Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) was created on February 17, 1964, by Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties under a 1963 act that permitted counties to organize such authorities and acquire the assets of private transportation companies.

SEPTA was created in response to a growing crisis in urban mass transit. Commuter rail lines were suffering from operating losses that freight income could no longer offset, combined with equipment that was nearing the end of its service life. Private bus, trolley and subway operators were in little better shape, and the city had suffered a nineteen-day transit strike in 1963. On the positive side, the Urban Mass Transportation Act now made federal funds available for pilot projects and capital improvements.

SEPTA's first years were spent in overseeing commuter rail subsidies and buying equipment and in frequently stormy negotiations for the purchase of the city bus and subway system from the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC). Speculative investors, including the contractor John McShain, had purchased undervalued PTC stock in the hope of reaping windfall profits when the property was sold, and there was a long history of conflict between the city's politicians and the transit companies. In the southwestern suburbs, the family-owned Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company was in relatively good health and ready to oppose a takeover or subsidized competition.

SEPTA inherited several earlier programs designed to bolster commuter rail service. The city had begun subsidizing service on both the Pennsylvania and Reading railroads within the city limits in 1958 in return for a flat 30-cent fare and 10-cent transfers to the PTC system. This program was given a permanent administrative structure with the creation of the Passenger Service Improvement Corporation of Philadelphia (PSIC) in July 1960. The city also purchased new rail cars and financed the electrification of the Reading line to Fox Chase in 1966.

To extend subsidized service into the suburbs, Philadelphia joined with Bucks, Chester and Montgomery Counties to form the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Company (SEPACT) in September 1961. Delaware County, the stronghold of the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, remained outside the compact. SEPACT conducted three short-term pilot projects with federal matching funds. SEPACT I improved commuter rail service to Lansdale and Hatboro on the Reading and to Levittown on the PRR. SEPACT II was a long-range plan, several of whose elements were realized over the next twenty-five years, the most important being the so-called Center City Commuter Connection to link the PRR and Reading lines end-to-end. SEPACT III was a crash program to support Reading Company service to Reading and Quakertown, which was threatened with termination.

SEPTA became the managing agent for SEPACT on November 1, 1965, and extended its rail service improvements into Delaware County the following year. At this point, SEPTA was fundamentally a subsidizing agency and was not responsible for actual operations. That changed on September 30, 1968, when SEPTA finally completed its purchase of the Philadelphia Transportation Company system, which became its City Division.

On January 29, 1970, SEPTA finally purchased the property of the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company (PSTC) from the Taylor family. Popularly known as the Red Arrow Lines, PSTC had been formed on April 13, 1936, by the merger of several trolley companies in the Delaware and Chester County suburbs that converged at the western end of the Market Street subway-elevated line at 69th Street. The car lines, which ran mostly in median strips or on private right-of-way, served West Chester, Ardmore, Media and Sharon Hill. On January 1, 1954, PSTC acquired the Philadelphia & Western Railroad, builder and operator of high-speed interurban lines to Strafford and Norristown. Beginning in the 1930s, the company developed a system of bus routes that supplemented its rail lines and eventually replaced all but the Norristown, Media and Sharon Hill routes.

In 1970, SEPTA operated the bulk of the subways, trolleys and buses serving the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. As a state agency, however, it could not operate in New Jersey. Buses entering the city from the New Jersey suburbs were operated by Public Service Co-ordinated Transport, later reorganized as Transport of New Jersey, and eventually part of SEPTA's counterpart, New Jersey Transit Corporation. The Delaware Bridge Line and Locust Street Subway became part of the Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO) line to Lindenwold, N.J., in January 1969. SEPTA extended the Broad Street Subway to the stadium complex at Pattison Avenue on April 8, 1973, and purchases new generations of buses, subway cars and trolleys, now called "light rail transit vehicles."

SEPTA had continued to subsidize commuter rail service since 1964, but actual operations were still in the hands of the Reading Company and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The PRR was succeeded by the Penn Central Transportation Company in 1968, which in turn entered bankruptcy in 1970. The Reading followed a year later. When Amtrak, a government corporation, assumed all long-distance rail passenger service on May 1, 1971, SEPTA was forced to subsidize Reading trains to Pottsville and Bethlehem, Pa., and Newark, N.J. that failed to meet Amtrak's criteria.

During this period, SEPTA began a number of improvements, including the extension of electrified service from Hatboro to Warminster in Bucks County on July 29, 1974, and the purchase of 144 new "Silverliner IV"cars.

The two major projects of this era were the extension of rail service directly to the terminals of the Philadelphia International Airport and the construction of the Center City Commuter Connection, a tunnel linking the PRR and Reading lines. The latter project also called for replacing the elevated 1893 Reading Terminal on Market Street with a subway type station just to the north.

The tunnel and new station were part of the city's ambitious "Market East" scheme for replacing the decaying retail district on East Market Street with what amounted to a suburban mall or "Gallery" in town that would occupy the area above and just to the south of the new railroad line and tunnel. The idea that suburban shoppers would take a train to a mall in the city instead of a car to one by a major interchange ran against the current of the times. Both the Airport Line and the Center City Commuter Connection faced lengthy delays, funding problems, and political opposition. The Center City Commuter Connection was not completed until 1984 and the Airport Line until April 1985.

By then, the rail landscape had changed drastically. Viable portions of the former PRR and Reading lines were acquired by the federally-subsidized Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) on April 1, 1976. Conrail then operated the commuter trains for SEPTA. At the same time, Amtrak took title to the former PRR lines used by SEPTA trains to Trenton, Wilmington and Paoli, while the commuter trains continued to be operated by Conrail. A number of the commuter routes that had little or no freight traffic were sold by Conrail or the bankrupt estates to SEPTA in 1976 and 1979. SEPTA ended service on the former Reading lines beyond the electrified commuter zone in the summer of 1981.

The commuter service burden proved as onerous to Conrail as it had to its bankrupt predecessors, so new federal legislation relieved it from such duties as of January 1, 1983. On that date, entire responsibility for operated commuter rail services was transferred to regional transportation authorities, SEPTA among them. SEPTA operated the service as its "Regional Rail Lines." Unlike in other metropolitan areas, the transfer in Philadelphia was accompanied by severe disruptions. SEPTA replaced former railroad operating rules and wage scales with the less generous ones previously applied to transit workers, and as a result, few qualified railroad workers changed employers. This led to deep cuts in service for about two weeks until new workers could be trained and qualified or induced to transfer from Conrail. This was followed by a long strike over rules and wages that lasted from March 15 to June 30. Service to Wilmington, Del., was cut back to Marcus Hook on January 11 after the State of Delaware refused to grant a subsidy. Service between Fox Chase and Newtown was discontinued on January 18 because of mechanical failures on the rail diesel cars. All remaining SEPTA services were covered by electric traction.

During the 1980s and 1990s, SEPTA was forced to make substantial repairs to badly-deteriorated repair shops, bridges, catenary, and signal systems on both its subway and commuter rail lines. Only six days after the Market East Station opened for through service on November 10, 1984, a bridge just north of the tunnel mouth was condemned as unsafe, forcing the suspension of all service on the ex-Reading lines into Center City for over a month. All of the former Reading bridges through North Philadelphia were later replaced over a period of several years.

Two lightly-used lines were abandoned because of poor track conditions, Elywn to West Chester on September 19, 1986, and Cynwyd-Ivy Ridge on October 16, 1986. Rail service on the Paoli Line was extended to Downingtown during the Schuylkill Expressway reconstruction on March 3, 1985, and to Pareksburg on April 1, 1990, tapping a growing area of Chester County. Service was later cut back to a new station at Thorndale. Subsidies from the Delaware Department of Transportation permitted the restoration of service to Wilmington on January 16, 1989, followed by a further extension to Newark.

Despite an almost complete rebuilding of Philadelphia's transit infrastructure, SEPTA faces greater problems than many of its counterparts in other cities. Chief among these is the absolute decline of Center City Philadelphia as an employment and shopping center and the lower density of both its older suburbs and the more recent exurban sprawl. SEPTA's fixed lines focus on spots where activities were concentrated fifty to a hundred years ago. Suburban travel into the city is increasingly for night life, culture, sports and other forms of entertainment, which, if they can be reached by public transit at all, require cumbersome and time-consuming transfers between trains and buses. Many spots, even in Center City, are more easily reached by auto. At the same time, SEPTA serves a large urban population, mostly without cars, who are absolutely dependent on it to reach jobs that are increasingly located in the suburbs. The picture is further complicated by the confrontational political relationship between the City and its older suburbs on the one hand and the rest of the state on the other, which has resulted in recurring crises over funding.

In the suburbs, SEPTA has continued to be hampered by continuing sprawl and dispersal, resulting in densities for both residential and workplace development that are too low and decentralized to generate the number of riders needed to support public transit. SEPTA has had some limited success with reverse commuting, bringing city dwellers to suburban jobs by a combination of trains and buses. SEPTA may also assume responsibility for Philadelphia-Harrisburg service from a beleaguered Amtrak, a move that might enlarge its base of support. All in all, it is likely that the future history of public transit in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area will be just as marked by contention and struggle as its past.

From the description of Agency history record. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 164035414

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is a public agency organized on February 17, 1964, by Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties for the purpose of acquiring and operating the privately owned transit companies in the region. During its first four years its activities were limited to subsidizing commuter rail service. It acquired the subway, bus and trolley system of the Philadelphia Transportation Company on September 30, 1968, and the smaller Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company on January 29, 1970. On January 1, 1983, it assumed the operation of the commuter rail lines, which it had heretofore merely subsidized, from the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail).

For a more complete history of SEPTA and its predecessors, see the associated agency history records.

From the description of Records, 1874-1989 (bulk, 1895-1976). (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122648803