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Thursday, November 5, 2009
Thrown under the bus

No matter how long this SEPTA strike lasts, let’s hope Day 2 was rock bottom. It couldn’t get much worse.

An R5 Paoli train caught fire yesterday during the morning rush, just outside the Overbrook station. A SEPTA official said the likely cause was electrical.
 

The train was packed with nearly 700 passengers. Nobody was injured, but the suburban commuter line was shut down for two hours, complicating an already chaotic rush hour. Many commuters walked off the tracks to look for alternatives. Others waited for help from SEPTA.
 

SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said the transit agency tried to send “rescue” buses to the scene to transport stranded passengers, but picketers from Transport Workers Local 234 prevented the buses from leaving the Victory terminal at 69th Street.
 

Victory Division buses serve Delaware County and the Main Line, and its employees are not on strike. But the picketers from the city division allowed buses to move about once every 45 minutes, and SEPTA got only four buses to the burned-out train.
 

“Despicable,” Maloney said. “It was a whole new population that they can inflict pain on.”
 

Eventually, the city sent school buses to pick up some of the passengers.
 

The massive inconvenience of a strike is a given. But compounding a potential public safety hazard, by blocking buses intended to retrieve passengers who escaped a fire, takes the union’s irresponsibility to a different level.
 

In spite of enduring delays and higher costs, commuters are mostly taking it in stride. Some are carpooling, or riding bikes.
 

City schools set up blogs for students who cannot make it to class, so they can keep up with assignments. The cycling club at Central High School set up a “valet” service for students who ride to school, parking bikes in a gym.
 

The more details to emerge from the reasonable contract that SEPTA offered its largest union, the more difficult it is to understand why Local 234 decided to walk out. The two sides reportedly were only $4 million apart when negotiations broke down. Gov. Rendell and Rep. Bob Brady (D., Pa.) were working again yesterday to resolve the impasse.
 

In the meantime, those involved with this strike can’t just throw public safety under the bus.
 

Posted by Inquirer editorial board @ 2:00 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About The Inquirer Editorial Board
Harold Jackson, a winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, grew up in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement. He graduated from Baker University in Baldwin, Kan., in 1975, with a degree in journalism/political science. He has also worked at the Birmingham Post-Herald, United Press International, the Birmingham News, and the Baltimore Sun. He was at The Inquirer in the mid-1980s, returned in 1999, and became editorial page editor in 2007.

Paul Davies is the deputy editor of the Editorial Page. His newspaper career has spanned more than 20 years and includes stints at The Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Daily News. He graduated from the University of Delaware and received a masters in journalism from Columbia University, where he was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. He was born in Philadelphia and still lives in the city.

Tony Auth began drawing while bedridden for a year and a half at the age of five. He graduated from UCLA in 1965 and worked for six years as a medical illustrator while doing three cartoons a week for various college newspapers. Tony has been happily ensconced as The Inquirer’s editorial cartoonist since 1971. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976, and has won numerous other awards, including five Overseas Press Club Awards, the Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished service in Journalism, and the Herblock and Thomas Nast Prizes. Tony is married to Eliza Drake Auth, a painter of realistic landscapes and portraits.

Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column appears twice weekly in The Inquirer and runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.

Kevin Ferris is an assistant editor on the Editorial Board who oversees the Sunday Currents section and writes a weekly column on a wide range of issues. In his 15 years on the board, he’s handled letters to the editor and the Community Voices pages and has been Commentary Page editor. He started with The Inquirer in 1986, and his assignments have ranged from the copy and news desks to the Chester County bureau and the national/foreign desk.

As an editorial writer for The Inquirer for the past two decades, Russell Cooke has written on a wide range of topics covering government, legal, civic and social issues. Before joining the Editorial Board, he was a reporter in the Inquirer’s City Hall bureau.

Editorial writer Dave Boyer joined The Inquirer in 2002. He writes about politics, government, the economy, sports and many other subjects, but draws the line at writing about "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." He has won journalism awards and insists bribery was not involved. A native of Allentown, Boyer graduated from Penn State. He and his wife reside in Center City, where they enjoy strolling and paying the wage tax.

Melanie Burney joined the editorial board in January 2008 after covering education at the Inquirer for eight years. She previously worked at the Associated Press in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Josh Gohlke has been The Inquirer’s op-ed editor since last year, editing the daily commentary page and writing occasional editorials. He came to the Inquirer after eight years at The Record of Bergen County, N.J., first as a reporter covering local and state politics and government and ultimately as the deputy editorial page editor. He also worked as a reporter for several smaller papers in New Jersey and California. Josh was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from Stanford University. He lives in Philadelphia.

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