ARCHIVES - 06/10/02

Regular riders on the 5:33pm 104 West Chester Express to Eagle Rd got a rude surprise when it was announced that the trip is now a local making all stops - and adding about 3-4 minutes to the run time. The lame excuse offered by Terminal Manager J. O'Rourke (who obviously took lessons in dealing with the public from Richard Maloney) was that riders travelling to Eagle Rd were inconvenienced by a lack of service.

Considering that there's a 123 that leaves for King of Prussia at 5:25pm and a 112 that leaves at 5:40pm, that's a pretty ridiculous explanation.

There was no new timetable issued for the 104 this time around for whatever reason. How O'Rourke still has such a key assignment within SEPTA is beyond me. The sad part is that some passengers tell me he's actually an improvement from his predecessors (which I find hard to believe).

The good news is that there's no longer a bus shortage at Red Arrow. The bad news is that there is still an operator shortage. Service both last Monday and today was worse than usual as some trips were forced to be cancelled.

Speaking of the aforementioned Mr. Maloney, DVARP's newsletter reports that NBC10's Sheila Allen-Stephens was thwarted by Maloney in her efforts to get interior footage of seats in SEPTA's Regional Rail cars as part of a May 29 story in the ongoing "Seat-Gate" controversy involving the new Silverliner V order.Here's hoping that NBC 10 does a hit piece on the fact that some T-Cars are on the road with expired inspection stickers - as is the case with SUR4243, which was spotted yesterday at 69 St Terminal and today at Arrott Terminal with stickers that expired in March. Shades of SUR6393 from this past April in Frankford (see the April 2002 archives page).

Someone at Comly may want to be reminded that the 73 is a wheelchair accessible route. During the afternoon, 8763, 8775, and 3098 were all seen running the 73 at one point or another. On a related note, the 24 saw 3108 running 2286 block even though the 24 is also an accessible line.

The 6:20pm 92/133 run from West Chester to King of Prussia (6020 block) saw 3203 - a non-accessible bus covering that run, which usually sees an ElDorado.