PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA is giving the public a look at the research supporting a comprehensive redesign of its bus routes.
The transit agency has released two reports, titled "The State of the System" and "Market Analysis," detailing the changing demand for bus transit, and strategies to make SEPTA’s 125 bus routes faster and more reliable. In the second year of a three-year redesign of its bus network, SEPTA is weighing changing ridership patterns with efforts to simplify and shorten routes.
SEPTA plans a virtual "Transit Talk" for Thursday at 6:30 p.m. to present the reports to the public.
In the coming weeks, SEPTA will post profiles of each of its 125 bus routes so riders can see, for example, what a shorter bus route or one with fewer stops might look like.
"People can read a report and say, 'Okay, that’s interesting. SEPTA wants to make service more direct,' or something like that," Dan Nemiroff, SEPTA’s manager of planning programs, told KYW Newsradio. "And then they can look at the profile of the route or the routes that they use on a regular basis, and they can see how some of those ideas may be applied."
In April, SEPTA plans to release two bus route scenarios to demonstrate how the system could be improved.
"The scenarios are going to be the first glimpses of what a new bus network may look like," Nemiroff said. "There’s going to be themes. Whether they’re about reliability or directness or duplication, we’re kind of fleshing all of that out now."
Nemiroff added, "The likelihood of us adopting one full scenario is very low. Based on comment, we are likely going to take pieces of both scenarios and create something that’s more of like a middle ground."
After collecting public input on its "Bus Revolution" initiative, SEPTA plans to launch the redesigned routes late in 2023.