SEPTA to offer new one-day pass
It's a lure for tourists and families. The pass will be good on Philly Phlash, which extends to the zoo, Please Touch.
To boost ridership by tourists and families, SEPTA is creating a new one-day pass, good for unlimited rides on any SEPTA vehicle and on Center City District's "Philadelphia Phlash" mock trolleys.
The "Independence" pass, approved yesterday by the SEPTA board, will be available in late April, for $10 for individuals and $25 for families. The pass will not be good for travel until the morning rush hour ends at 9:30 a.m.
Under the new agreement with the Center City District, the purple Phlash trolleys, which operate between May 1 and Oct. 31, will also accept SEPTA TransPasses and TrailPasses and Cross County passes. The cash fare is $2.
The new agreement will also extend Phlash service, which currently stops at 27 tourist attractions in the city, to the Philadelphia Zoo and the Please Touch Museum in Fairmount Park.
SEPTA will pay the Center City District $254,500 for the linked, extended service. And the zoo and the Please Touch Museum agreed to pay the district up to $150,000 to reimburse it for any lost income from the use of the SEPTA passes.
Paul Levy, president of the Center City District, said the linked service "is a great idea that shows SEPTA is willing to try new ideas, and that's a real change from the past."
Levy said he expected the extended service and the link with SEPTA to increase ridership. The Phlash, which is partly funded by a state grant, carried 184,654 passengers last year.
Matthew Mitchell, of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, praised the new Independence pass as an improvement over SEPTA's existing $6 one-day pass, which does not permit rail use and is limited to eight trips.
"They understand now that doing the right thing for the region is more important than wringing every last possible nickel out of customers," Mitchell said.
The Phlash trolleys will operate from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week, with service every 12 minutes between Penn's Landing and Fairmount Park, and with new stops this year at the National Constitution Center, Franklin Square and the African American Museum, as well as the zoo and the Please Touch Museum.
SEPTA's board yesterday also agreed to pay $4.2 million to try to fix chronic problems causing frequent delays of the Subway-Surface trolleys that run under Center City to West Philadelphia and beyond.
The no-bid contract with Bombardier Inc. is designed to fix a collision-avoidance system that SEPTA got for free from Montreal-based Bombardier as compensation for mistakes made in producing cars for the Market-Frankford El in the 1990s.
Because Market-Frankford cars came in late and overweight, SEPTA negotiated to receive the trolley-control system in lieu of a cash settlement from Bombardier. The system was put into part-time service in May 2005, but not into full-time service until last July.
The transit agency is still trying to get its money's worth, and is now spending some of its own money from the federal stimulus program on the project.
The "communication-based train control" system is a complex combination of computers, radio-frequency tags, and electronic transponders that is supposed to calculate the location and speed of each car and keep it a safe distance from other trolleys.
The new contract gives Bombardier 810 days (about 21/4 years) to fix the problems.
Mitchell, of the passengers association, told the board: "We are angered that SEPTA has to spend four million dollars to fix a problem that didn't exist but for the unscrutinized decision to accept the CBTC system in lieu of cash penalties.
"We are asking SEPTA to insist on a performance guarantee from Bombardier before spending any of its own money pursuing fixes to this system," Mitchell said.
About a dozen members of Transport Workers Union Local 234 attended yesterday's board meeting to protest SEPTA's maternity leave policy. The TWU is in contract negotiations with SEPTA; its existing contract expired March 15.
Also yesterday, the board honored outgoing board members Jettie Newkirk and Christian DiCicco, who represented Philadelphia. The city's new representatives will be Rina Cutler, the city's transportation chief, and Beverly Coleman, executive director of Neighborhoods Now, formerly the Philadelphia Neighborhood Development Collaborative.