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SEPTA goes with new color scheme for Regional Rail

SEPTA has rediscovered its color palette. Last summer, SEPTA abandoned its R designations for Regional Rail lines and got rid of the color associated with each line. The red for the R7, the blue for the R5, and the other colors were replaced with a uniform blue-gray tint for all lines.

SEPTA has rediscovered its color palette.

Last summer, SEPTA abandoned its R designations for Regional Rail lines and got rid of the color associated with each line. The red for the R7, the blue for the R5, and the other colors were replaced with a uniform blue-gray tint for all lines.

Riders complained that without letters or colors, schedules for the different lines were hard to tell apart and hard to find in the station racks. So, with the release of spring rail schedules next month, SEPTA will have colored bars across the top of the timetables.

But they won't be the same colors that riders were used to.

"We're doing 13 different colors," SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said Wednesday. "It was done deliberately to avoid confusion with the old ones."

So Chestnut Hill East, which used to be red, will be brown. Paoli, once blue, will be dark green. Media/Elwyn, formerly orange, will be blue. The Airport Line will be purple instead of yellow.

The schedules, in their new finery, are already available on SEPTA's website (www.septa.org).

Regional Rail lines, crowded and late all winter because so many cars were sidelined for weather-related repairs, have begun to return to a semblance of normal service.

On Wednesday, SEPTA had 303 of its 354 cars in service. It needs 315 to operate normal weekday service, Maloney said.

"The cars are coming back quickly. If we continue to get a break in the weather, we should be back to normal soon," he said.

General manager Joseph Casey issued an apology that was distributed to passengers Friday and posted on the agency's website.

"Our customers deserve a comfortable ride, but what many of you have encountered lately is overcrowding and uncomfortable conditions. This is not the way we want to run our railroad, and I apologize for any problems you've experienced," Casey wrote.

He blamed the weather and the age of the fleet; cars are an average of 30 years old.

The solution, Casey said, is new cars. SEPTA has contracted for 120 Silverliner V cars that are being assembled in a South Philadelphia factory, but production problems have delayed their delivery.

So far, only three new cars are in revenue service. Five more are being tested on SEPTA tracks, and two of those are expected to be placed in service next week, Maloney said. An additional four cars are expected to be delivered in late March.