A car got stuck on the tunnel tracks near a trolley station. The driver said it was a ‘wrong turn.’
SEPTA surveillance video showed that the car entered through the 40th Street trolley station open portal in the intersections of Baltimore and Woodland avenues.
It was a “wrong turn,” the driver told officials, that caused a white Jeep to end up on the tunnel tracks near SEPTA’s 37th Street subway-surface trolley station at 5 a.m. Saturday — disrupting service on five trolley lines for three hours.
SEPTA surveillance video showed that the car had entered through the 40th Street trolley station open portal at the intersections of Baltimore and Woodland Avenues, in West Philadelphia.
When the car was discovered by the station’s staff, the driver was in the vicinity, said Andrew Busch, a SEPTA spokesperson. No charges were filed.
Busch says that this was a rare occurrence, and despite historical photos circulated on Twitter, that it hasn’t happened in recent memory.
“We think this was an isolated incident and the area where the car entered does need to be open for trolleys to access it,” Busch said.
The 40th Street station portal is an open tunnel accessible through Woodland or Baltimore Avenues that could be accessed by cars or pedestrians.
“[The entrance] is clearly marked, and there are signs and all kinds of notifications that are clearly marked a trolley area,” Busch said.
The car was removed from the tracks without incident, Busch said, and no one was injured.