program to allow easier access for cyclists on 10th and 13th Streets and Fairmount Avenue. The new routes - which will replace a traffic lane on each road - will run from Spring Garden Street to Lombard Street on 10th Street, and from South Street to Spring Garden on 13th.

Tourist duck boats may return to Philadelphia, but only if the company that operates them gets approval from several agencies to build a ramp near a popular recreation path along the Schuylkill. Ride the Ducks, which operates the amphibious vehicles, remains confident of its new route, developed after a July 7 accident on the Delaware River that killed two young Hungarian tourists, but the proposed location presents several challenges. Most significant is the likely disruption to the riverfront path, which has become so popular that over the summer people used it for about 2,200 trips daily.

Earlier this month, on the eve of my own summer vacation, I urged readers to unplug when they hit the road this summer. "It's time to turn it all off," I wrote in the Daily News. "This vacation season, have the courage to unplug the BlackBerry charger. Power down the iPhone. And stop tweeting. " You might say I am now tweeting a different tune. At every turn during my vacation overseas, I was relying on apps. And while I'm still a believer in disengaging, I'd like to recommend a few ways to make the trip smoother with technology.

By adding less than 8 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline, Gov. Rendell and Harrisburg lawmakers can plug the yawning $470 million hole in the state transportation budget - the subject of the legislature's special session beginning Tuesday. Motorists already accustomed to paying nearly $3 a gallon-plus over the past several years would hardly notice such an increase at the gas pump. But the upside to raising additional revenue for transportation projects would be manifestly evident to anyone hoping to travel Pennsylvania roads or ride on SEPTA in safety and comfort.

AS COMMUTERS and students enter the second day of having to ask themselves how to get where they need to go - with no clear idea of how long the ordeal of the SEPTA strike will last - maybe we should be asking another question: Is it time to considering subjecting SEPTA to binding arbitration? This would mean that transportation workers would forfeit their ability to strike in exchange for arbitration, currently used in contract negotiations for police officers and firefighters, who are barred by state law from striking.

US Airways Group Inc. will announce today a new international route from Philadelphia International Airport. Chief executive officer Doug Parker said last month that the airline would like to start service to Tel Aviv, Israel. US Airways, which carries two-thirds of passengers in and out of Philadelphia, declined yesterday to name the new route, pending today's announcement. Parker, along with Mayor Nutter, will be at the airport this morning to detail the new service.