SEPTA’s bus system overhaul is finished — but don’t expect big changes until late next year
After two years and many rounds of public feedback, SEPTA has finally finished their comprehensive redesign of the city's public bus system.
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SEPTA’s first comprehensive redesign of its bus network is finished after staffers made final adjustments to the plan in response to concerns voiced in recent hearings, bringing to a close two years of deliberations and several rounds of public input.
Bus Revolution, as the project is called, is scheduled to go before the agency’s board Dec. 21 for approval of the new routes.
It’s unclear when a new bus network will be fully up and running, but the goal is late summer of 2024, SEPTA officials said. Agency planners say they are eager to begin an intensive communications effort to prepare riders.
“We went through every single route again [asking] ‘Is this what we want? Is this is as good as it can be? Does this make sense?’” said Dan Nemiroff, the SEPTA planning manager in charge of the project. Tweaks were made. “We were able to preserve access to the network to a really high extent.”
At least 99% of residents who are within a five-minute walk of a bus route today will be that close to a route in the new network, SEPTA officials said. There will be 106 bus routes, down from the 125 today when the plan is in full effect. Forty-three of the routes will offer frequent service, defined as a maximum time between bus runs of 15 minutes, up from 33 currently.
» READ MORE: How does the SEPTA Bus Revolution impact you?
SEPTA released the third draft of Bus Revolution Sept. 1 and took formal testimony until the end of the month. It finished its response last week, which includes refinements of the plan.
Financial crisis looms
In the fall of 2021, SEPTA undertook the only wholesale revamp of the bus network since the agency started in 1964, spurred by a drop in ridership that was in progress before the pandemic — with the goal of making bus service more frequent and reliable and bring back riders. Agency staff also had been studying other bus system redesigns for four years beforehand.
SEPTA believes the plan will advance its goal, but there is a potential hitch that could undermine the painstaking work before it takes root.
Transit agencies face a fiscal crunch next year as the cushion of federal pandemic aid runs out, and Pennsylvania’s Senate has not passed the state funding fix pushed by the agencies. Only two scheduled voting days remain this year.
Under the proposal, the state’s Public Transportation Trust Fund would receive 6.4% of the money generated by the sales tax, up from 4.4%, generating an additional $295 million annually for public transit operations across the state. The sales tax itself would not increase.
SEPTA alone faces projected annual deficits of $240 million beginning next year and expects it would get about $190 million yearly from the sales-tax proposal. If the money doesn’t materialize, service levels will be cut 20% — and that would include the new bus network, officials said. Fares also could be raised 30%, the agency has warned.
“That’s the reality we face,” said Jody Holton, the transit agency’s chief planning and strategy officer. “If we don’t get the additional funding, we’ll never see the full benefits. It’s not going to deliver the increase in ridership we hope to see.”
Final changes
SEPTA officials knew they were done after two years of tinkering because they had received so many public comments to review, not just the hearing testimony, and reams of data on each proposal to double and triple check. With each draft, the tweaks had gotten smaller. Nemiroff said it seemed there was a good balance between hitting the project’s goals and reasonable accommodations to address concerns.
“It made sense to end [the process] in December and then start the new year with our foot really on the gas for implementation,” Nemiroff said.
Here are some of the adjustments made in the Bus Revolution plan since the final round of public testimony:
Route 32 will be discontinued, as SEPTA had proposed. Opposition to the move has been vocal, with residents of the Strawberry Mansion section of North Philadelphia arguing they would lose an important connection to western Center City and older people and those with disabilities would have to walk farther. “It is highly duplicative,” Nemiroff said. SEPTA’s analysis found several alternative routes within a quarter mile or less, such as the 48, would serve the same destinations.
Customers also expressed concern about losing Route 32′s access to cultural attractions on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and South Broad Street. SEPTA found other convenient routes serve those destinations.
Route 49 service on North 20th and 21st Streets would continue down to Market Street, in order to preserve access to 30th Street Station for people in Logan Square and the Art Museum area. Those portions of the route were slated to disappear in a realignment sending Route 49 across the Schuylkill at Spring Garden Street, looking for faster trips and more service to Mantua.
SEPTA is eliminating the current Route K, with segments covered by Routes 26, 41 (formerly Route J), and 65. Customers were concerned because Chelten Avenue, a busy business corridor, was not included in the proposed realignment. SEPTA looked at the numbers, Nemiroff said, and decided to extend Route 26 along 66th and Chelten Avenues to close the gap.
Areas near Chadds Ford were due to be served by an on-demand microtransit zone for destinations on Baltimore Pike west of Wawa Station as well as Cheyney University. Customers disliked the additional transfers they’d have to make at Wawa Station, as well as increased waiting time for riders boarding in Chester City. Instead, two fixed routes will be realigned, with Route 117 serving Painters Crossing, a jobs center, and Route 119 serving Cheyney.
The planners reversed course with Route 67 in the Northeast. It was going to be shifted to connect to the Olney Transportation Center via Rising Sun Avenue, instead of to Frankford Transportation Center. People in the area did not want to lose access there. SEPTA reconnected the line to Frankford, but changed the alignment to go deeper into the neighborhood and run on the same streets as Route 24. That would allow for more frequent service and avoid Oxford Circle, where walking and boarding buses can be difficult, Nemiroff said.