Three separate incidents involving SEPTA trains and trolleys over 12 hours starting Wednesday night have left two dead, and a dozen injured, with commutes halted and delayed, SEPTA Senior Press Officer John Golden confirmed Thursday.
The first incident happened at approximately 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, when an inbound train along the Media/Wawa Regional Rail line “struck a person in the track area, between Morton and Secane stations,” Golden said.
The person was killed. There were no other injuries reported to customers and SEPTA employees and a shuttle bus was called in to transport the passengers into Center City. The line is back in operation.
Thursday morning at around 7 a.m, overhead wires fell onto a D1 Route 101 trolley near Scenic Road Station, with all passengers and the trolley operator on board reporting injuries.
“There were 10 passengers on board at the time, three passengers were transported to Lankenau Hospital,” Golden said.
As of 11 a.m. Thursday, there were shuttle bus operations between Drexel Hill Junction and Woodland Avenue Stations, leading to delays of up to 35 minutes in both directions.
Another person was struck and killed at around 8 a.m. Thursday, this time along the inbound Manayunk/Norristown Line at the “grade crossing at Schoolhouse Lane between East Falls and Wissahickon stations,” Golden said.
The approximately 300 passengers on that train were brought into Center City with shuttle buses and SEPTA announced that the line’s service had resumed at around 10:16 a.m., with delays of 30 minutes or over reported since.
It’s the latest in a challenging year for SEPTA. Beyond the service cuts and fare hikes that were put in place and then resolved over the past two months, the transit agency was pulling Regional Rail trains offline to perform safety audits in August.
All of SEPTA’s latest alerts and advisory information can be found on its website.
