PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA on Monday released a new set of revisions to its bus network after taking in thousands of rider comments about its first draft in October.
The initial redesign reduced the number of routes from 125 to 99, aiming to eliminate redundant routes and make service more frequent and and reliable. But it missed the mark for a lot of riders.
SEPTA’s chief planning and strategy officer, Jody Holton, says they heard from the public that faster isn’t necessarily better and that riders don’t want to transfer as much, even if service is more reliable. So they brought back a few lines.
“We heard from the public that they wanted one-seat rides into Center City. So we added a couple of routes back that did just that,” Holton said.
SEPTA bus network revisions
For example, SEPTA had proposed combining Routes 17 and 33, which both travel along 19th and 20th Streets, into one route that didn’t make turns into Center City. But Holton says that proposal has been dropped.
“Most riders would have had to have transferred onto a Market Street service. So in the new plan, in this revised draft, the 33 and the 17 stay the way they are.”
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SEPTA is also abandoning a plan to change the names of all bus routes to a three-digit number.
The new, new bus route map now has 105 routes in all.
SEPTA will collect more feedback on this second draft to its bus plan through the middle of May 2023, with the goal of implementing a final version in the fall of 2024.