PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA expects to receive 10 coach cars from Maryland on Friday to add much-needed capacity on Regional Rail in the coming weeks.
The agency is leasing the cars from the Maryland Area Rail Commuter system, known as MARC. They will make their way from Brunswick, Maryland, to Union Station in Washington, D.C., before finally arriving at 30th Street Station sometime Friday night.
SEPTA is tapping into the $220 million that Governor Josh Shapiro allotted for the agency in November to help pay for the one-year lease.
The cars will not be used right away. There is a process to implement them that may take a few weeks, officials said.
SEPTA said adding the rail cars will ease some of the burden that regional rail riders have been dealing with the last few months - the delays, cancellations, packed trains and skipped stops.
The problems stemmed from the federally mandated Silverliner IV car inspections and repairs that needed to be done. Friday was supposed to be the deadline to install thermal units on all the cars, but SEPTA isn’t meeting it because of supply-chain issues, including difficulty obtaining wiring. About a third of the fleet still needs those units.