[PRCo] Route 15 on Opening Day by Phil Craig

[Fred Schneider]

I'm forwarding what Phil Craig observed on opening day in Philly ...  
not much different than I saw yesterday.  fws


Fred and John:

I am not sure that you will see this so I am forwarding it to you.   
My experience yesterday is consistent with what you reported today.

     Phil

Phil Craig <philgcraig204 at yahoo.com> wrote:
To: LRPPro at yahoogroups.com
From: Phil Craig <philgcraig204 at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 19:25:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [LRPPro] First Day of SEPTA's Reopened Route 15-Girard  
Avenue Streetcar Line

Sunday, September 3, 2005 was the first day of operations of SEPTA's  
reopened Route 15-Girard Avenue streetcar line.  I travelled to  
Philadelphia yesterday to witness this event and made the following  
observations between approximately 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM:

1)  About half of the scheduled service was being operated by  
remanufactured PCC cars; the remainder was been run by 40-foot  
buses.  Route 15 timetables call for 20 minute headways on Sundays,  
so there were long waits between cars for those who wished to ride  
the PCCs given the mixed mode operations.  Buses and PCC cars seemed  
to be mixed indiscriminately on the route, sometimes with two buses  
in a row being followed by a PCC car; sometimes by alternating buses  
and PCC cars; and sometimes by two PCC cars (one almost immediately  
behind the other) followed by a bus after a long interval.  About 5  
or 6 PCC cars seemed to be in service; another 9 or 10 were evident  
inside three-track Bay 2 of Callowhill Depot.  Whether the mixture of  
buses and PCC cars being operated on Route 15 was the result of a  
deliberate decision not to risk a total breakdown of streetcar  
service on re-opening day or the result of not having a sufficient  
number of PCC car qualified operators available on the three-day  
Labor Day weekend was not clear.

2)  There seemed to be little or no adherence to the printed  
timetable, no doubt due to delays.

3)  Twice during the day I saw service disruptions caused by PCC car  
2322 having experienced a dewirement of its trolley pole, the trolley  
pole being pulled down by the car's trolley retriever, and then with  
the motorman/operator finding that it was jammed and not being able  
to obtain rope from it in order to raise the pole and restore the  
trolley shoe to the trolley wire.

The second incident of the day that I witnessed occurred on an  
eastbound trip where Route 15 traverses Lancaster Avenue for a short  
distance on joint trackage with subway-surface Route 10.  In this  
instance, the PCC car experienced a dewirement as it began to turn  
from Lancaster onto Girard; it was being followed immediately by  
another PCC car, which closed in on it, effectively blocking the  
Route 10 Kawasaki car behind it as well.  Two SEPTA supervisors  
arrived at the scene and began concentrating on unjamming the trolley  
retriever of 2322, which they worked on for about 20 minutes or so  
before cutting the rope about four feet from the pole, eventually  
yanking out enough rope from the jammed retriever to allow the rope  
to be knotted and the trolley pole raised back to the wire, after  
which the car was sent on its way remaining in service.  During this  
period, no attempt was made to divert the second PCC car via  
Lancaster Avenue to 40th Street and thence via the 40th Street  
trackage back to Girard, a move that would have freed up Route 10  
from the blockage.

4)  Earlier the day, around 11:00 AM, a SEPTA tower truck arrived at  
the Richmond and Westmoreland Street loop at the eastern end of the  
line; its crew then began working on the trolley wire frog above the  
turnout the splits the loop in to two tracks.  During the next 45  
minutes or so, they disconnected one of the span wires, hammered away  
at the wire frog, then re-connected the span wire, and tightened  
things up again.  They seemed to finish their work, or at least stop  
it, when two PCC cars - one behind the other - arrived at the loop.

5) A new turnout had been installed at Callowhill and 59th Streets,  
connecting the exiting tracks from Bay 2 (used by PCC cars assigned  
to Route 15) and Bay 3 (used by Kawasaki cars assigned to Route 10)  
from Callowhill Depot, on the previous Thursday, August 31st.  The  
street surface, however, had not been restored where there the  
previous worn-out turnout had been removed and the new turnout  
installed.  This left a six-inch deep cavity in the middle of the  
street for motorists to negotiate, hopefully at low speed lest they  
should break an axle or flatten the tires of their vehicles. [While  
the cavity was evident in daylight, there was no warning posted and  
only night-time illumination of the hole-in-the-road would come from  
street lights.]

It is worth noting that 59th Street is the scene of the controversy  
with the neighborhood that resulted in the 15-month delay in the  
reopening of Route 15.  The issue of illegal parking on the west side  
of 59th Street, which is about 30 feet wide having a parking lane on  
its eastern side, a center lane with the streetcar track in it that  
is used for pull-outs from Callowhill Depot, and a lane ostensibly  
for vehicular traffic in the opposite direction but in reality used  
for illegal parking, seems to have been resolved the way it always  
have been - by an informal "live and let live" arrangement with the  
neighbors; if a motorist is travelling south on 59th Street sees a  
streetcar or a motor vehicle coming northbound towards his or her  
vehicle, he or she finds a place to pull over to the curb until it  
passes, then resumes his or her southbound driving when conditions  
permit.  [Given that this is a very poor neighborhood, overwhelmingly  
populated by black people, SEPTA's insistence that the illegal  
parking had to go before it could resume streetcar service on Route  
15 (and return Route 10 to Callowhill Depot) appears to have been a  
questionable stand at best.]

6)  Riding on Route 15, whether on buses or PCC cars, seemed to be  
light on September 4th but that may not be indicative of much given  
that this was the Sunday of a three-day holiday weekend. On the  
otherhand, poor people - and this line serves very poor neighborhoods  
for the most part - seldom have a lot of extra money on hand to go  
off to the Jersey Shore or some other resort area for a holiday  
weekend.  Of course, many of those who were riding the PCC cars were  
- you guessed it - men of all ages with camera slung around their necks.

These observations notwithstanding, it was wonderful to see the  
remanufactured PCC cars in service at long last.  With their "just- 
off-the-showroom-floor" condition and striking green, cream and red  
livery looking very much like they did when the Philadelphia  
Transportation Company took delivery of them in 1947, the make a  
noticeable presence on the main east-west thoroughfare of North  
Philadelphia.  Would that SEPTA manages a better service when the  
more demanding weekday schedules come into force tomorrow, September  
6th.

Phil Craig