GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS...

KYW NewsRadio reported that SEPTA set a one-day ridership record for the Broad Street Line, carrying nearly 17,000 Iggles fans to the Linc for yesterday's beatdown of that team from Atlanta. Things didn't quite go as well for the return trip...

SEPTA's Minister of Mis-Information Richard Maloney claims that Philadelphia Police ordered SEPTA to close the two headhouses on the northeast corner of Broad and Pattison.

“There are four entrances [to the subway] at the sports complex, we call them headhouses. Philadelphia Police, in an attempt to keep vehicular traffic going on Pattison Avenue, prohibited SEPTA from opening the two northern headhouses."

But that decision forced hundreds of fans to jam into the southern entrances that were open. And, Maloney says, two other factors made the situation worse:

“We had a record number of people ride –- 17,000 people, that’s a record breaker there. And everyone stayed to the very end of that game, and they all tried to leave at once.”

Some fans tired of waiting to get into the station and instead walked north to the Broad and Oregon station, only to see the express trains pass them by.

And, while doing so, they passed by the very same headhouses that the city ordered closed.

Maloney says they'll have to figure out what to do when police close off some subway entrances:

“The pedestrian movement system down there at the sports complex was designed with four entrances, to accommodate the crush of large crowds. And we’re obviously going to have a backup if we’re prohibited from opening two of those four entrances.”

Let's hope that SEPTA actually had the escalators running in the proper direction this time. The last time I went through Pattison after a sporting event, the escalator was heading up towards the station exit instead of down towards the trains...

Maybe in the future, either SEPTA or NJ Transit could consider a regional park-and-ride bus network to serve the sports complex for Iggles, Phillies, Sixers games and other special events. I'm sure NJT would be open to such an idea more so than SEPTA...