PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA canceled 22 trains along three Regional Rail lines on Monday, some during the busy morning rush, due to the ongoing safety inspections of its Silverliner IV cars. Those same trains will not be in service on Tuesday.
Trains on the Airport, Chestnut Hill West and Fox Chase lines were canceled on Monday, six of them during the morning commute. Sixteen other trains scheduled for later in the day were also canceled.
SEPTA said "to provide more reliable service" for Tuesday morning's commute, it canceled trains 9411, 412, 425, 802, 809 and 814. The following trains will be canceled later in the day: 9426, 9435, 436, 449, 9450, 9459, 460, 473, 821, 826, 833, 838, 845, 850, 857, 862. Those cancellations include trains on the Trenton, Warminster, Paoli/Thorndale and Lansdale/Doylestown lines.
At Cheltenham Station along the Fox Chase Line, passengers arrived only to find out their trains were not going to come. The trains that were set to arrive at 6:29 a.m. and 7:58 a.m. were the only ones still on the schedule between 5 and 9 a.m.
“It means that I just have to keep watching the SEPTA app for the schedule changes and it means being flexible,” said Michael Erb. “I might have to go to another station. I might have to take the subway in. Just anything but drive in.”
Fewer trains on the tracks means the trains that are still running are packed. In some cases, especially closer to Center City, stations are being skipped because they are completely full. This has been the norm for Regional Rail service since early October, when federal transportation officials ordered SEPTA to pull its Silverliner IV cars out of rotation for safety inspections due to five fires earlier this year.
The 50-year-old rail cars make up two-thirds of the Regional Rail fleet. Cancellations and delays have piled up, and riders have had to deal with unpredictability.
“The 7:39 train [on Sunday] never showed up, and I was scheduled to work overtime. And it felt like I lost money versus making extra money because I had to spend money to get a Lyft to work,” said Dee, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia employee.
SEPTA was initially given an Oct. 31 deadline to finish the inspections, but an extension through Nov. 14 was approved.