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Episode 4 - What can we learn from SEPTA and Philly? (with Justin Roczniak)
214 Plays11 days ago
In 2025, both Metro Vancouver and Philadelphia faced tremendous budget cuts only to have them cancelled at the last minute through the age-old method of kicking the can down the road.
We're joined by Justin Roczniak, one of the hosts of Well There's Your Problem podcast where we discuss not only the budget troubles transit agencies face, but calamities such as trolley poles that have no business being used in places they don't belong or the current state of affairs with the bus manufacturing industry in North America.
This episode will be a bit chaotic due to our audio recording software having a mind of its own. Please excuse any weirdness with how parts of the episode are segued!
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Justin's links:
https://www.wtyppod.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/donoteat.bsky.social
https://www.youtube.com/user/donoteat01
https://www.transitforwardphilly.org/
https://blvdsubway.com/
Mayor Chow Announces Phase 1 TSP for Lines 5 and 6
https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/1rqd87j/transit_signal_priority_update/
https://ontariotrafficman.wordpress.com/
Metrolinx Documents Leaked: Series by Jack Hauen:
- Shorter, more frequent GO train plan ‘unlikely to materialize’: leaked document
- Metrolinx could run first electric GO trains in 2036: leaked document
- GO trains in ‘poor’ condition and could ‘begin to fail’ in 2026, says leaked report
Three door buses for Vancouver
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/translink-new-solaris-trolley-bus-three-doors
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Apologies
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, my name is Cariad and I'm the producer for Dwell Time. We had some troubles with our recording software. It seemed to gain a life of its own and cause trouble for our hosts and guests. We're sorry about this in advance.
00:00:13
Speaker
It tried its damnedest to make this episode not happen, but we persevered. There will be portions where the audio just sort of ends and there's very little I can do to fix this other than throw in little segues. As penance, I've thrown in a little extra as well at the end. I hope you enjoy the episode regardless.
Meet the Hosts and Guest
00:00:50
Speaker
Hi everyone, welcome to Dwell Time. is Canada's most prominent, most foremost ah trusted and honored podcast in relation to Canadian public transit advocacy. My name is Dennis Agar out here in Vancouver and I am joined by my co-host.
00:01:09
Speaker
Rodney, I'm currently in Kitchener, Waterloo. We're trying to expand our reach and not just talk about Canadian public transit, but also American public transit. So today we have.
00:01:23
Speaker
Oh, hi, it's it's Justin Rosniak from from what is your problem podcast? I'm here. ah um Where are you joining us from, Justin? i'm I'm joining you from Philadelphia, beautiful West Philadelphia. In fact, this podcast is going international.
00:01:40
Speaker
That's, that's, well, not if the president has his way, but you know, oh that sadly i where we automatically booted off of our podcast. We don't accept that here. um Would you like to tell our audience a little bit more about yourself for people who haven't heard about you?
00:02:00
Speaker
Hi, i'm umm I'm Justin Rosniak. I host a podcast called Well, There's Your Problem. I i used to do a YouTube series called Franklin about sort of the history of a city similar to Philadelphia over time, which, the you know, sort of at some point, the amount of work going into that became overwhelming. But You know, ah that's i i I enjoy riding public transportation.
00:02:30
Speaker
That's the other thing. You're going to fit in just right here. Yes. Excellent.
Transit Systems in Vancouver and Philadelphia
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I understand we're going to talk a little bit later in the show about some commonalities that maybe Philadelphia has with Vancouver in the sense that we had a fiscal cliff and the outcome is kind of good, unresolved, not bad, something like that. Maybe that's a bit of foreshadowing.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's definitely an unresolved issue. That and the fact that um the Canadian light rail vehicle retirement that Toronto did has made it so I can't take a trolley after 10 o'clock anymore. That's the whole story. about yeah That's an excellent teaser. how like How could that possibly be connected? Stay tuned.
00:03:15
Speaker
You'll find out. Undwell time. um But let's do news first. Should we do news? I like this. News.
00:03:25
Speaker
A wheelchair accessible station for Amtrak's William H. Gray, the third 30th Street Station. Santa's regional airline and free interchange to Charlie, Route 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36. Well, I'm going to start since I'm already talking. And we had an announcement or I guess it's not necessarily an announcement, but just a picture that surfaced on Facebook that then a Hungarian transit website posted, which is a picture of a Polish bus that is being purchased by Vancouver. And it's the first one that we've ever seen in Vancouver livery with three doors on a 40 foot standard bus.
00:04:07
Speaker
We're we've been excited that Vancouver chose to order these buses. These are the long awaited replacement for our trolley bus fleet. We have a bunch of old new flyer trolleys that are around 20 years old, none of which have air conditioning, which used to not really be needed in Vancouver because we had to such a moderate climate 20 years ago. But now we don't and we need air conditioning. So I'm excited about that.
00:04:29
Speaker
But I'm also excited that these buses are going to be European. So they're going to be less creaky and they are going to have three doors, which means dwell times are going to be lower. Well, time um they're they're Polish, right?
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, they're Solaris. Are they screen doors? yeah i I don't know what kind of door actually. I figured they they might have gotten those from the submarine factory. I don't know. um But the other thing that's really exciting about them exciting about them is that they will be IMC trolleys in motion charging, which just basically means they have a chonky battery in them that'll last maybe, a you know, a couple dozen kilometers, which means we can have trolley routes that now extend beyond where the trolley wires are. It gives a bunch of new options for route planning. and We haven't seen exactly how those are going to be
00:05:22
Speaker
you know, which choices will be made with that additional flexibility. What I'm hoping they do is that we have a bunch of corridors in our regional core, like our city center, where multiple trolley routes overlap.
00:05:34
Speaker
And so you'll have a situation on Main Street where there'll be a three, an eight and a 19 and none of them can pass each other because they're all hooked up to the trolley wire. And it's just this platoon. ah It feels agonizing if you're the the third bus.
00:05:47
Speaker
in in the line especially if the bus stops don't have enough space for that third bus to get on so you just have to wait and wait and wait anyway it would be really nice if we detached some of these trolley buses in the city core and then had them run on wire and charge in places that were a little bit further out I have a few questions about that so I'm assuming it's easy to just detach it but does the operator have to get out to reattach it I thought you'd never ask. What an excellent question. You're right. It is easy. They just press a button to detach it. And then there need to be designated spots for them to reattach. And there's little like hat shaped like catchers that are on the wires in those spots. And there's ah a fairly snazzy system where the bus lines up underneath these catchers. They press a button and then they they go back up. But it takes like 30 seconds, maybe. So it there has to be like
00:06:41
Speaker
If you can line it up with a stop that has a decent amount of dwell time, dwell time, always like a stop with a lot of stop activity, then hopefully you can just barely notice that that reattachment is happening. Right? Because I know I've been in Philly before I've been on a on a streetcar. What do you guys call it? Trolley? Trolley. Yes. Yeah, I've been in a trolley before where the pole detaches and the operator has to get out and like the like lights turn off and everything and you're just like sitting there.
00:07:10
Speaker
i have I had an amazing experience with that. I wasn't on the trolley. I was on my back porch where the trolley goes by and there was a trolley that stopped and de-wired right on the section break.
00:07:23
Speaker
right where there's two sections of voltage and then there's an insulator. He was right on the insulator and actually what he had to do, this is something you can't do with a pantograph, by the way, is he had to get out in the back and wait for the next trolley to come along.
00:07:40
Speaker
That operator got into the cab while he swung the trolley pole across the street to make contact with the wire on the other side. Yeah. No.
00:07:52
Speaker
And then they were able to just sort of nudge it forward like eight inches. That's wild. It's amazing. It's, ah you know, you know, it made me I looked at that. and I was like, huh?
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, maybe maybe pantographs aren't such a good idea. Maybe we should stick with trolley poles. Well, honestly, i don't have a super love love relationship with our trolley pools here in Vancouver because they dewire awesome.
00:08:20
Speaker
all the time. And it just, I understand that maybe that doesn't happen in European cities, but like it it really feels like you you take a really significant time penalty when you rely on ah a trolley bus route because like it like feels like I don't know, three times out of 10 or something that you go around a corner like at Hastings and Seymour and the the three just detaches and the guy has to get out, put on his vest, like reattach, like it's like fishing. It's like a little game. And then you get, my i would definitely say it happens more frequently on trolley buses than on, you know, the regular trolleys that are on rails. You know, we also figured out a unique solution for trolley buses passing each other in Philly, or we call them trackless trolleys here, which is that, frankfurt avenue just has four sets of trolley wires above and ah and then how do the the inside track ones stop they're there are they running express uh yeah the the ones on the inside just run express yeah okay theoretically you can pull over the curb
00:09:23
Speaker
But really ideally you don't. Yeah. Cause there's a lot of play on the side, you know? Oh, that's cool. We used to have um express trolley wire on Hastings, but now it's just diesel buses that do that.
00:09:35
Speaker
So I don't think we have any express trolley wire anywhere. Yeah.
Impact of Gas Prices on Transit
00:09:38
Speaker
Good thing. Diesel is going to be way too expensive to buy pretty soon. Ooh, foreshadowing. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, we can move to kind of gas prices recently and the impacts of that on how people commute, whether they drive, take transit, bike. I know there was a recent survey I saw where they polled where it's like, how are you going to change your transit decisions or commuting decisions? And only like 10% or 11% of people said they'll use public transit or cycle more, which is kind of sad to hear.
00:10:11
Speaker
Well, well, they said they won't. um The real question is, will will external factors force them to let let's not pretend our opinions matter here?
00:10:27
Speaker
It's true. i mean, what I mean, because there's two things that are going to happen theoretically if this if this continues, you were going to get ah more people riding transit, more fare revenue. That's good.
00:10:40
Speaker
But then we're also going to get way higher costs for the transit agencies that are reliant on fossil fuels. Yes. And what is interesting, it's going to be kind of a race between the two factors, more revenue, more costs, like, like, it's really going to depend on the agency, whether like, which one's going to win out. So are some agencies going to actually have to cut service because of this oil crisis?
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm feeling I'm feeling pretty good here in Philly because so much of our transit is electrically powered and that electricity is either hydro or nuclear. So I'm kind of like, ah, we were winning. We're winning on this one. But, you know, I don't know if you're out in like Chattanooga or somewhere, probably not going to be so great for your transit agency or like, I don't know, Louisville or i somewhere that it's all diesel buses. Yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, in Toronto, our streetcar system is completely electric and it covers a lot of downtown, but we have such a strong bus network that's mostly diesel and a hybrid right now, which will probably face those cost increases.
00:11:43
Speaker
I wanted to ask...
Challenges and Innovations in Bus Systems
00:11:45
Speaker
Back to the trolley thing or the three door buses. First of all, I know there's a lot of by Canadian, especially in our situation right now. And second, I know a lot of transit agencies are pretty stubborn about just doing things how they always had, just sticking with the two doors.
00:12:01
Speaker
Why and how did Vancouver purchase those? And how do I get my own transit agency into the same? It was a two step process, I think. I think the first step was that um we needed to replace the trolley bus fleet. And I don't even know if because we bought our last round from New Flyer. They don't have a lot of customers that even buy trolley buses anymore.
00:12:24
Speaker
would Would they even be willing to manufacture this new round of trolley buses? So i don't know if, Justin, if you know this, like as New Flyer still making trolleys. New Flyers still has a trolleybus model.
00:12:35
Speaker
i but I don't know who... Well, I guess Dayton, Ohio, I think, bought them. Dayton, Ohio has a big trolleybus network. it it The United States bus industry, I feel like, is currently experiencing a collapse that we sort of saw similar to the passenger rail rolling stock industry like in the late 70s and early 80s. We're down to like two manufacturers. I think it's i think it's literally just... um a new flyer in Gillig now.
00:13:05
Speaker
So, right you know, it's which matches how many manufacturers we have. Well, actually, that's a lie. We have three. Technically, we have new flyer in Manitoba. We have Nova bus in Quebec and we have BYD, which has a factory in New Market. I don't know what the status of that is.
00:13:21
Speaker
I know there have been some negative reviews on their buses. in the gta yeah i know toronto uh the ttc was like buying a bunch of different electric buses and doing a pilot testing out all of their like reliability and range and ease of maintenance and everything and i think byd was like at the very bottom Yeah, that's not that's that's a consistent thing I've heard. But to to answer your question, Rodney, so I think there was a limited ability to actually procure these buses in Canada anyway. And so i was like, oh, well, who else are we going to go to? Oh, here's Solaris. They're in Poland. They're owned by a Spanish company named CAF, and they're trying to make headway in Canada. I think they kind of could eventually I mean, i don't want to jinx it, but open a factory in Canada. That would be incredible. So they were chasing for those dollars. And then
00:14:11
Speaker
we couldn't help notice that a lot of the buses that they make for the European market have three doors. And I think enough people within TransLink were like, come on, we got to get the three door one that they overcame the internal hurdles of the internal like status quo.
00:14:25
Speaker
And ah so now I understand that there are going to be some TransLink operational staff that are going to have to go through every single trolley route and make sure there's nothing in the way of that third door. So like whether it's like traffic lights or like light poles or mailboxes or garbage cans or whatever. They're going to have to like review every single stop in the network to make sure that it can accommodate the third door without having something in the way of it.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, interesting. So there is like a kind of operational hurdle to implementing that. But I love it when transit nerds work at agencies and they know and like have the the pressure or that the like outside to see yeah like long term benefits. TransLink is lousy with nerds.
00:15:07
Speaker
It's stacked. you know I've been on septa buses where you know they just ah they pull up at at the stop location and it's completely blocked and they're just like bye figure it out get out you know i've been especially with with snow snow mounds a lot of times it's like you can only get out through the front door and like the operator will yell at front door speaking of we don't have those ah and snow in Canada? no not in Vancouver, no we're special we're special
00:15:38
Speaker
It was Transit Worker Appreciation Day, I think yesterday or two days ago. Shout out to transit workers. I know earlier we talked about, I think a lot of people have this conception that they're just drivers, but they do a lot more than just driving, managing customers, going outside, rear rearranging the trolley pole, rewiring things. It's a lot of critical thinking, problem solving, people skills. it's It's a hard job. And yeah, make sure
Cultural Etiquette in Transit
00:16:03
Speaker
to be nice and be thankful for your...
00:16:06
Speaker
bus operators or whatever transit workers you encounter. Yes. Yell thank you at them from the back door. Yeah, it's interesting that the culture in Vancouver, that's very common in Waterloo. It's very common Toronto. I guess there's so many people that no one. It's not really a thing to say thank you. In Philly, do people say thank you when they like leave the bus?
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, I always say thank you when I get off the bus. um You know, sometimes we we have a special a special thing that happens, right? I think this was true in Toronto when they had the older light rail vehicles, which is the back door of the trolley is activated by stepping down. There's a pressure pad there. there's like a plane. Oh. And then so so whenever someone yells back door on the trolley, everyone then yells at them, step down.
00:17:00
Speaker
That would be fun for like a show, like a call and response. backdoor It is. it is natural, natural call and response. the problem is people get, you know, people are confused by it because they don't expect people to yell at you in public.
00:17:15
Speaker
But it is it is an ordeal we must all go through once. Yeah. Yeah, the way to upset a Torontonian is if you delay their commute in any sort of way, even by 10 seconds, they will be mad at you. Whether that's walking slow on the sidewalk in front of you or not knowing to step down or push on the back door.
00:17:36
Speaker
one more news item I think we want to like move on, but... In to Toronto, our mayor announced phase one transit signal priority for our new line five Eglinton and line five six Finch West. She broke it ah first on Reddit, which is interesting. She's like, here, Redditors, like I'm breaking it out here first.
00:17:57
Speaker
What they did is um they made it so left turning cars before it was like a leading left turn. So it would be a red light and then left turn cars and then straight through green and then red. But now they're doing lagging left turn. So it's like green and then left turn and then red. So like the optics of it are better. So it it doesn't seem like you're waiting for like left turning cars in front of you first and then the train goes. But a lot of like transit actually have said that this will make no operational difference because there's the still the same amount of
00:18:34
Speaker
red light and green light time for for the light rail vehicle. And it's like a static, you've just moved it. like As long as you're not real time changing the lights to anticipate the light rail vehicle coming and adjusting as is, you've kind of Yeah, you're you're just back to square one because it's like a light cycle. And if you shift something in it, there's no like start and end. It's a cycle. It's kind of hard to explain without a diagram.
00:19:02
Speaker
There's this guy on Blue Sky and Twitter called Ontario Traffic Man who's like obsessed with signals. And I love his work. But he has really interesting phase rotation charts to show how it doesn't actually increase or decrease commute times. But this is just phase one. I know they're working on phase two. They are testing kind of, what is it called? Yeah, the the kind of real-time phase rotation on the Spadina streetcar. So more to come. it's It's exciting, but at the same time kind of misleading. Is there any TSP kind of initiatives are existing in Vancouver or Philly?
00:19:39
Speaker
I think there is at least one intersection that has transit signal. Well, not priority, but it does have transit signals, which is Frankfurt and Girard.
00:19:51
Speaker
I would say like Philly and Toronto, like the streetcar systems are relatively similar. So, you know, but we tried to do that joint order of new light rail vehicles a while back. um But, you know, the the you have some of the same problems where I mean, it's funny that on Gerard Avenue, which is the only place that consistently has dedicated lanes because of the way that the ah the left turn lanes are set up, the trolleys are slower in dedicated lanes than they are in mixed traffic.
00:20:27
Speaker
And I mean, you know, one of the things one of the nice things in Philly is that, you know, our our operators have lead feet. um You know, they go they go fast everywhere, which makes the sort of mixed traffic operations work.
00:20:44
Speaker
But ah yeah, I mean, where you've tried to upgrade the infrastructure, mixed results to say the the best, I would say. but Yeah, there's like a lot of discussion about bus rapid transit and putting in the center or on the side and how it interferes with like left and right turns and signals. I know one thing that we talked about now Passengers, is reported 10 minutes late.
00:21:21
Speaker
Please remain on the platform as this is only an approximate time. Yeah, Justin, do you want to tell us a little bit more about how you got into your interest in transit and like kind of what you kind of i I mean, I don't think anyone knows how they get into trains.
Justin Rosniak's Transit Journey
00:21:40
Speaker
You know, it just happens to some people.
00:21:43
Speaker
um We'll definitely say it's innate. My interest in. i I came out of the womb with a with a model train. and already got the corduroy hat and everything. um Or excuse me, seersucker. That's that's a seersucker head usually. um But I would i would definitely say some of my interest in public transit, I mean, it comes from, you know, the normal places like, you know, you play SimCity, right? um you You grew up in the suburbs ah and it was goddamn impossible to take public transit anywhere. But, you know, your parents also weren't going to buy you a car, so you had to do it anyway. Mm-hmm.
00:22:26
Speaker
You know, I grew up ah taking the the very directionally oriented Virginia Railway Express to school. um Really? That's a long trip to school.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, that was, ah well, yeah i went to I went to Bishop Ired in high school. That was in Alexandria. I grew up in Burke. So that was about 30 to 40 minutes on the train. That was one of those commuter rail systems. It still is one of those commuter rail systems where it's like, okay, this runs inbound in the morning, outbound in the evening. And if you want to go anywhere else, fuck you. Yeah.
00:23:04
Speaker
We got one of those. Also, no weekend service either. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of us, we kind of talked about in our first few episodes about how a lot of us were born in suburban places with a lack of transit. That's how we kind of got into it.
00:23:21
Speaker
And also, yeah, the SimCities, Cities city Skylines. I know I've seen some of your YouTube videos. Everyone, you should check them out. What is your YouTube channel? So ah I have the old Do Not Eat YouTube channel.
00:23:35
Speaker
ah Might be some content on there in the near future, but not too much of it. I have obviously the Will Airs Your Problem podcast. That's some broader like that's not about urbanism per se. That's an engineering disasters podcast ah with slides.
00:23:53
Speaker
did you have any engineering disasters that were like transit? Well, I think I, I'm not sure when it's going to come out. Cause I'm still writing in the episode. We are going to talk about the DC street car, uh, very soon. Yeah. As well as, lots of discourse as well as the, uh, the, the, the sort of phenomenon of modern street cars through like, um, you know, the, the, the, uh,
00:24:18
Speaker
the Obama era, um especially. Right. Cause the DC streetcar is one, you know, I, when I was growing up, I saw there was a little more track every day. And I was like, this is going to be great.
00:24:33
Speaker
And it wasn't. Yeah. ah Yeah, I know there's a really good Vox video, like five, six minute about Obama era streetcars, starting with DC and kind of why they were a failure and lessons learned.
00:24:47
Speaker
Well, I'm excited to listen to that podcast soon. Soonish. We also had another. if we're lucky, the podcast comes out before the streetcar goes away.
00:24:58
Speaker
Okay, yeah. Hopefully. We also had another YouTuber on Reese Martin who also had a YouTube youtube channel but kind of stopped doing YouTube for other things.
00:25:10
Speaker
Could i ask why you decided or why you don't do YouTube content as much? You're focused on your podcast or other work? You know, i had the last episode of Franklin entirely written out and recorded, and I was like, you know, this feels like too heavy of a subject to talk about using video games, and then I got confused. And then, well, there's your problem took off, and I was like, well, I'll get to this eventually. that Makes sense. There's like that ambiguity there. Should I do that? Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm.
SEPTA's Funding Struggles
00:25:46
Speaker
Next stop, Aarid Transportation Center for Routes 3, 5, 59, 75, 89, J and One thing I want to talk about this episode is public transit funding and we'll start ah with Justin in Philly.
00:26:07
Speaker
how How is SEPTA funded? How is the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority funded? ah It is from thee city of Philadelphia, and it is from the surrounding counties, Bucks County, Montgomery County,
00:26:24
Speaker
Delaware County. I forget if it goes into a fourth. Shit. Okay. i Hold on. i'm I'm not a moron. No, I am. but i make i think it's just those. Yeah, exactly. Just make up a county. um We also have transit service that comes in from New Jersey, which is funded entirely from New Jersey. ah you know and then because of ah though those those We get a lot more funding from the suburban counties than the city puts in, which is kind of a bizarre situation.
00:26:58
Speaker
But also the service in the suburbs is more expensive to run. Mm-hmm. because it's largely commuter trains as opposed to buses, and those don't necessarily pay the bills as much. I mean, we have buses, we have the commuter trains, we have regional rail, excuse me, we have the L, we have the subway, we have the several trolley lines, we got the trackless trolleys. I think it's just... Philadelphia and Boston that has every mode of transportation, except Boston has us beat because they also have a ferry.
00:27:35
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, that's that's interesting. like Could you take us through some of the most recent like wranglings around transit funding and in Philly? Am I right to say that there was kind of a fiscal cliff?
00:27:48
Speaker
There was a fiscal cliff. There still is a fiscal cliff. It was just postponed. Right. um This happened late last year. Unfamiliar. Yeah. Yeah. um Which was essentially, OK, we needed all this extra funding because the novel coronavirus happened. I don't know if you remember that. um or not And yeah, exactly. And then, um you know, the um transit ridership fell off a cliff, you know, and all of a sudden the every agency in the United States needed a whole lot more funding. SEPTA needed a whole lot more funding.
00:28:24
Speaker
It came from the federal government, which sort of gave up on the supplementary funding recently. And then that was thrown to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to make up the difference, which because we are governed by some guy in like East armpit in Carbon County, they didn't want to do. um You know, so this required um eventually the governor to step in and say, look, we're going to take some of the money from the public transit trust fund and we are going to give that to SEPTA to cover the operating budget. Right. Which is very much like that. That's a that's a piggy bank you don't want to dip into unless it's an emergency.
00:29:17
Speaker
But, you know, ah again, this needs to this this needs to go to, you know, as far as Harrisburg is concerned, you know, that money for for SEPTA is sort of.
00:29:29
Speaker
You know, that that's ah one of one of our state senators said this is paying for private chauffeurs in Philadelphia, um you know, because they need to, I don't know, widen, you know, ah ah a third rate county road, you know, out yeah near Warren or something. But no.
00:29:49
Speaker
and To my understanding, were they pulling money from a reserve fund or like a future capital project money into operations? It's sort of a future capital project. They did it.
00:30:02
Speaker
I think they did it twice. i think there was one. train Oh, no, there was one transfer from the Highway Trust Fund, I think. And then there was a second one from the Public Transit Trust Fund.
00:30:14
Speaker
The Yoke, the Pencil Tucky folks got really mad about the Highway Trust Fund one. Because again, i mean, you, you, you go out there in the middle of the the Commonwealth and, uh, you know, you see these roads they build out there and they're, you know, palaces. Um, yeah, I think there's a lot in both Canada and the U S though. Like,
00:30:37
Speaker
urban, suburban, urban divide in opinions on transit and a lot of other things. I've done some like brief reading on SEPTA. I think one interesting thing about the funding gap is that Right SEPTA had plans where like, okay, well, if we're off this fiscal cliff here, the planned cuts that we're going to make to still like ah operate some semblance of service. And a lot of the routes that they picked, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but people noticed that they picked a lot of like of the commuters, suburban, ah like lower density areas, which kind of makes sense because like those don't make as much money. But at the same time, it kind of pressures a wider range of
00:31:22
Speaker
policymakers and and politicians and parts of the the state that normally you don't really vote in favor of transit. But now that their constituents will have like cuts to their transit and it's not just the inner city, Philadelphia, they are kind of forced to act. Yeah, it's ah this was the second Doomsday map I have gone through since I've lived in Philadelphia. um This one was much more aggressive than the previous one in that they they were just like, all right, you you you main liners need to...
00:31:55
Speaker
so you know, wake up and take notice of this because they were really aggressively, you know, taking away service in this doomsday map from primarily, you know, the affluent sort of old money, like Protestant suburbs that surround the city. This was like that it was it it was very much targeted towards, OK, we're going to we're going to tell ah rich and powerful people this is your problem. um and know it sort of worked it's it i mean we haven't solved the problem we did successfully kick the can down the road though which is better than nothing that is so similar to what happened here we actually had two maps
00:32:44
Speaker
One map was one that preserved as much ridership as possible. So that cut a lot of of like suburban routes, rural routes. And then we had one that preserved as much coverage as possible. So that cut a bunch of frequent routes in the core. um And I think the end result was that people just thought both were happening. Like people didn't really look into why there were two scenarios. They just said, Oh, my roots on one of these, I'm furious. Uh, so that was kind of a win from a PR perspective from translating.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I, I like the strategy of like saying, okay, we're going to cut, you know, the Paoli local, which has been, i mean, that's the, uh, that the commuter train that comes in from Paoli along the Pennsylvania main line. That's the line that goes from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Um, you know, but that, that's always been, ah traditionally, you know, that that's the banker's train, you know, that's the, uh,
00:33:41
Speaker
that the the The rich people take that train. it's not there's There's definitely a class divide between our regional rail network and the urban transit network, but we do you know you do have the advantage that you can you you can scare the rich people if you need to. um I mean, you shouldn't be in that situation to start out with, but it can be done. Yeah. It's always interesting to see what you can do as the public, what people who work at transit agencies, what kind of methods that they can use and kind of need everyone board.
00:34:16
Speaker
You kind of talked about the COVID funding in Canada. We also had like emergency funds from the federal government distributed, but the kind of agreement was the province had to match the amount of funding as well. So only some provinces opted in.
00:34:32
Speaker
But then once the COVID money dried up, a lot of agencies were having problems again. and it's kind of this kind of ongoing conversation about which level of government government should fund operations. And currently in most municipalities, it's on the municipal level.
00:34:49
Speaker
In Ontario, there used to be, the province used to fund almost half of municipal transit operations funding. But in the 90s, under the conservative Harris government, they got rid of that.
00:35:02
Speaker
And ever since then, a lot of transit agencies have been kind of struggling. Obviously, they could still increase property taxes and fund transit more. That's something we need. But there has to be some kind of support from higher levels of government that people have been asking for it and we haven't really been getting.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, the fiscal situation in Vancouver has been a little bit different. we you know We got some bailouts during COVID from the province, and that kind of masked a problem, a baseline problem that had been emerging, which is that our region, we have a bunch of different ways that money is raised for transit. It's kind of a big hodgepodge. One of the biggest has historically been ah a huge gas tax. So within Metro Vancouver, like if you cross out of the region, you immediately don't have to pay this 18 cents a liter gas tax. And so it's it's notable. We've had pretty much the highest gas prices on the continent as a result, which probably is great for transit ridership. But ah it also means that we are very quickly transitioning to electric vehicles. And so um the revenue from this gas tax is kind of plummeting. And that was one of the things that TransLink's been saying for years, like, hey, we're hurtling towards this fiscal cliff because we're running out of gas tax money. We've got no more COVID covid bailout.
00:36:12
Speaker
You know, we have a new labor contract, so that's more expensive. And, you know, everything is generally more expensive. And so last spring is when it was coming to a head. And what happened?
00:36:25
Speaker
had to happen was the the province and the mayors of the region had to get into a ah room and negotiate. And yeah, that's kind of that's yeah with the the outcome was yeah I'm getting ahead of myself. Why don't we let why we let us but we hear about um Philadelphia a bit more? Yeah, I mean, ah definitely like one one of the things that's weird about SEPTA is um I'm actually not too familiar with how the county is appropriate, the amount of but money to SEPTA. But what I can say about the city itself,
00:37:01
Speaker
is that we have a thing called the 10 year tax abatement, um, on property taxes, right. Which is any improvement to a property.
00:37:12
Speaker
You don't get taxed on that until 10 years. So as of right now, the city is working with the tax, uh, revenue of March 19th, 2016. So yeah So the except that doesn't get very much money from the city, ideally it would get more. But ideally, we also wouldn't have this this insane development incentive, which is designed like, you know, it's like we're desperate for any development whatsoever. Like, you know, it's like the late 70s or something in the cities and terminal decline.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, another thing I, so i've I've visited Philly before and I have some friends from there. i And so, and I've also gotten like TikToks. Like I was, i was my my TikTok knows me too well. I went during like the peak of like the SEPTA funding crisis. I mean, that's like always, but I got a lot of TikToks of people being upset at SEPTA. A lot of times people have misguided They think everything is the TTC's fault and they don't see that this is a broader, like this is on your municipal politicians and your provincial government. A lot of people are oh like, oh, SEPTA sucks. Like there's always drug use on it. It's dirty. They don't run the service well. And obviously there's always room for improvement on the local transit agency. But yeah, like it's it's on your politicians. And like what i what I saw was that actually SEPTA is one of the most like efficient like cost provider in the country, which means that they're doing an amazing job with the limited amount of money they have. And like the reason why the outcomes look so bad is because they don't have the money to do all the extra cleaning and like service improvements. And I wish people would like direct their anger SEPTA.
00:39:04
Speaker
the elected officials who who do control that the purse strings. Yeah. And I mean, they're one one of the things, I mean, I've i've i've always sort of had sort of of my my opinion with like anti-social behavior on ah public transit has always been, you know, kind of suck it up, you know. But the other thing is,
00:39:25
Speaker
It's actually it is really bad on SEPTA like it is especially on the L. um And that that was like a deliberate municipal decision when they cleared out the big heroin encampment on Lehigh Avenue. Like there was like a hard turn there where all of a sudden, you know, you couldn't get on the L.
00:39:47
Speaker
without, you know, people smoking, there was open drug use, there was all, and that has not changed. You know, I i mean, a big, a big part of, uh, SEPTA's problems are right down to, um, well, we decided to clear out homeless encampments, but we didn't give those people anywhere to go.
Social Issues Affecting Transit
00:40:06
Speaker
so they're on the train now. Um, and,
00:40:10
Speaker
That's also a very similar problem in Toronto. Basically, our our provincial government started with no safe consumption sites within X meters of a school or whatever. So they shut down a few. Public drug use is up.
00:40:23
Speaker
um Overdoses are up. And this includes in transit. And now the province just recently announced that they're going shut down all of them, the rest of them, even though the data shows that it's already getting worse in public spaces. And I just saw like a a tweet or skeet the other day where like this is kind of intentional that the government, at least the Conservative government here, the policy is not about caring for people, but it's also a political move of when they close them down, they know that urban spaces like in downtown and more progressive areas are going to see more drug use and be kind of the bearers of that and kind of have that reactionary attitude against people who use drugs and kind of be more willing to have more drastic measures, whether that's further criminalizing them. and I think it just goes to show that like transit kind of intersects with so many other issues like housing and drug policy, it all kind of collapses. And it's kind of sad that
00:41:22
Speaker
the The TTC, kind of they're supposed to be a public transit service, but now they kind of have to have to have policies around like letting people shelter in the bus or the streetcar when it's really cold outside or how they go about fare enforcement.
00:41:39
Speaker
So there's like so many things to consider. um Yeah, I really wish we had better supports for housing and everything else and it wasn't on the transit agency.
00:41:53
Speaker
Welcome to Route 10. Face cash fare for a valid fairness permit is required. Service 2, 63rd. Yeah, I think we have like five, ten minutes left. I think we kind of left off on what solutions exist. We kind of talked about Transit Forward Philly, the Roosevelt Boulevard subway yes advocacy.
00:42:15
Speaker
I mean, the but the Boulevard subway is such a no-brainer. It's like embarrassing that people have to advocate for it. um Isn't that always the way? Yeah, yeah. You know, and that's that's sort of, for for for your listeners, that's a subway that would go under an exceptionally wide road in northeast Philadelphia, the Roosevelt Boulevard, which was designed to have a subway in it and for which there have been plans for for nearly 100 years now and it would be relatively cheap to build and it would serve a huge section of the city and it's it's just ah it's a no-brainer it you just have to do it like and and you know there's
Philadelphia's Rail System Potential
00:42:58
Speaker
there's always like some folks trying to come out and say well we should do it as light rail or we should do it as uh bus rapid transit no it joins the broad street line It should be a heavy rail proper subway because they did do the quote unquote boulevard direct bus where they they painted some buses green and made nicer bus shelters and said, this is this is bus rapid transit. um
00:43:27
Speaker
But you don't want that. You want to avoid that force transfer, right? You like if it's ah already a heavy rail vehicle, you want it to just be able to continue. Yeah, and that's an underused four-track subway. There aren't so many of those, and people aren't building new but new ones. you know If you have a four-track subway, and you should put more trains on that if you got it. That's incredible.
00:43:50
Speaker
More train equals good. Did you say there's like already like a BRT on the corridor? There's a, there's, they call it the Boulevard direct.
00:44:03
Speaker
and And it was, with the is the ridership on that good or. It was bad enough that it was one of the first lines that was going to be cut under the recent doomsday plan.
00:44:15
Speaker
but But if it was connected as a subway, I'm assuming the like ridership would be a lot better and justified. Yes. Yeah. and And when I say bus rapid transit, i yeah i it doesn't have dedicated lanes or anything.
00:44:30
Speaker
It just has branding. but Many such cases. Yeah. Do you know um do you know Christoph Spieler? Does that ring a bell? That does ring a bell. Yes. Yeah. He's a you know ah a big transit consultant. He has a government job now, but for a while he was going around just helping different cities and He talks, I i attended one of his talks about SEPTA and about how much potential the regional rail network had, that if it were fare integrated, like if it wasn't that much more expensive than a bus, people would have be able to ride it for, you know, roughly the same price and just get where they're going way faster. I don't know if that if people talk a lot about that in Philly.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the the system was built in such a way... when When they did... Okay, so we had two railroads that served Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad, the two separate terminals. In the 1970s, I want to say they started the the project to connect the two sides of the commuter rail system, which means all the trains through Run, through Center City, right? Yeah.
00:45:36
Speaker
So, and this was built with the intention of, you know, having high frequency S-Bond type service, right? um You were going to have electric commuter trains, you know, every 15, every 10, every five minutes on some sections of this network.
00:45:56
Speaker
And then what they did, what they did was started a huge fight with the union. Right. ah because they wanted to go to one-person train operation, and they wanted to use city trans city transit employees to do that.
00:46:13
Speaker
And that is a big no-no, because those... Those trains are real trains that go on freight train tracks and stuff like that.
00:46:24
Speaker
So the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and train men got really mad. And, you know, there was a huge, very long strike, um you know, and this was.
00:46:39
Speaker
it it It's one of the stupider things I think that ah SEPTA has done. I mean, this could have been phased in gradually. You could have used actual railroad employees to run those trains.
00:46:54
Speaker
But instead it was like, well, we're in the Reagan era. We can finally beat labor. And well, no, they they didn't. They just didn't do that.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of sad to hear. I actually was in the initial news section, wanted to talk about something
Metrolinx and Greater Toronto Transit Issues
00:47:11
Speaker
similar. In Toronto, it was just recently leaked. We have a lot of potential for regional express rail to Metrolinx has been pushing for like a 15 minute or better all day, all week service. And they have been doing a lot of work, but there was recent documents leaked in a series by Jack Hewan about how they're behind on maintenance and, The electrification is not going to happen on a lot the lines or isn't going to happen as soon as we thought. It's not looking great. And and there was like, ah they were initially going to be in a partnership with Deutsche Bahn and going to kind of leverage their expertise on running frequent like European style regional express rail.
00:47:55
Speaker
And Metrolink's leadership was against that. They kind of had a few interesting quotes. One of them was... Let's see that that it was like they they didn't want to do streetcar style. Yeah. Right. I read that and I was like, this is that that's an insane way to frame it. I hate it I was I was shaking my fist at the screen, you know.
00:48:21
Speaker
Yeah, the quote is, Metrolinks may have decided the previous quote unquote streetcar like plans was too much of a headache, according to the source with knowledge of the report. When you do the math, do you want 3000 small trains running around, which all need maintenance and you have to keep track of and everything or 1200 larger ones or maybe 2000? They said that's what that alludes to as opposed to like streetcars running every three minutes ago train every 15, the source says.
00:48:48
Speaker
That is a classic piece of like the tail wagging the dog, right? Like, what are you doing this for? Don't you want transit to be frequent? Yeah, like every every three minutes is a little insane to me for a go train, but like...
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, you should be running like five, 10 minutes service would be nice. I mean, even it would as bad and annoy like as a huge train of those octagons, you know, pull up every three minutes like it's on the London Underground. And, you know, by the time one train is leaving the station, you already see the next one coming in.
00:49:21
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so good I mean, that's what it'll be at Union Station, right? Where all the lines converge. True. Yeah. honest not I mean, that's what streetcars used to be like in Toronto, like every three minutes. Like, I think the kind of ah slogan was like never a sh streetcar, like never not a streetcar in sight or something. But now they've upgraded it to the Bombardier vehicles, which are much longer. So that kind of actually had to reduce the frequency to like every 10 minutes. But now they're ramping it up back to eight, six minutes. yeah But.
00:49:53
Speaker
We're worried Septa is going to try something similar. Actually, I did mention earlier there was, what's it, the connection between Philadelphia and Toronto streetcars. Yeah. corner We were going to go in on those Bombardier streetcars with Toronto, which did not happen.
SEPTA's Modernization Efforts
00:50:13
Speaker
But we did wind up with spare parts for them.
00:50:16
Speaker
most notably the trolley poles. And so what happened recently, someone finally tried to use them after someone at SEPTA retired who was saying, don't use these.
00:50:31
Speaker
So these are the specifically the trolley shoes, the actual part that makes contact with the wire, right? And the Toronto ones were a little bit longer and a little bit deeper.
00:50:45
Speaker
So they started sending in trolleys into our trolley tunnel with the new contactors, right? With the new trolley shoes. And it just ripped all the hardware down off the ceiling over the course of about a week.
00:51:00
Speaker
So we've been, i mean I live in West Philly, so I'm reliant on the trolleys to get to center city. We've been in hell. Just just in ah hell. They've stopped they've started ah reducing hours late at night.
00:51:15
Speaker
um You used to be able to get a trolley up until two o'clock in the morning. Now it's only until 10. For a while, it was just out completely. Then they were doing weekend outages. This is just... ah It's embarrassing. It's it's it's also it is very funny, ah though, that, you know, it was like there was one guy who was like, no, don't do that. And then he retired and someone did that.
00:51:38
Speaker
um Sometimes you got sometimes there's just load bearing employees in a company. Yeah. Um, and so institutional knowledge is so important. There's been a lot more talk about that now. So because they, the order, they couldn't do the order with TTC. Is there any other, like, what are they going to replace the streetcars or the trolleys with, or they're going to do the TTC thing of just keep on refurbishing and maintaining.
00:52:06
Speaker
oh they have, and be like the ship of Theseus where like by like 50 years, like all the parts are new, but it's still falling apart. Oh, God, we could do we could do like an hour just on this. i mean, they are getting new. They are getting new trolleys from Alstom.
00:52:21
Speaker
Right. But they've been I would have to go back and see what I'm allowed to say. um are Are they like low floor or like the they will be low? They will be low floor.
00:52:33
Speaker
Are they going to just like the Toronto ones? um No, they're a little newer. um you know ah Otherwise, pretty similar. yeah and it's just like you you You wonder, given how a lot of these light rail procurements have gone recently,
00:52:52
Speaker
whether they're going to they're going to do something stupid yeah that's going to degrade service. I mean, we just got communications-based train control installed on the suburban trolleys, and they added 15 minutes to a 30-minute trip. um Can someone explain that to me? I understand that that's also the problem with the Finch West streetcar. yes Why are we using CBTC on street-running trains? So i I can speak at least on the Philly one. The suburban trolleys have a lot of grade crossings, um several of which used to be protected by, you know, normal like railroad crossing gates. Right.
00:53:34
Speaker
um And all the rich people out there got mad and got them removed. Right. At which point it was like, okay, now we treat the trolley and road intersection like a normal road intersection with, with traffic lights. You know, in this case, it's like, you know, the trolley is on a dedicated right away. It has trolley signals. The road is a road.
00:53:58
Speaker
It has traffic lights. When they installed communications based train control, on the trolley line, which had been previously been running on line of sight operation, except for where it goes down to one track where the driver actually had to reach out and push a button to set the signals. You know, there it was ah that was fine. um But when they switched to communication based train control,
00:54:26
Speaker
They had to install a lot of formal speed limits. I mean, I said before, our operators have lead feet, right? This was not a, there was not like there were overspeed derailments or anything like that happening. There were a lot of grade crossing accidents.
00:54:42
Speaker
The trolley had to come to a complete stop before the intersection and then could go. Now the trolley has to come to a complete stop before the intersection and proceed at a no greater speed than 10 miles an hour until they've cleared the intersection, at which point they could speed up to then slow down for the next intersection. Oh my god And there's ah other speed restrictions. I hold on. I forget who it is on Twitter who did a good thread on this. The actual, ah you know, the physical, ah the the speed restrictions as they actually are. But this was this this was poorly implemented. I mean, it's not that communications based train control is bad. It's a very good technology, but they didn't.
00:55:31
Speaker
They didn't change the rule book to be able to make the same schedules that they were once able to. Yeah, you gotta optimize them. that If you do find that thread, send it to us. We can add it to the podcast notes so people can check it out.
00:55:47
Speaker
I know Toronto was suffering the same thing with like the speed restrictions and intersections. Actually, in Waterloo, the ION is already pretty fast. It's like 22 hours, 22 hours, 22 kilometers an hour average, which is like pretty good. But recently at Tritag, we have have a blog post about how to make the ION even faster. And we have some of the same issues where even though we have crossing gates at intersections, because there have been accidents before, now they like, the the train crawls through the intersection to make sure an accident doesn't happen. and not only does it like degrade the experience for passengers, but then also the crossing gates are down longer. So you're going to create longer traffic queues. People out in the cars get annoyed. Like the stupid train is, is making my commute longer. And then we also have an issue at the South end of the line where,
00:56:37
Speaker
Because it kind of kind of sectioned off, it kind of segregated communities from each other. Like, when they put the train down, they put fences up so people could no longer travel across it. So people started cutting holes in the fence to like cross through informally. so then like, they retroactively added crossings, but they didn't have money to do like a fully like with the gates and everything. So they were kind of like, the trains have to slow down through those sections to like do like line of sight.
00:57:04
Speaker
to make sure so now, but we just got, I think some funding from upper upper levels of government to improve those crossings, but there's still at the intersections and some other speed restrictions. Like Dennis was talking before, like you have to be constantly iterating and making sure that these so-called improvements like CBTC or dedicated lanes we were talking about earlier, like actually improve the experience and you don't just put a technology. A lot of it is like asking why, how how is this helpful? yeah And like, is this creating the outcome that we want?
00:57:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, with respect to the suburban trolleys in Philadelphia, I am kind of like wondering why
Transit System Challenges and Opportunities
00:57:45
Speaker
your first go to is communications based train control when a good portion of you your right away is in two lane road.
00:57:56
Speaker
Right. Where the single trolley track straddles both lanes. ah It's like a kind of a bus, right? Like it's just mixed. You know, it's in traffic.
00:58:08
Speaker
No, it's worse than in traffic because it's a two-way road. But the single trolley track straddles both lanes. And if you encounter a a large pickup truck, there's a standoff. Oh, my God.
00:58:27
Speaker
I used to ride it daily. It was fun. ah um yeah Any last words? how do we How do we want to end this? That's grim. Oh. oh Choose wisely. yeah ah yeah School is bad for me, but not not that bad.
00:58:46
Speaker
Well, this has been interesting, like getting that it a little insight across the border, a lot of shared ah problems, a lot of commiseration, but hopefully opportunity. I'm trying to end this on a positive note. I don't know. Maybe I'm just making it up.
00:58:59
Speaker
Come to Philly. Ride SEPTA. It's great. You can meet Ben Franklin. won Yeah, I think the opportunity highlight is really important. Like how how much ah possibility there is with Philly and the regional rail network in Toronto. Like I was just looking up a map of the SEPTA map and there's so much coverage. Like if they could run things better, more frequently, like the amount of lives and commutes you could change with that.
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know we we like to complain about it, but you know you you can you can come here and ride the train. It's fine, you should do it. It's a good idea. write the train and everything. Last thing, breaking news,
Conclusion: Evaluating Transit News
00:59:40
Speaker
positive note. I just got a message from our producer, Karyad. Mark Carney just skeeted. We're putting nearly 200 million towards critical infrastructure upgrades across Toronto, including public transit, improving the TTC for faster and more reliable commutes.
00:59:56
Speaker
I will have to look at if this is from the existing yeah public transit or infrastructure fund, but I'm wary of a re-announcement. sounds nice. I'm wary that it's re-announcing the same money. Putting CBCC Spadina.
01:00:10
Speaker
Putting it on the bus network.
01:00:13
Speaker
Dennis, what we say you're worried about? I'm worried it's a re-announcement of existing money. They do this so often. i wait Wait until we can actually see what's in it before we get excited.
01:00:24
Speaker
Okay, well, I think this is good. it's It's good to have some good sounding news, but as always, have some critical thinking. Go look at it. Things are not always as they seem, just like at the beginning when we talked about the so-called TSP improvement on Finch and Eglinton.
01:00:40
Speaker
Way to bring it back around. Yeah. Dwell time. Dwell time. you Dwell time.
01:00:53
Speaker
You've been listening to Dwell Time. This show is hosted by Rodney Chan and Dennis Agar. Producer and editor is Carrie and Heather Keir. Thank you for listening. Details about our social media and content mentioned are in the show notes.
01:01:09
Speaker
We would like to recognize that this show is written, recorded, and edited on the ancestral lands of First Nations peoples across Canada.
01:01:27
Speaker
Here we go. All right. All right. We're podcasting. We're podcasting. It's happening. Wait, don't you run your own podcast too, Justin?
01:01:39
Speaker
Yes. It's a pretty prominent podcast, isn't it? i We make a, we make a, it pays the bills. Okay. I mean, incredible.
01:01:53
Speaker
um Well, i guess I guess I'll get things started. Karad's going to edit in sounds and music and all this stuff. And then, ah ah yeah, wait.