I think a huge part of it may be that the CCD is run by the business community of Center City and is thus beholden to people who actually have some stake in the appearance and quality of life in Center City.

SEPTA and the city workers, on the other hand, are responsible to a bunch of government functionaries who are, in turn responsible to a bunch of overpaid, do-nothing politicians. Technically, the politicians are ultimately responsible to the citizens but it hasn't been that case in Philly in a LOOONG time. Basically, once a politician gets elected in Philly, he/she pretty much has that position for however long he/she can legally have it. This city only votes Democrat so there's much less fear in Philly of being voted out in the next election. Thus, the politicians simply default to the typical corruption and pay-to-play and take the voters who got them there for granted. They have no incentive to make the government run well since whether they do or not will not make a scrap of difference when it comes to them keeping their job.

The aforementioned does a good job of summarizing why people don't trust the government to pay for their retirement or to be responsible for their healthcare. It is exactly the reason why my children attend private school. I support public transportation, however, because the private sector does such a lousy job of providing transportation - think about that the next time you fly.

You do know that SEPTA is a public company? They do get a lot of government money and have some government influence on them, but overall they are run as a public company.

The real question you want to ask the CCD cleaning workers is if they have a union, and if so is it as good as SEPTA's union?



That is more or less the reason for a lot of people doing "nothing" at SEPTA stations...the union. After all they STILL don't pay for their healthcare.


That's the one area that really would do a lot of good for SEPTA if it got resorted, but then I do feel for the workers because I wouldn't trust the SEPTA management when the first area they would attack if they were in a deficit would be the workers.

This is why are stations suffer from not being redone the last couple of years and we don't hear stories of workers being laid off like os many other companies.

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"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."--Rev. Arnold Conrad

I hopped on a 17 bus going east on market a few months ago. It was operating room clean. People kept complimenting him on how clean the bus was.

The driver had a hand written sign stating absolutely no food or drinks allowed and that you could take another bus if you insisted.

He kept a mop and a broom and cleaned it regularly. The floor sparkled, and it was stocked with air fresheners. It was so nice you had to wonder why other drivers didn't do the same.

I've been on a few buses like this. There is one bus driver on the 66 who is cleaning Nazi. He will keep rolling and pass you by if he sees an open container or you stuffing your face with a chip bag; if he has to stop he won't let you on until you toss it.

I've been able to miss him in the morning when I sometimes have a Wawa coffee with me, I've been lucky.

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

That's true. I don't mind long waits to transfer on SEPTA, in rare occasions there's been power failures on the Railroad where I've been stuck in a car for a couple of hours, but it's only happened to me once and I hear about those incidents happening about 1-2x a year.

That's the first thing I think of when I'm waiting for a SEPTA vehicle that is late: it could be worse... I could be sitting in PHL or O'Hare for 6 hours.

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

OMG, what time!? I need to re-time my commute to see this bus. I only take the 66 when I've missed the 88, but the floors of those morning 66s are generally so sticky/sunflower-seed-shell covered that you could lose a shoe. Not to mention the exhaust fumes that could kill you if you sit too far toward the back. (And, yes, I have complained to SEPTA. They don't care.)

With 29 tracklesses on the property now, that last one shouldn't be a problem anymore on the 66.

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11/28-12/31: MACY'S LIGHT SHOW (10AM-8PM EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR) AND DICKENS VILLAGE (10AM-7PM)
BEST VIEWING TIMES AFTER 4PM

I've ridden the subways in every city I've lived in and visited that has one, and whenever I visit a city with one, I try to ride it as much as I can. So far, that's been: Baltimore MTA Metro (haven't been there since the Central Light Rail Line opened), Boston MBTA, Chicago CTA back when it ran, New York MTA NYCT, Metro-North and LIRR, New York-Newark PATH, Newark (NJ) NJT City Subway, Philadelphia SEPTA, Philadelphia-South Jersey PATCO, San Francisco-Oakland BART, San Francisco MUNI Metro, Toronto TTC, Washington WMATA Metrorail.

New York's subway is light-years cleaner and neater than it was at the start of the 1990s; that capital renewal campaign that repaired just about every one of its 722 miles of track and rebuilt scores of run-down stations was $12 billion well spent, but even now, most New York subway and elevated stations look shabbier than their SEPTA counterparts, and the faint odor of ozone often wafts through many of them. They're also stuffier in the summer, thanks to SEPTA having installed industrial fans in most of the stuffiest stations on the poorly ventilated 1907 Market Street subway tunnel.


New York is the elephant in the room of North American mass transit, accounting for 2/3 of all trips taken on mass transit in the United States. FWIW, though, when you measure ridership by riders per route mile, SEPTA's two rapid transit lines are fairly intensively used, ranking third on that metric behind New York and Chicago. (In terms of raw ridership numbers, it ranks sixth, with Washington, Chicago, Boston and BART in between New York and it.)

Actually, most of the stations I've used on SEPTA are also kept decently clean; it was the concourses in Center City that were the real problem areas, and as has been pointed out on this thread by MayfairMeat and others, the Center City District's takeover of concourse cleaning and maintenance has pretty much taken care of that.

DC is a Second Subway Era system, and thanks in no small part to its monumental architecture, every other rapid transit system in the United States pales beside it (though the Baltimore Metro stations are fairly attractive too). The fairer comparison is to Boston -- and IMO what you perceive as better cleanliness is really less physical plant deterioration; I note that leaks, mineral deposits, stains, and crumbling walls and pavement in stations are far more common here than elsewhere, and there are severe problems with leaky water mains causing seepage and damage at some stations, like the unreconstructed Spring Garden station on the BSL. Agreed, however, that Boston appears to do a better job of maintenance overall.

When I hear the phrase "public company," I think "publicly traded company" -- IOW, a corporation that issues stock to the general public, which can then own a piece of the company by buying said stock. These enterprises are "private" in the sense that they are not owned by a government, but they are also commonly referred to as "public companies" -- when a privately held company issues stock for the first time, it is said to "go public".

Public benefit corporations, a category that includes SEPTA, are different animals. As their name implies, they are run for the benefit of the general public and usually chartered or controlled by a government entity.

I was trying to ride out to Yardley the night those powerful electric storms passed through the era around 6:30 pm, and my train lost power between Fern Rock and Melrose Park. After about a half hour, power was restored, only to be lost again shortly after leaving Melrose Park. When we coasted into Elkins Park, the crew discovered that the train's electrical circuits had been fried. We got a push into Jenkintown from a working train.

It seems that moving people from place to place is an extremely difficult business in which to make a profit, with moving goods from place to place only slightly better. In the Golden Age of railroads, several of them went bankrupt, including the Union Pacific and Reading, much as airlines do now. The Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company went bankrupt during the Depression, leading to its reorganization as the Philadelphia Transportation Company in 1940.

With the return of electric trolleybuses to Route 66 service, those fumes should soon be a thing of the past.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Jazz and blogging are both intimate, improvisational, and individual -- but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both." --Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic, November 2008

Perhaps the difference is that drivers like this one and other such workers take pride in their jobs and in their workplaces, union or not. Those in the private sector that do not have unions and who work their asses off do so mainly out of fear of getting fired or laid off. And often, like that famous dialogue goes in the movie Office Space, the fear only gets workers to do just enough to not get fired.

Managers in public and private sectors all have to deal with the major issue of motivation. If your workers are motivated to do their jobs and keep customer service as the center of attention, you will find that your business works like a well-oiled machine. If you cannot motivate your workers, the whole thing falls apart sooner or later.

In the private sector example of airlines mentioned by Billy_Ross, you (or at least I) can sense a major difference in the level of experience everytime I use Southwest Airlines versus almost any other airline in America. Southwest experience is just superior.

I'm not sure whether Southwest has unions. Do they?

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Is it ghey that I love this song so much?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl_Wc6Nm8lc

I guess you could say I'm not as jaded about "stuff" such as enduring love yet...