SO WHAT'S THE PLAN?

On Saturday, SEPTA will be operating a bus-bridge on the R5 between Paoli and Thorndale. Initial reports had indicated that buses would serve Thorndale, Downingtown, Whitford, and Exton stations en route to Paoli. Apparently, when this was posted in today's Metro "propaganda page", someone at SEPTA realized that it's next to impossible to run 40-ft buses along Whitford Rd to reach Whitford Station.

The SEPTA web site now notes a corrected bus-bridge plan: Buses will stop at Thorndale, Downingtown, and Exton, but a van will be operated between Whitford and Paoli. Wouldn't it have made sense to post that in the first place?

In any event, all outbound trains to Thorndale and all inbound trains with the exception of the #8524 (6:47am from Thorndale to Center City) will be impacted. Additionally, the last three trains from Paoli (#1574, 1576, and 1578) will be delayed 15 minutes, causing delays on the Lansdale side of the R5. Should make for a fun Saturday in Chester County...

WEST CHESTER PARADE TO CAUSE MESSY COMMUTE

Not that SEPTA is ever going to mention this to its customers, but...

West Chester Borough will be holding their annual Halloween parade along Market and Gay Sts tomorrow night. As a result, the 92, 104, 119, and 314 buses will be on detour routings between 5:00pm and 10:00pm. The only problem is that nobody knows what the detour routings are going to be. This is hardly surprising, since neither SEPTA nor borough officials ever have a clue where to route the buses when both Gay and Market Sts are closed for a parade.

This was the case last December, when no white-shirts were ever dispatched out to West Chester to coordinate detours for the borough's Christmas parade. At least one 104 bus ended up on the north end of town, turning off of Marshall St onto High St, which is way out off their normal routing.

Somehow, I don't expect anyone from SEPTA to try and coordinate things again this year. I had better be proven wrong.

And while we're at it, how is it that two months after taking effect, SEPTA still has schedule and route changes for the Red Arrow routes, but no mention of Frontier schedule and route changes on it's detour listings page?