SEPTA returning to regular schedule next week

Almost three months to the day after flawed railcars sent SEPTA's  rail service into a tailspin, weekday service is returning to a normal schedule -- though trains may be shorter, and overall capacity still below peak.

Starting Monday, SEPTA is returning its 13 Regional Rail lines to a June 19 schedule, the most recent regular schedule SEPTA released. Since July 5 the rails have operated on variations of a weekend schedule.

"We are grateful to our customers for their patience, and we sincerely regret the inconvenience this situation has caused," said Jeff Knueppel, SEPTA's general manager.

While riders are still likely to encounter delays and crowded trains in the coming week, getting back to a standard weekday schedule is an important step, said Matt Mitchell, vice president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers.

"They were promising to get us back to normal as soon a possible," he said. "The weekend schedule is an inconvenience for a lot of riders."

Over Independence Day weekend, SEPTA discovered most of its newest cars had cracks in their equalizer beams, caused, SEPTA officials have said, by faulty welding and poor design. All 120 of the Silverliner V cars, about a third of the rail fleet, were pulled from service. The beams transfer weight from the cars to the axles, and the fatigue cracks, which developed gradually over time, eventually could have caused a serious accident. It quickly became clear a temporary fix wouldn't work, and SEPTA rushed to order replacement steel beams that had to be made from scratch.

SEPTA attempted to continue serving its typical daily load of 65,000 passengers each way  with a diminished fleet and up to 48 vehicles leased from Amtrak, NJ Transit, and the Maryland Area Regional Commuter train service. The result was overcrowded trains and a scheduling nightmare. SEPTA's overall on-time rate for Regional Rail from July 31 to September 3 was 66 percent, 20 percentage points worse than its performance in the first half of the year. While some lines, like the Airport Line, maintained strong reliability, many lines' performances were worse than average. Only about half the time were the Manayunk/Norristown Line, Wilmington/Newark Line, and the Lansdale/Norristown Line, for example, on time last month.

The disruptions took their toll. In recent years SEPTA has boasted of growing ridership. In the period during which the Silverliner V's were out of service, ridership declined 14.8 percent compared with the prior year. That translated into $7.48 million in lost revenue, SEPTA officials have said.

The cars' manufacturer, Hyundai Rotem, is paying for the replacement parts and installation, but it remains unclear whether the South Korea-based company will pay for the lost revenue, overtime, leased railcars, and other expenses SEPTA has incurred because of the sidelined cars. Personnel from both SEPTA and the company have acknowledged Hyundai Rotem's full financial responsibility will likely fall to the lawyers to resolve.

SEPTA began returning the Silverliner V's to service at the beginning of the month. Now the fleet is bolstered by leased cars and more than 50 railworthy Silverliner V's.

That doesn't mean riders won't still experience some inconvenience. To meet the demands of a weekday schedule, some trains will be short the usual complement of cars, and likely very crowded. There will also still be delays.

"It's going to be rough on the front end, but we'll smooth things out as we increase our railcars coming back into service," said SEPTA spokeswoman Carla Showell-Lee.

SEPTA anticipates returning Silverliner V's to service at a clip of 14 a week. They should all be back on the tracks by November, officials have said.

There are some variations from the regular schedule, SEPTA officials said. Details on schedules can be found at www.septa.org/service/rail-service-returns.html.