PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA riders on Wednesday night got their first opportunity to ask about when their bus routes might change under the transit agency’s bus route overhaul.
At a virtual town hall on the rollout of the New Bus Network, SEPTA made one thing clear: Changes in many bus routes are coming. They will be phased in starting this fall.
SEPTA community organizer Tammy Leigh DeMent read a question from a rider: “How often are buses going to run in this new system and how early and late will the service run?”
SEPTA’s Deputy Chief Planning Officer Colin Foley responded that the changes are designed to provide more reliable service with the same number of buses.
“We will go from having frequent routes — which by this definition are 15 minutes or better — seven days a week,” he said. “We currently have nine of those, and once we implement all of the New Bus Network, we’ll get up to 29 routes that’ll run 15 minutes or better, seven days a week.”
Overall, SEPTA is moving from 124 bus routes to 106, with two new routes — the 72 along Cheltenham Avenue and the 76 from Crescentville to Center City.
There was early talk of spacing out bus stops to make routes run more efficiently, but Foley said right now, bus stops are staying the same as the new network is phased in.
"Each phase that we plan on implementing is geographically focused. And we've done that so our teams could be in specific communities talking to specific riders about changes that affect them directly."
View the bus routes that will be changed here.