
There is no place in the proposed changes that address the safety issue so many people have raised. In a virtual meeting with South Philadelphia SEPTA riders, SEPTA’s consultant explained to the riders that if they were unhappy with the longer wait for busses that the plan recommends, they could use the Broad Street Subway Line. Riders should know that SEPTA will be cutting service on Route 4, the Broad Street Bus, and eliminating the 32 and 47, which connect Center City to other parts. Hall Monitor will be interviewing Daniel Nemiroff, manager of planning programs to ask some basic questions about the redesign and about some specific routes that are being recommended to be changed or eliminated. The draft network has 16 fewer bus routes, not including the 10 bus routes that would be included as mobility-on-demand zones.Īnd despite many riders saying safety is a major issue, the consultant’s report and recommendations are silent as to what can be done to make it safer to ride.
It increases the frequency of many bus routes, especially in the middle of the day and on weekend days, but reduces the number of bus routes overall. This means more connections between frequent bus routes (10 MAX or 15 MAX routes) and stronger connections to Metro and Regional Rail services. The draft network is better coordinated with other SEPTA services.
It is the same amount of service organized in a different way.
The draft network doesn’t increase or reduce the amount of bus service available. Here is the summary that SEPTA published on its Bus Revolution web page: As it writes, “We (SEPTA) recognize the need to account for a significant digital divide, a range of literacy levels in our region, and an increasing number of people for whom English is a second language.” SEPTA does not state how they interpret the responses to control for the digital divide.ĥ,806 people responded to the survey, and 333 people participated in the in-person events. SEPTA and its consultants are well aware that internet surveys don’t provide accurate information. An overwhelming number of those responses have come from the internet. As of today, less than 1% of the daily riders have responded. In 2019 there were 600,000 daily bus riders and an additional 250,000 on weekends. The challenges of getting information have been made much greater by the COVID pandemic, which limited the number of in-person meetings SEPTA’s consultants could hold.
A small percentage of the riders have been surveyed, and a smaller number have attended meetings. SEPTA has been working on changes to its bus routes for the past two years.