EVENT ALERT: MAY 4 - LAST DAY FOR INPUT ON SEPTA CAPITAL PLANS FOR RY 2016

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:

You may have been busily enjoying the abundance of mild weather and not have taken any of the many modes of transportation offered by SEPTA - or you've become so desensitized to the system that you pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the rolling stock you use to get around Philly every day - and the region beyond it - so that includes regional rail, buses, and senior vehicles and other modes of transportation under the auspices of SEPTA.

SEPTA | Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority www.septa.org/

 
Or you might even think that your opinion doesn't matter so you paid no attention to the banners that are calling for public input - but if you do have something to contribute, tomorrow - May 4, 2015 - is your last day for the 2016 fiscal year.  Notice, I didn't say for the 2015 Fiscal year - that was held last year, and is currently in the works for implementation.

No, SEPTA, in their wisdom, holds their hearings a year prior to when the needed changes or acquisition occur in order to give themselves sufficient time to do the research and make sure they have obtained the appropriate equipment, material and supplies to bring on board.


It's actually a great way to run a railroad - and a transit system.  However, without adequate community input, it can cause some problems down the line when they are implemented.

As a former transit administrator, and one who believes that a city is only as good as its transportation system, I attended one of the hearings to see how they were conducted - last Thursday, April 30 at the 5:00pm session - and to my shock and dismay, there were only three groups there - myself and two others - and board members from SEPTA.

Of course at first glance one could only surmise that Philadelphians don't care about their transit system.  But from the commentary I am constantly hearing, that would be totally incorrect.  It probably is more to the point that the hearings are not held at a time conducive for broad based community input:  the midday hearing is scheduled for 11:00 AM; the evening hearing is scheduled for 5:00 PM.  That only works if you're not working or you have an 8am to 4pm job, and can get to the hearing, at 1234 Market in time to make your statement.   Or your lunch hour will allow you sufficient time to be there at 11:00AM to participate.

Community input would probably increase significantly if the evening hearings were scheduled for 6:00PM instead of 5:00 giving folks sufficient time to make it to SEPTA Headquarters.

That aside, there were some really great concepts in the table, generated by the board and their consultants, most of which can be obtained by logging onto www.septa.org  - or if you have any concepts you want to include, but could not attend the hearing, can be emailed to them at capbudget@septa.org - before the close of business on May 4, 2015.


The Theme is "Rebuilding SEPTA for the Future," so make sure you reference that title when you submit your comments.  Just so we're clear, capital budget is centered around such issues as improvements to the infrastrucure - bridges, trestles, tunnels, platforms, etc., replacement of railcars that have exceeded useful life; as well as buses and, alas, trolleys (if one would think that I'm not overly fond of trolleys, one would probably be correct)

The following are the recommendations I suggested during the hearing:

1)  DO NOT RE-ESTABLISH A TROLLEY SYSTEM ALONG THE 23 ROUTE ON GERMANTOWN AVE - THAT WOULD ADD TO CONGESTION, BACK UPS AND DIFFICULTY IN MANUVERING VEHICLES ALONG AN ALREADY NARROW THOROUGHFARE - IT'S A TRANSPORTATION NIGHTMARE!

2.  THE NEW RAILCARS ON SEPTA REGIONAL RAIL DO NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT SPACE FOR LUGGAGE - A MAJOR OVERSIGHT, CAUSING THERE TO BE FEWER SEATS DURING RUSH HOURS WHEN LUGGAGE IS EITHER PUT IN THE SEAT ADJACENT TO THE PASSENGER OR IN THE AISLEWAY - CAUSING CONGESTION AND POSSIBLE ACCIDENTS.

3.  THERE SHOULD BE ELEVATORS OR ESCALATORS AT MORE STATIONS ALONG THE BROAD STREET LINE - FOR SENIORS WHO HAVE DIFFICULTY MANUVERING THE STAIR.  THERE SHOULD BE ESCALATORS ON PLATFORMS FOR THE BROAD STREET LINE TO THE MEZZANINE AND TRANSFER POINTS TO THE MARKET STREET LINE AT CITY HALL.

4.  THE SIXTEEN (16) BUS, WHICH IS INCREDIBLY SLOW, SHOULD HAVE DOUBLE OR RECTICULATED BUSES DURING RUSH HOURS  - 

5.  THE TRAINS ON REGIONAL RAIL ARE NOT WHEEL CHAIR OR HANDICAP ACCESSIBLE AT MOST STATIONS OUTSIDE JEFFERSON, SUBURBAN AND 30TH STREET - THERE NEEDS TO BE MAJOR CHANGES IN THE WAY THE TRAINS ARE DESIGNED IN ORDER TO ACCOMMODATE THOSE WHO HAVE MOBILITY DIFFICULTIES - THE STATIONS OUTSIDE THE AREA, BETWEEN NORTH PHILADELPHIA AND TRENTON, EITHER NEED TO HAVE THE PLATFORMS BUILT UP TO MEET THE STAIRS, OR SPECIAL EQUIPMENT TO  HELP THOSE WITH WHEEL CHAIRS EXIT SAFELY; OR THE TRAINS HAVE SPECIAL EQUIPMENT TO SAFELY LOWER THE PASSENGERS TO THE PLATFORM.

6.  SEPTA SHOULD KEEP IN MIND THAT PHILADELPHIA IS HEADQUARTERS FOR THE 2016 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, AND BEGIN NOW TO MAKE THE APPROPRIATE ACCOMMODATIONS FOR INCREASED RIDERSHIP - TO THE STADIUMS, NAVAL YARD AND OTHER VENUES THROUGHOUT PHILLY - IT WOULD BE A CRUSHING EMBARRASSMENT TO NOT HAVE THE UPGRADES IN PLACE IN SUFFICIENT FOR THE CONVENTION - ONE OF THE WAYS TO MITIGATE THIS IS VIA A MONORAIL SYSTEM THAT COULD BE UTILIZED THROUGHOUT PHILADELPHIA, BE A GREAT TOURIST ATTRACTION, TAKE A SHORT TIME TO CONSTRUCT, AND DOES NOT POLLUTE.  JAPANESE AND OTHER COUNTRIES USE MONORAILS AS THEIR PRIMARY SOURCE OF TRANSPORTATION - THE GREAT THING ABOUT THEM IS THEY TAKE LESS THAN A YEAR TO CONSTRUCT AND COMPLETE - IT MAY WELL BE THE SOLUTION TO PHILLY'S OUTMODED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.  ADDITIONALLY, SINCE REGIONAL RAIL WILL WITNESS HEAVY INCREASES, IT IS HOPED THAT THE RENOVATION OF THE MALL WILL BE COMPLETED IN SUFFICIENT TIME TO NOT CAUSE ANY DIFFICULTIES AND TO BENEFIT FROM THE INCREASE IN REVENUE THAT IS SURE TO BE GENERATED - I.E. WAKE UP EVERYBODY - YOU'RE OFFICIALLY ON A TIME LINE AS OF NOW !!

= TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE TO GET IT TOGETHER!

7.  REGIONAL RAIL NEEDS TO HAVE THEIR STATIONS OPEN AT NIGHT  - ESPECIALLY IN SOME OF THE REMOTE AREAS - THERE COULD BE THE HAZARDS OF ACCIDENTS OR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY - HAVING SOMEONE THERE TO PROVIDE A SENSE OF SECURITY COULD MITIGATE THIS PROBLEM.

8.  STENTON STATION IS NOT WHEEL CHAIR ACCESSIBLE AND HAS A VERY STEEP GRADE FOR ACCESS AND EXIT - IT MAKES IT DIFFICULT FOR SOMEONE WITH SPECIAL NEEDS TO ACCESS THE TRAIN FROM THAT STATION. 

9.  STATIONS ALONG THE BROAD/RIDGE SPUR NEED TO BE UPGRADED - FAIRMONT, CHINATOWN, ERIE; AS WELL AS THOSE ALONG THE BROAD STREET LOCAL - WYOMING, HUNTING PARK, ALLEGHENY, NEED SERIOUS UPGRADE {WYOMING AND HUNTING PARK, CHINATOWN, TASKER/MORRIS AS WELL AS ALL THE LOCAL LINES WOULD BENEFIT FROM EITHER ESCALATORS OR ELEVATORS OR BOTH} - BY NOW THERE SHOULD BE A WAY FOR PASSENGERS TO TRANSFER BETWEEN THE BROAD/RIDGE STATION AND THE MARKET STREET STATION AT 8TH STREET - THEY'RE TOO CLOSE TOGETHER TO NOT HAVE WORKED THIS OUT BY NOW.

10) SNYDER AVE STATION HAS TWO UP ESCALATORS ACROSS THE STREET FROM EACH OTHER, BUT NO DOWN ESCALATOR; ADDITIONALLY, THERE IS NO ESCALATOR OR ELEVATOR FROM THE PLATFORM TO THE MEZZANINE - SO IT'S NOT FULLY ACCESSIBLE (WHO THOUGHT THAT ONE UP?) AT LEAST ONE OF THE ESCALATORS SHOULD BE FOR GOING DOWN TO THE MEZZANINE.  

11)  IN AREAS WHERE THE BUSES ARE RUNNING 30 AND 45 MINUTES APART, PASSENGERS SHOULD BE ACCOMMODATED WITH COVERED, LIGHTED KIOSKS WITH SEATS - SENIORS ESPECIALLY HAVE DIFFICULTY STANDING EXTENDED LENGTHS OF TIME. 

In 2012 the APTA - American Public Transportation Association - gave SEPTA high marks for it's beautiful stations and upgraded infrastructure -  it's time to get one to match that one - the good thing is that SEPTA is not resting on its laurels.  And with community input there will no doubt be more awards to come.

Stay Blessed
Gloria Dulan-Wilson

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The MTA Holds Hearings, But They’re Not Listening to New Yorkers: It’s Time to Stop the Madness

BY Gloria Dulan-Wilson

As a former TA employee, I am thoroughly disgusted at the highhanded attempts on the part of the MTA to hijack affordable public transportation from New York.

They have been holding bogus hearings throughout New York, but they have already made their decision long before the first person spoke of the difficulty and hardship they will face if there are cutbacks in service, increases in fares, or discontinuation of lines in specific communities.

So it causes me to ask this question: Who owns the transit system in New York? Is it the city, the state, or the federal government. Or is it the people of New York? The transit system is not a private entity, although you’d think it was as of late the way the so-called transit board has been behaving.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a public benefit corporation responsible for public transportation in the U.S. state of New York, serving 12 counties in southeastern New York, along with 2 counties in southwestern Connecticut under contract to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, carrying over 11 million passengers on an average weekday systemwide, and over 800,000 vehicles on its nine toll bridges and tunnels per weekday (WikiPedia).

The MTA also receives billions in federal and state funding to keep running, along with the fares we continue to pony up every time they screw up. It seems to me they’re doing a pretty sorry job of taking care of our public trust. I would say that trust has been constantly and continuously violated.

In fact, it appears that they have an overabundance of incompetents in high places, bringing down all the good work started by David Gunn and Jim Corbin back in the mid-80’s when the system was in serious decline. It was Gunn that brought management and quality control to the Transit Authority at a time when track fires, robberies, and other atrocities were out of control. He not only got rid of the graffiti, cleaned up the platforms, brought in the modern cars we’ve become accustomed to, but had all the transit workers completely and totally retrained so they did their positions efficiently, effectively and with courtesy and respect for the ridership.

Well, it’s 25 years later -- how do you like them now? Where has the quality gone? The trains may look nice, but do you really like it when the car starts off with a jerk and you’re nearly knocked off your feet?

How do you feel about getting on a car where there’s so much debris on the floor and the seats that you have to shove it aside to sit? The cars are supposed to be cleaned when they reach each final terminal.

How do you like it when you go to a token booth to find that they've closed it down and there is no token clerk to help you; or worse yet, you have an incompetent in the booth who knows absolutely nothing about anything, including directions. Just a warm body.

Who's brilliant idea was it to close down the token booth at 34th street and 8th Ave., right at the mouth of Madison Square Garden, Long Island RailRoad, and Penn Station -- no token clerk?!! People traveling to and from the city can't info or service in the busiest stop on the planet. You have to wonder if the person making these pivotal decisions is on drugs, or are they just cutting services just be be cutting them?

By the way, how many of you can use your cell phones in the tunnels?

The Transit Authority former headquarters, located at Jay Street and Borough Hall, where the A/C and F trains run, is receiving an overhaul. The escalator that goes from the mezzanine to the street has been in operation at least 40 years. With all the money that’s being spent on the renovation, the design engineers somehow didn’t think to put either an escalator or elevator from the mezzanine to the platform for handicap usage. Who’s minding the system?

Nostrand and President Street has an escalator that goes from the mezzanine to the platform, but does not have one that goes from the mezzanine to the street, hence no handicap assistance there either. They've closed entrances that needed to remain open, or removed token booth clerks that were essential to the services. But what do they care? They don't ride the subway anyway.

Couple these oversights of the current incompetents, with the ever escalating bookkeeping and accounting errors and you have a recipe for disaster. In fact, please explain: How do you commit such and egregious book keeping error that you overlook a $400 million budget error - twice? And why are you still working? And more interesting than that, why hasn’t the federal government been called in to do a formal audit of all the books to make sure nothing untoward has happened to the dollars they are investing in the system, not to mention the dollars hard working New Yorkers are called upon to spend.

In fact, why is the MTA Board holding hearings? That's like the fox watching the henhouse!! Why aren’t we, citizens of New York, with our own legal team, holding hearings to determine what we are going to do with the MTA, their board, and the rest of the incompetents that are running the system, waiting for retirement so they collect their pensions and go home?

Remember animal farm? Well the animals are really running the zoo in this case, and we’re letting them get away with it. What happened to all the New Yorkers who stand up for themselves? Where the heck are we? This is like Wall Street robbing the people blind, causing the economy to tank, then holding hearings to tell the people how they are going to foot the bill to cover their incompetence and stupidity. Time to stop the madness and take out the trash.

I recently asked State Senator Bill Perkins if he was going to look into the recent fare increases and possible misappropriation of funds on the part of the Transit Authority, since that falls under his jurisdiction. He had acknowledged the possibility. This is now a formal request for him to do so, post haste, before we are splayed out on a spit and barbecued by the fares that seem to be increasing exponentially, each time they find out they’ve made an error.

The Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget should find out where the $400 million plus $400 million dollars really went (hey, that’s $800 million!! - and why we have to eat it.

It would also be interesting to find out why they are still trying to construct a tunnel to no where - via Second Avenue, when a monorail could have been constructed and completed in less than 18 months, would not have disturbed the integrity of the buildings they are now preparing to evacuate (you mean after all these years no one anticipated this as a possible problem?), and would have provided New York with clean air rapid transit for the first time. Think about it -- it’s worked for Japan for almost a century; Disney swears by it; even Newark has one -- the only one we have thus far is to JFK. But if you do a tunnel, instead of a monorail you get to request more money for a sink hole and no one can really see what you’re doing.

Speaking of no one seeing what you’re doing. Those TBTA toll increases are a joke. The TBTA (Tri-Boro Bridge and Tunnel Authority) Tolls are the cash cow that has the MTA raking in millions in untold profits already. There is practically no way of really calculating how much money the MTA is really receiving, and the only books they show you have to do with the Transit Authority.

Back to who owns the TA. Though the Related Organization may think they own the system, it's really New Yorkers who own the subways, buses and trains that service downstate New York. Regardless of how it was started, or by whom, everyone knows the subways are the heart and nerve and sinew of New York City.

New Yorkers are being held hostage by a group of individuals who probably only take the system 1% of the time. While whole families, students, artists, workers, intellectuals, the people who make up this great city of ours rely on the Transit System. The Subway is ours. The MTA Board obviously has no real concern about New Yorkers, or the system as far as we the ridership are concerned. Their major goal is to pull as much money from it as possible. If they can come up with plausible excuses to do so, they will.

The Transit Authority belongs to us New Yorkers. New Yorkers, we are being jerked by the MTA! It is time to stand up for ourselves. Our New York News Media is doing a piss poor job of standing for us. They are more in the mode of co-signing the publicity from the TA than they are trying to get to the bottom of the incompetence. They're trying to make it sound like a fait accompli. Not sooooo fast!

It’s time to call for an injunction against any additional fare increases; call for auditing the books, and call for vacating the entire MTA Board and replace them with people who actually ride the system and have some knowledge about what it’s relationship is to New York and New Yorkers.

Haven’t we had enough of bearing the brunt of the incompetents that have taken us to the brink of disaster? Haven’t we had enough of people trying to balance the budget on the backs of the people least able to support it? They’ve closed token booths in essential areas. They’ve cut back on cleaning stations, buses and trains. They’ve closed station entries. Rats play on the tracks as if they are in a summer resort. But this is not because the TA does not have enough money, it’s because they don’t have competent in position.

It’s going to take more than just demonstrations, attending hearings and mumbling under our breath. It takes more than a wait and see attitude. If our local officials won’t help, if they won’t pay attention; if they won’t respect us, then take it to the Hill -- Capitol Hill. Take it to DC and let the feds deal with it on our behalf.

It’s time to stop the madness. Make the MTA Listen, and then return our system to the people system it was before they recent incompetent and the previous incompetent got into the game (and we are being gamed on).

The MTA is governed by a 17-member Board representing New York City and each of the counties in the Transportation District (again, WikiPedia). We need to replace all of them! And the new ones have to have had some real experience in transit (i.e. subways as a social network as well as a means of transportation) and being a true New Yorker who regularly uses the subway, train or bus to qualify to serve the board -- not some hand picked, political appointees who are little more than yes men/women and rubber stampers for an even more sinister purpose (that of having fare zones for the subways -- which, by the way is the underlying machination behind all this b.s. posturing).

So New York, as Brother Arsenio Hall used to say, "LET'S GET BUSY!!"
Thank you,
Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria Dulan-Wilson

PS I apologize for getting a little preachy. This has been roiling for a while now. So it had to come out. Please, if you have suggestions, expertise, or a way we can stop the madness (short of anything violent) please let me know. I am very serious about the Transit Authority remaining for New Yorkers and not some glorified cash cow. Thanks GDW).