PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA is shutting down service on the Chestnut Hill East Regional Rail Line for the entire summer to allow for maintenance on five aging bridges.
No trains will run on the Chestnut Hill East line from Sunday, June 15, through Sept. 2. SEPTA plans to shore up five poorly rated bridges along the line.
"It does not mean that they're unsafe. But what it does mean is that we want to be proactive and get out ahead of it," said Kate O'Connor, SEPTA's chief engineer of engineering, maintenance and construction.
The bridges over Wayne Avenue, Logan Street, Chew Avenue, Mt. Pleasant Avenue and Cresheim Valley Drive are around 100 years old, with the Wayne Avenue Bridge built in 1893.
Crews will be repairing the bridges' structural steel and doing masonry work. O'Connor said the $23 million maintenance project is scheduled for the summer months when ridership is lower.
"The idea is that by shutting down the entire line, we can knock out five bridges, do rehabilitation on all five bridges, bring them to a state of good repair within that one summer," O'Connor told KYW Newsradio. "While 11 weeks might sound like a lot of time, it isn't a lot of time considering the scope of work that has to be done."
The 2,800 daily riders on Chestnut Hill East are advised to use the parallel Chestnut Hill West Line, where SEPTA is adding trains, or the Route 23 bus.
"It might feel like an inconvenience to have this summer outage where people who are used to relying on the Chestnut Hill East Line have to go to the Chestnut Hill West Line," O'Connor said. "But in the long run, this is going to help things and make less of an impact on riders daily."
While the line is shut down, SEPTA will continue ADA improvements at the Chestnut Hill East Station, trim trees along the line and work on the system of overhead wires, O'Connor said.