PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — With the deluge of water that swamped Philadelphia and created a canal out of the Vine Expressway, you might wonder why our subways didn’t flood like some in New York City did.
It’s primarily a matter of prevention, according to SEPTA.
“The first thing is to try to catch the water before it gets into our system,” SEPTA deputy general manager Bob Lund told KYW Newsradio.
“It’s the surface runoff on all the sidewalks, streets, paved areas, how that is handled, and trying to make sure that it doesn’t get into our entrances.”
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SEPTA has worked with the Philadelphia Streets Department to raise curb lines to reduce the amount of runoff flowing down into subway vent wells, Lund said.
Lund said after Superstorm Sandy, the Federal Transit Administration funded a program to fortify SEPTA’s underground pumping system.
“We went through an aggressive program of rebuilding the pumps to build in redundancy, both in the power system and the pumps themselves.”
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The top of the subway tunnels can be six to 20 feet below street level, and the Broad Street Line runs below the water table in the stadium area.
That’s why, Lund said, SEPTA’s pumps need to be kept in good working order.
“If we lose the pumps there, if we lose the pumps near Tasker-Morris, they are two key areas," said Lund. "The water would start filling the tunnels on a dry day."
The Market-Frankford Line, of course, runs under the Schuylkill River. Lund said that tunnel has remained reliably dry, but SEPTA kept a close eye on it with the rising river level in this storm.
