Regional Rail

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.

SEPTA's board is expected to approve a $244 million contract next week for a Korean-Japanese consortium to build at least 104 regional rail cars over the next four years. A staff recommendation that SEPTA accept the bid by United Transit Systems was made public yesterday. The contract would be the largest investment SEPTA has ever made in regional rail vehicles, and would increase its fleet by 31 cars. The rest of the new Silverliner V cars would replace 73 aging rail cars that date to the 1960s.

State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf (R., Montgomery) said yesterday that he would introduce a bill paving the way for state funding of a proposed SEPTA rail line that would link economic centers and residential communities in three suburban counties. Greenleaf said his bill would place the proposed rail line - commonly known as the Cross County Metro - on the Capital Budget Authorization Bill, making it eligible for funding. He said he would introduce the legislation today or tomorrow.

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.

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SEPTA on Thursday began the long process of replacing 231 aging Silverliner IV train cars, even as it waits for the last of its new Silverliner V cars. SEPTA officials met with representatives of 12 car manufacturers and other companies in an "expression of interest" session Thursday. Among the manufacturers expressing interest in bidding on a contract for the new cars was Hyundai Rotem Corp., which built the new Silverliner V cars but fell two years behind schedule amid production and labor problems.

A man in his 20s who apparently fell off the platform was injured by a regional rail train as it arrived at Suburban Station shortly after 5 a.m. Saturday, SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch said. The man ended up under the train, Busch said. He was treated at Hahnemann University Hospital for minor injuries and a possible broken foot. - Jonathan Lai

EVEN THOUGH SEPTA suspended all of its services shortly after midnight on Monday, subway cars could be heard rumbling on the Market-Frankford line in the late afternoon. What gives? SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams said the agency was using "pilot trains" to ferry emergency personnel and search for leaks and hints of flooding underground. SEPTA officials expected to spend about six hours Tuesday morning doing a system-wide assessment to determine when services will resume. The Broad Street and Market-Frankford lines will likely be the first to resume full service.

All SEPTA regional rail lines will be working Wednesday, operating from the normal start of service in the morning on a weekday schedule, SEPTA announced Tuesday evening. Meanwhile, PATCO announced that service resumed at 6 p.m. tonight, with trains departing every half hour. Amtrak was to resume most service in the area Wednesday, though New York City service remains suspended because of tunnel flooding. NJ Transit said it would resume limited bus service Wednesday in Camden.

The Garden State Parkway was closed south of Exit 129 in Woodbridge Township at 4 p.m. Monday because of flooding, and more "significant closures" were likely on both the Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike, New Jersey officials said. Public transit will remain closed Tuesday morning, though some service may be restored by Tuesday afternoon or evening. Truck and trailer traffic was banned from all Delaware River Port Authority bridges (Commodore Barry, Walt Whitman, Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross bridges)