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I know in the Trainchat thread there's been a few great in depth posts trashing British Rail equipment which have been extremely popular. Would anyone be interested in an in-depth post series about SEPTA (America's worst greatest transit system)? to sum it up briefly, Philadelphia has lost probably 2/3 of its transit network over the past 30 years and the main person to blame for it is Ronald Reagan. Pretty sure most of DnD would get a kick out of that story, especially since it may take some detours outside the Philly city limits. donoteat fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 07:28
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ok, welcome to SEPTA Looks pretty extensive, right? We've got commuter trains:  We've got the el:  We've got the subway... with a different track gauge than the el:  We've got the Norristown High Speed Line, with the same track gauge as the subway, but a different third rail system:  We've got trolleys:  Lots of trolleys:  We also have PATCO but that's Jersey's problem:  SEPTA is a patchwork of legacy infrastructure in a way NYC can only dream of. We have two separate regional rail networks joined in the middle in the 70s. Our two heavy-rail subway lines were built by three private companies and the City of Philadelphia, then rebuilt by private companies in the early 30s, then rebuilt by the City again in the 50s. We have three separate trolley networks which are incompatible, except of course for the PATCO and the Broad Street Subway, which instead are operated by different transit authorities. Those nice historic trolleys? They are used only because SEPTA cannot afford new ones. They operate on a capital budget 1/3 of that of comparably sized systems, like WMATA or NYCTA, and have significantly more track-miles. It's a miracle the system runs at all. SEPTA is also the only transit system in America, and probably the world, to still use tokens instead of cards.  Philly transit goes everywhere and is excellent in that regard, but it's all so drat old. SEPTA won an award for best managed transit system in America in 2015 simply because it's a miracle they still exist. The following year they came out with a plan to reduce service to just the two subway lines and two regional rail lines if they didn't get additional state funding... which finally caused Harrisburg to cave, despite state legislatures calling SEPTA "welfare". That's just an intro to the system, I can go in depth into some more fun subjects -- ask me about ..."The Gang Builds a Tunnel" ..."Ronald Reagan Goes All America Over SEPTA's rear end" ..."The Gang Buys a British Leyland Railbus" ..."The Gang Blocks A Light Rail Extension" ..."The Gang Goes To Atlantic City" ..."The Gang Shuts Down Everything" ..."The Gang Fights The Union" ..."The Gang Gets Rid of Tokens" ..."The Gang Demolishes Paddy's" and remember as SEPTA's slogan went  EDIT: "Thunder Gun Express" is required viewing for this course. (The dude hangs dong!) donoteat fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 19:20
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Quorum posted:I wanna hear about how Reagan personally hosed SEPTA, that sounds entertaining. 1:00 PM, South Philadelphia, On a Tuesday The Gang, sans Frank, sit at Paddy's Enter Frank Reynolds DENNIS: Dude we've been open for an hour, where were you? FRANK: I got held up by those communist regional rail trains, it was stuck on the railroad crossing by the Wawa! MAC: What!? Those bastards shouldn't even exist! DEE: Hey I rely on that since you destroyed my car! FRANK: Well that settles it. If it benefits Dee, and it's blocking my way, I'm writing to the president to shut down SEPTA!  roll title sequence, etc. Ahem, so, to understand this one, we need to first understand a federal agency which was created under DnD's favorite president, Lyndon Baines Johnson.  hawt In 1964, LBJ signed into law the first Urban Mass Transit Act, which provided $375 million over three years to support mass transportation in the US. Funds were split 50-50 between federal and local governments (as opposed to the 80-20 federal-local split in the Interstate Highway Act). This act was amended in 1970 to allow for more flexible financing and to require environmental impact statements, and in 1974 to cover transit operating costs as well as capital costs. The UMTA funded some projects that really knocked it out of the park, like the Washington Metro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io6OIDwQiaA (a pre-reagan project) As well as some abject failures, like the Detroit People Mover:  (a post-reagan project) So the UMTA provided large amounts of funding to any locality that wanted it for high-quality, mostly rail transit for a long long time. MARTA was built under UMTA, so was the Baltimore Metro, and a few others I think. Funding continually increased until the last boost in 1978, and remained constant from then on, until 1982. In 1982, our Greatest President™, His Conservative Highness Ronald Wilson Reagan punted the idea of removing all federal subsidies for mass transit.  pictured above: a man who doesn't like trains. would you trust a man who doesn't like trains? This wasn't well received at any level of government and was never seriously considered, but pressure from the executive level lead to the Federal Public Transportation Act of 1982, which raised the federal gas tax from 4 cents/gallon to 9 cents/gallon, and started the current policy of 80-20, or 80% of revenue to highways and 20% to transit, in the form of block grants. Furthermore, operating budget subsidies for transit agencies were limited to 80% of their levels prior to the Act being passed. Reducing transit funding would become a common theme in the Reagan Administration: he proposed 40% cuts in 1987, and generally spent money on Reagan poo poo like battleships and space warfare and defeating communism and not trains. In 1991 the UMTA was renamed the Federal Transit Administration, the 80-20 split was made permanent, and federal funding levels have eroded from inflation, rising construction costs, and reduced vehicle usage and better fuel efficiency ever since. Which brings us back to SEPTA SEPTA was created in 1965, and at the time, the map you see above was a lot more complicated. It combined the trolley and bus routes of the Philadelphia Transit Company (itself an amalgam of smaller operators) with the commuter rail operations of the Reading Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Neither of those railroads were in good condition. The Pennsy would soon merge with the New York Central to form Penn-Central Railroad, which was a legendary disaster, as seen in their plea to congress for federal funding in 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmyYqfNYnc At the beginning, the map looked like this:  Several lines on the above map have been truncated. What is now the Media line went to the town of West Chester (20ish miles), the now Norristown Line went to Pottsville (70ish miles, via Reading, also home of Yuengling), the now-Fox Chase line went to to Newtown (20ish miles, location of ("The Gang Buys a British Leyland Railbus"), the now-Doylestown Line went to Bethlehem PA, and the West Trenton line went all the way to Newark, NJ. These areas have all exploded in population since the 1980s when service was discontinued. What happened to these lines? Their operations were all federally funded. Pennsylvania has done a poo poo job at funding SEPTA historically, and local counties are even worse. SEPTA's funding comes nearly entirely from the federal government even to this day, because Bucks, Chester, and Delaware counties (and even the City of Philadelphia itself) still operate under the mindset that trains bring in poor, black people. ("criminals", you know.) The counties containing Reading, Pottsville, Newark NJ, etc. all elected to not provide any local funding to SEPTA and merely freeload off the existing rail service the UMTA was determined that SEPTA would maintain. Furthermore, they were run by diesel locomotives, and the Center City Tunnel, a last gasp of LBJ's UMTA, with funding seized by mayor Frank "I'm going to make Attila the Hun look like a human being" Rizzo, was designed without ventilation stacks for diesel trains. Federal funding was not available for upgrades, so the diesel services had to rely on lengthy transfers which drove down ridership. So, crappy inherited infrastructure, combined with federal funding reductions, racist suburbanites, and short-sighted construction in the inner city, conspired to eliminate some of SEPTA's most important rail lines as late as the mid-1980s. They had no choice but to shut down the lines, even the West Chester line, which was all-electric, because not only were the trains slow and the ridership low, but bridges were collapsing, rail was spreading, and there was even less money for crews or additional vehicles than there had been before. Even in areas with rich riders, extensive lobbying by monied pro-rail interests wasn't enough to save the diesel trains. They were all gone by 1983. Despite the (admittedly waning) energy crisis, ridership on regional rail dropped to a third of its previous levels, from 32 million rides/year to 12 million rides/year, and only reached its previous levels again in 2008.  As a result our still-extensive 280 mile regional rail network has contracted by 150 route-miles since the 1980s. (Several important trolley routes have also been "temporarily" suspended since that era, too.) This phenomenon has continued since then: deferred maintenance caused by a lack of funding prompted SEPTA to make this map 2 years ago:  Without additional funding the plan was to shut down infrastructure as it became unsafe to operate (in contrast with the WMATA policy of "doing gently caress-all") and mothball it until it could one day be rebuilt. Thankfully the state legislature passed Act 89, but it hasn't provided entirely the funding needed to even bring the system up to a state of good repair, let alone any kind of expansion to its former glory. Que sera, sera.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:41
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hey everyone sorry I've been slacking on these, but I found out my 171-year-old West Philly house is being torn down for more ugly UPenn student apartments, because gently caress history, right? ain't been easy finding an equivalent quality house, which is affordable, in the same area...  ugh, so 7:25 AM, South Philadelphia, on a Friday The Gang, sans Mac, sits at Paddy's. ENTER Mac. MAC: I finally tried to use Paddy's Dollars at the TGI Friday's in Fox Chase and it worked man! DEE: Those are regular dollars with a leprechaun sticker on them. DENNIS: Shut up Dee! How are we going to get our Paddy's Dollars back from Fox Chase though? FRANK: I got it! MAC: What? FRANK: I'll buy a railbus!  Unusual for many commuter rail systems in the world, SEPTA has several lines which begin and end within the city limits of Philadelphia. These are the Chestnut Hill West Line, the Chestnut Hill East Line, the Cynwyd Line, and the Fox Chase Line. (and the Airport line, depending on your interpretation.) The Fox Chase Line was originally owned by the Reading Railroad. It runs 12.4 miles to Fox Chase, and never leaves the city limits.  Prior to 1983, the service went another 15.4 miles to the town of Newtown. It was called Newtown because when it was founded, it was new, I guess. Originality is not the hallmark of Pennsylvanianans.  This area has grown considerably since the 80s, and while it's served by two other commuter lines, the Newtown segment is gone? How did that happen? Welp, as mentioned in the last post, when SEPTA was created, the late, great Frank Rizzo secured federal funding for the Center City Commuter Connection, a tunnel linking the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad commuter lines. To save money, it included no ventilation stacks for diesel locomotives. The Newtown Line, north of Fox Chase, had no electric catenary. Budd built Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) operated north of Fox Chase at a reduced schedule, as had been the case since steam trains had been replaced. Passengers transferred to electric trains at Fox Chase:  This wasn't an ideal set up, but it worked for many years. Most Reading RDC trains, since they traveled long distances, had restrooms, and also snack bars which served alcoholic beverages -- you could get piss drunk on your commute home instead of waiting until you got there. What's not to like? This all worked fine until the creation of Conrail in 1976.  Conrail was a government-subsidized attempt to bring life back into the shambling hulk that was the Penn Central. The idea was this: if merging three failing railroads together made a huge loving mess, then surely merging seven more in would solve all the problems! Thus the Penn Central (itself a merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York Central railroad, and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad) merged with the Erie Lackawanna (itself a merger of the Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western and the Erie Railroad), the Ann Arbor Railroad, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Lehigh & Hudson Railroad, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and a huge array of assorted short lines were merged into the behemoth Consolidated Railroad Corporation, or Conrail. The gimmick this time around was that only certain lines of each railroad would be taken over, and others would be abandoned or sold to the states under a master plan. it didn't work This created a bizarre situation for SEPTA and several other fledgling transit agencies (New Jersey Transit, Metro North, and MARC, especially) -- most had been previously running trains under contract with the various railroads in a subsidy format, if they existed at all. (i.e. SEPTA contracted the Philadelphia & Reading to run a train from Reading to Philadelphia, rather than run the trains using their own employees and equipment.) Now, they found themselves running trains under contract with Conrail over tracks that they owned themselves -- as was the case with the Newtown Line. The entire Newtown Line had been transferred to SEPTA in 1976. Conrail was given permission to exit the commuter rail business by 1983 by the Reagan administration. SEPTA outright ended service to Reading and Bethlehem and Newark NJ early on -- those counties did not wish to provide financial support. However, Bucks County, PA, was still in the game, and thus the diesel Newtown line had to stay. So begins the saga of "Newtown Rapid Transit." In anticipation of the Conrail exit in 1983, in 1981 SEPTA gave their city transit workers from the Broad Street Line a 6-week training course, and had them run trains on the Newtown Line north of Fox Chase. Conrail crews would continue to run electric trains south of Fox Chase to center city Philadelphia. Service was increased from four round trips to eight round trips per day, owing to the savings incurred by having lower-paid city transit workers, and the lack of conductors on the trains north of Fox Chase. Unfortunately, Conrail crews, represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, did not like city transit personnel, represented by the Transit Workers Union, muscling in on their territory. There was retaliation. Conrail crews would deliberately leave Fox Chase moments before trains from Newtown arrived to make a connection. They protested -- the first day of operations resulted in a whole train cancelled and a second being 30 minutes late due to BLET protests, in which six engineers were arrested. The whole operation was seen by BLET as a bargaining chip for SEPTA -- railroad crews were not necessary for commuter rail, only lower-paid city transit personnel were, in SEPTA's mind, so BLET set out to prove them wrong. This was SEPTA's first foray into actually operating a railroad, so of course they just doubled down and ignored the protests. Conrail crews refused to maintain the RDC units, so city transit personnel were instructed by management to just feed more oil into them until they sounded good. Fifteen of 17 RDCs were out of service by the end of the first year. The new single-car trains of RDCs also wouldn't trigger grade crossing gates -- resulting in a deadly accident when one of the two operable SEPTA RDCs crashed into a tanker truck. (Conrail, of course, had only operated two-car trains because they were aware of the problem,.) Combined with the RDC's lack of air conditioning, and the transfer at Fox Chase which only worked half the time, commuters fled the line in droves for the nearby and more convenient West Trenton and Warminster lines which offered a one-seat ride to center city. The last train from Newtown arrived at Fox Chase January 14, 1983. It made the trip back to Newtown, where the brakes failed and it overran the station. It was taken out of service, and a shuttle bus ran on the Newtown line forever after. Sort of. Plans to restore service cheaply circulated for a long time afterward -- especially after SEPTA took over all electric service in 1983, and irate Conrail crews were out of the picture. (SEPTA crews were still represented by BLET, however, and followed their rules for how many crewmembers should be on each train. Turns out you can't train city transit workers to run on a 6-track high speed main line in only six weeks...) So SEPTA wanted cheap, modern equipment to run the line. So they went to the only railroad with a  This is a British Leyland Railbus. It is a British Leyland bus, mounted on a British Rail freight car chassis, with some tweaks to the transmission. If you follow the Trainchat (or Locomotive Insanity in AI, I forget which) thread, you'll know that this is the only thing which is actually worse than a Pacer. (EDIT: Axeman Jim talks about the Pacer and the British Leyland Railbus in Automotive Insanity.) It is shown here at Huntington Valley, PA, in September of 1985. Tests were run several times, but to SEPTA's credit, they had higher standards than the Brits and thought the ride was just too rough to justify purchasing the units. This railbus was never used in revenue service, and instead toured the US, where every other transit agency also rejected it because the ride was too rough, and it also did not comply with FRA standards for crashworthiness. It now sits forlornly in the Connecticut Trolley Museum, their only piece of diesel equipment. Newtown service was never restored -- today it is a rail trail. Though SEPTA still owns the right-of-way, there are no plans to reactivate the line at any point in the future, despite the explosion in growth in the areas it serves. donoteat fucked around with this message at 07:03 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 04:56
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Most garages are made of pre-cast concrete parts and can be thrown together in a matter of months with a mobile crane -- that's why the initial cost is only 3x as much as surface parking. They then immediately become a maintenance nightmare since unlike a climate controlled building, all structural members are subject to freeze-thaw cycles. Since vehicles are coming in during the winter after roads are salted, they are also exposed to high levels of salt contamination. This wrecks the concrete and corrodes the steel extremely quickly. If you park in an old garage and everything looks like it's falling apart, it's because it is. 
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May 11, 2016 00:20
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