Regional Rail

Faster, better passenger train service on the overcrowded Northeast Corridor will require more cooperation - and money - from eight states and the District of Columbia, eight commuter rail agencies, Amtrak, and freight railroads, rail experts said this week. A new federal law requires the many users of the 457-mile corridor to come up with a cost-sharing plan by October 2014, and local transit authorities such as SEPTA fear that will mean higher costs for them. States as well are struggling to pay for new Amtrak requirements.

SEPTA fares will increase July 1, but the transit agency's new budget, supposed to take effect at the same time, is still undetermined. The SEPTA board on Thursday approved increases that will boost the bus, subway, and trolley cash fare to $2.25 from the current $2. The cost of a token will go to $1.80, up from the current $1.55. Also on July 1, Regional Rail fare zones will change, with the current seven reduced to six. Zone 5, which includes distant suburban stations such as Yardley, Doylestown, Malvern, and Downingtown, will be eliminated.

SEPTA workers who maintain Regional Rail signals will get an 11.5 percent wage increase over five years under a deal approved Thursday by the SEPTA board. The terms of the new contract, which affects about 75 employees represented by the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, are similar to those negotiated by other unions in contracts with SEPTA over the last two years. The workers, whose wages have not increased since 2008, currently are paid from $26.55 to $28.85 an hour.

A passengerless SEPTA regional rail train was halted dead in its tracks this week when one of its steel wheels split in half. The unusual accident crippled the 14-year-old train as it traveled to the transit agency's newest station in Chester County. Neither the train operator nor the conductor was hurt. "It was a stress crack that began from the inside of the wheel," said Tom Dorricott, an official with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. He added that a broken wheel could have caused a catastrophic derailment.

If the Transport Workers Union, Local 234, goes on strike this week, SEPTA passengers may flock to Regional Rail trains and suburban bus routes. SEPTA's City Transit Division, which carries 875,000 one-way riders a day, would be shut down by a Local 234 strike. That is 84 percent of SEPTA's daily business. Regional Rail trains, which carry 103,000 one-way passengers daily, would continue to run from the suburbs into Center City. SEPTA has 35 to 40 Regional Rail stations in the city, according to Bernard Cohen, the agency's chief operations officer.

Starting Sunday and continuing until Oct. 3, most Bucks County riders of SEPTA's regional rail lines will be taking a different route to Center City. Commuters who usually take the R2 Warminster, R3 West Trenton and R5 Lansdale-Doylestown train lines will be diverted onto the Broad Street subway line. Riders of the R8 Fox Chase line will be bused to the Market Frankford subway line. With more than 10,000 commuters to be affected by the diversions in Bucks County, reaction has been varied.

SEPTA has rediscovered its color palette. Last summer, SEPTA abandoned its R designations for Regional Rail lines and got rid of the color associated with each line. The red for the R7, the blue for the R5, and the other colors were replaced with a uniform blue-gray tint for all lines. Riders complained that without letters or colors, schedules for the different lines were hard to tell apart and hard to find in the station racks. So, with the release of spring rail schedules next month, SEPTA will have colored bars across the top of the timetables.

City Councilwoman Happy Fernandez is asking SEPTA to reopen hearings on its recently announced service cutbacks, saying the transit authority is trying to eliminate some lines in secret. In a letter to SEPTA general manager Louis J. Gambaccini, Fernandez said the proposed cuts "fly in the face of common sense" and deserve closer scrutiny. She said SEPTA's presentation in public hearings earlier this month on proposed cutbacks in the Regional Rail division "did not clearly inform me and other concerned citizens on the extent of these additional cuts.

Facing a projected $55 million deficit created in part by state budget-cutting, SEPTA announced a plan yesterday to raise fares and severely reduce service, including discontinuing four Regional Rail lines and shutting down or merging dozens of bus routes. An estimated 50,000 passengers - 12 percent of the transit agency's 430,000 daily riders - would be affected by the service cutbacks, set for October. "This is big; this is bad," SEPTA general manager Faye Moore said before a news conference.

The SEPTA board yesterday approved the contract that ended last month's six-day strike by bus drivers, subway and trolley operators and mechanics. The board's approval clears the way for SEPTA to distribute $1,250 "signing bonus" checks to each of the 5,100 workers represented by Transport Workers Union Local 234. The five-year contract provides a 2.5 percent raise in its second year, and a 3 percent raise in each of the final three years. It increases workers' contributions to the pension fund from the current 2 percent to 3 percent, and it increases the maximum pension to $30,000 a year from the current $27,000 a year.

Faster, better passenger train service on the overcrowded Northeast Corridor will require more cooperation - and money - from eight states and the District of Columbia, eight commuter rail agencies, Amtrak, and freight railroads, rail experts said this week. A new federal law requires the many users of the 457-mile corridor to come up with a cost-sharing plan by October 2014, and local transit authorities such as SEPTA fear that will mean higher costs for them. States as well are struggling to pay for new Amtrak requirements.

In the Region Peco rate cut kicks in Friday Just in time for the summer air-conditioning season, most Peco customers will enjoy a substantial rate cut starting Friday, when the cost of residential default electrical service will drop by 10.4 percent, from 9.61 cents per kilowatt-hour to 8.61 cents. The quarterly price adjustment will be in effect for the next three months. This is also the first summer that Peco is not charging two-tiered rates, which imposed a higher rate on consumption in excess of 500 kilowatt-hours.

SEPTA and other area transit agencies will get $5.4 million in federal and state subsidies for additional "reverse commute" service to suburban employers. The money will pay for more bus service to Parx Casino, Neshaminy and Oxford Valley malls, Great Valley Corporate Center, Philadelphia International Airport and other job centers. SEPTA will also add earlier Regional Rail service to Philadelphia International Airport and to Paoli. The Federal Transit Administration will provide $2.2 million and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation $3.2 million, funneled through the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which announced the grants Thursday.

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SEPTA fares will increase July 1, but the transit agency's new budget, supposed to take effect at the same time, is still undetermined. The SEPTA board on Thursday approved increases that will boost the bus, subway, and trolley cash fare to $2.25 from the current $2. The cost of a token will go to $1.80, up from the current $1.55. Also on July 1, Regional Rail fare zones will change, with the current seven reduced to six. Zone 5, which includes distant suburban stations such as Yardley, Doylestown, Malvern, and Downingtown, will be eliminated.

TO REDUCE the number of trespassers who die on its rails, SEPTA will hold its first-ever Safety Awareness Day during morning rush tomorrow, sending 500 staffers to 160 regional rail, subway and trolley stations to warn riders that a trespass can be a TransPass to a violent end. SEPTA had 111 rail deaths from 2003 to 2012 on its regional rail (74 deaths), subway (27) and trolley (10) lines - including 41 confirmed suicides. There have been eight rail deaths in 2013, including two confirmed suicides.

More money or less service. That was the familiar essence of SEPTA's capital-budget presentation Tuesday, as the agency noted how little $308 million will buy these days. In two hearings at its Center City headquarters, SEPTA officials outlined what they described as a bare-bones spending plan for construction, new vehicles, and growing debt service. Cuts in state funding have reduced SEPTA's capital budget 25 percent since 2010, and if Harrisburg doesn't come up with more money, the transit future is grim, said Catherine Popp-McDonough, SEPTA's director of capital budgets.