Love Philly? So do we. Let’s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today.
SEPTA has been working to enhance its Regional Rail fleet – and thanks to emergency state funding, help is now coming in the form of 24 new coach cars.
The transit agency purchased the cars from Exo, which currently runs the public transportation system in the Montreal area.
“We want to make sure that we have as close to regular capacity as possible for our customers, and that they can rely on a train showing up when it’s supposed to show up, or that it has the allotted space that it needs to accommodate our customers,” said SEPTA’s Andrew Busch.
The addition comes following over $200 million in state funding aimed at helping SEPTA address and fix aging trains. The agency already purchased 10 cars from the Maryland Transit Authority MARC in December of last year.
Busch explained that adding in the Canadian cars will help SEPTA to provide uninterrupted service.
“It’s not a full replacement or anything like that for our fleet, but we’re adding to our availability, adding to the fleet that’s available to us to run, and that’s going to help us with reliability moving forward,” Busch said.
SEPTA faced issues last year following Federal Railroad Administration-mandated inspections and repairs of its 50-year-old Silverliner IV fleet.
The aging trains have presented problems for riders, including a fire on trains in Ridley Park, Levittown, Paoli, Fort Washington and Philadelphia.
Part of SEPTA’s strategy in the aftermath was to reduce use of the Silverliner IV’s and to reduce service to certain Regional Rail lines – which was restored earlier this year.
“[These trains] make up two-thirds of the Regional Rail fleet, but it’s also the oldest part of our fleet,” Busch said. “Those rail cars are over 50 years old. We have had some issues with them.”
Despite this, Busch said the agency still needs to rely on some of its remaining Silverliner IV’s that are now back on the tracks.
SEPTA officials have said that they are “confident” that the Silverline IV trains are still safe.
But Busch emphasized that emergency funding to purchase new cars, including this Canadian feat, has been helpful during this time.
“Last year, the FRA required inspections and repairs that took a number of the trains out of service, and we’ve worked through that, but we know that to keep those cars going for another five plus years, which is how long we’re going to need to purchase a replacement fleet, that we need to have a larger fleet available,” Busch said.
“We don’t want to run into shortages and cancellations that are going to severely affect our riders.”
The transit agency is currently working out a plan to transport the passenger cars from Montreal. They expect a timeline to place these trains into service later in the spring.
Beyond these purchases, SEPTA is using emergency funding to further increase safety and efficacy for all of its trains.
“We have a lot of projects underway to renew parts of our infrastructure and replace old tracks and power systems, so that money is being put to a lot of good use,” Busch said.
