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Chester County
Topic Started: Mar 17 2008, 12:14 PM (443 Views)
rider65
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KRAPF’S COACHES INC. OF WEST WHITELAND SAYS IT HAS IMPROVED THE A BUS SERVICE SINCE 1992, BUT SOME PROBLEMS LINGER
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer
Russell Corbin is one of the 1,000 people who ride the Krapf A bus on weekdays.

Corbin is a happy rider, but not everyone is.

The West Chester resident takes the bus to doctor’s appointments in Downingtown.

“I’m not too proud to ride the bus. It’s interesting, I have conversations,” Corbin said. “It’s fun to ride the bus.”

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In contrast, Tamika Boggs thinks the bus is “horrible.” One recent day, she said, there was no 10 a.m., 11 a.m. or noon bus.

“They all didn’t come,” Boggs, of Coatesville, said.

Lisa Lucas said she waited 30 minutes for a bus one day to take her 5-year-old daughter to the doctor’s office because she didn’t want the sick child to walk six blocks in the cold. Because the bus was late, the child was outside for the same length of time anyway, she said.

But Lucas said she does like the bus drivers.

“They are all always nice,” Lucas said. “You can wave them down and they’ll stop for you even if you are not at the corner.”

Gary Krapf, president of Krapf’s Coaches Inc. of West Whiteland, said the family-run transportation company took over the A bus in 1992 as a private route.

All of its funding comes through the fare box, Krapf said.

“It’s a stretch,” Krapf said.

It is not subsidized like SEPTA, which gets up to 70 percent of its operating costs from the state government, Krapf noted.

“They are operating on your tax dollar,” Krapf said.

And Krapf should know. It operates four lines in Chester County for SEPTA, two others for Transportation Management Association of Chester County and several corporate shuttles.

Subsidized or not, when the bus is late or breaks down, it aggravates customers.

Chris Cummins of Coatesville is so tired of the Krapf A bus problems that he has started a petition.

So far he has 30 signatures, he said.

“It happens all the time,” Cummins said. “Then they put us on school buses but when you’re standing, there is nothing to hold on to. When the bus stops, people fall forward. It’s not safe.”

Further, school bus seats were designed for children, Cummins notes. One elderly customer could not get out of the tight quarters and Cummins said he and another passenger had to lift him out.

At 6 feet tall, Cummins said it is hard for him to get in and out of school bus seats.

“People are tired of this, they want something done,” Cummins said.

Krapf said the Route A buses are refurbished buses purchased from other transit companies. All of the other Krapf equipment is bought new, Krapf said. But a new transit bus costs $300,000, and the Route A would not sustain that type of investment.

Krapf operates three buses on the A line. If one breaks down and no other transit bus is available, “we use a school bus to resolve the problem,” Krapf said.

The company has applied to the Public Utility Commission for an increase in the fares on the A route, now $1.85. With that additional money, the company will purchase another transit bus so that an extra bus will be dedicated to the route in case of mechanical failure, he said.

Krapf believes the company has done much to improve the A bus service.

When Krapf took over the A bus, it operated 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Today it runs from 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and has weekend rounds, new bus signs and new passenger shelters, Krapf said.

As for the petition, Krapf said if the individual wishes to bring it to the company’s attention, the company will review it.

Gary Smith, president and chief executive of the Chester County Economic Development Council, has watched and worked with public transportation issues for years.

“Western Chester County would not have bus service if it were not for the Krapf company,” Smith said.

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rider65
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Development history has hindered public transit
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer
The push to get people out of their cars and onto public transportation, especially buses, has been talked about at length by planners, pundits and politicians alike.

Though it sounds like a good idea, questions of practicality remain where the rubber meets the road.

Based on 2000 U.S. Census data, only a third of the county’s population lives within a quarter-mile of public transportation. For most Chester County residents who live in residential developments miles from a main artery, catching a bus is not an option.

“It ain’t Philadelphia, and it ain’t Delaware County,” concedes Michael Herron, executive director of the Transportation Management Authority of Chester County.

Herron notes Chester County was developed differently — in a way that makes residents much more dependent on the automobile.

“Public transportation was an overlay in Chester County after the fact,” Herron said, adding that places with population density such as West Chester, Phoenixville and Kennett Square do have bus service that people can walk to.

But the problem, according to Herron, is that if residents in Chester Springs, for example, wanted bus service to Great Valley Corporate Center, “I’d love to give them a bus — but who would pay for it?”

Bus service is subsidized heavily through the state or federal Welfare to Work programs. Only about 40 percent of the cost to run a bus comes from the fare box. And money for public transit is limited.

The investment has to follow population density and go where the businesses are, said Mark Cassell, TMACC’s senior director of business development and operations. Year over year, ridership growth is up 15 to 20 percent on buses that serve Chester County riders, Cassell said.

“It’s good, but it could be better,” Cassell said.

SEPTA Routes 205 and 306 are relatively new, starting in May 2007 and are funded as part of the Route 202 Section 300 project.

In the future, the Route 99 bus is being studied as part of the 2009 Annual Service Plan to improve service within and beyond Phoenixville. Public hearings will be conducted this spring, SEPTA officials said.

SEPTA is also examining the feasibility of enhancing service on routes 99, 104, 120 and 124 that would improve frequency, offer new trip opportunities and in some cases reduce crowded conditions, SEPTA officials said.

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rider65
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Despite options, getting around Chester County can be a challenge
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer

Route 202 during rush hourFirst in a series
Magali Tranie left a job in Conshohocken because of the commute, much of it on Route 202.

Tranie said she drove the 30 miles a couple of times at mid-day during the interview process. Though she said she had heard traffic was heavy during morning and evening rush hours, she figured, “How bad could it be?”

Once she got the job, she found out. She joined the tens of thousands motorists on Route 202 who commute to work, a number that is growing.

The West Brandywine resident said when she left her house at 7:15 in the morning the backup started at Route 340 ramps on the Route 30 Bypass in Caln. It got worse when the bypass merged onto the heavily traveled Route 202 in East Whiteland and again on the Schuylkill Expressway.

“And there was never any reason for the backup,” Tranie said. “You were driving and you just stopped.”

The commute that started at 45 minutes grew longer over time, stretching to an hour and 15 minutes by the time Tranie gave her notice.

“There was no construction, nothing to justify the change. It just got slower and slower. I could never figure out why,” said Trainie, who is now a marketing and communications specialist at Penn State Great Valley where she starts work at 9:30 in the morning, missing much of the logjam.

“That commute did me in,” Tranie said of her former job.

But Tranie only catches a break one way. The bumper-to-bumper traffic south on her way home starts at 3:30 p.m. and doesn’t let up until 7 p.m. Tranie knows because she can watch it from her office at Penn State overlooking Route 202.

Commuting is rough from western Chester County, Tranie notes. She would like to live closer to work, maybe in the Malvern area, but acknowledges living on the Main Line is financially out of reach.

Tranie is not the only one to notice more cars and longer commutes, especially on Route 202.

The average commute time in the county has increased 40 percent in the past five to seven years, according to the Transportation Management Association of Chester County.

Meanwhile, TMACC says, the number of licensed drivers in Chester County is up 18.5 percent from 1997 to 2006.

So where are they headed on their daily commute?

The Route 202 Corridor, referred to as the economic engine of the state by many business groups, is home to a staggering 130,000 employees within a seven-mile radius of Great Valley, TMACC says.

Businesses in the Great Valley Corporate Center have 30,000 employees, the Vanguard Group has 10,000, Wyeth has 7,000, joining nearby big employers such as Siemens, Microsoft, Vishay and QVC to make the area a top destination for commuters.

And the logjams are expected to only get worse.

In two years, the 100-acre Uptown Worthington, a mixed-use development of retail, offices and residential space at the former Worthington Steel property at Routes 29 and 202, will open. With it will come another 5,000 on-site employees along with a projected 7 million visitors a year, TMACC reports.

Despite the delays in traffic, getting people into carpools, van pools or public transportation has been a tough sell.

“Single occupant cars, you can see visually. It is difficult for people in the suburbs to give up the ghost,” said Michael Herron, TMACC’s executive director. “Even if you had public transportation on every major highway, 24 hours a day, you would still have people driving their cars.”

Thus the need to widen Route 202 Section 300 — seven miles from the Exton Bypass in East Whiteland to North Valley Road in Tredyffrin.

“Route 202 is the single most important artery in Chester County,” Herron said. “And Section 300 is important to hundreds of thousands of employees in and around Great Valley. It is an extremely important economic link to the business community.”

And it is extremely busy.

According to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the stretch between routes 401 and 29 has the most daily traffic in the limits of the Section 300 project with 75,411 vehicles on weekdays in 2008 compared to 67,833 in 1998.

There are three ways to expedite traffic, explains Louis R. Belmonte, district traffic engineer at PennDOT.

First, there is technology, such as PennDOT’s Intelligent Transportation System, a $13 million project that put message signs and cameras on the Route 30 Bypass and Route 202. The cameras can be watched at www.penndot.com so commuters can check on traffic conditions from home, office or on their iPhones.

Next, there is increased capacity.

Route 202 Section 400, for instance, was widened from four to six lanes. The five-year project was completed in 2005 at a cost of $280 million. The five-mile stretch from North Valley Road in Tredyffrin to Gulph Road in Upper Merion sees 70,000 to 105,000 cars a day.

Widening Section 300 is a top priority for PennDOT. It is currently doing bridge work over the section. The Route 30 Bypass from Valley to Caln has had ramp improvements.

Blemonte’s last solution to improving traffic is the use of public transportation, a difficult concept for suburban drivers to embrace. Some, however, are trying.



Riding the rails

Monday through Friday, Mindy Kring starts her morning commute at the R5 Thorndale train station boarding the 6:55. She ends her work day when her train pulls into Thorndale at 6:47 at night.

She has been making the torturous commute since 1992.

“You just have to do it,” Kring said, standing on the platform in the pre-dawn hours on a February morning.

On the train, “I do everything; open mail, pay bills, read the paper, read fiction, do Sunday School papers, and when I take courses, I study,” Kring said. “Naps on the train help, it’s a long day.”

Living in Caln and working in Center City Philadelphia is her choice, Kring acknowledges.

But it did not start out that way. The paralegal got her job with Sunoco in 1988 when the refining and marketing company had offices in Radnor. Four years later, it consolidated staff in Philadelphia.

The train is a better option than driving for the 42-year-old Kring. Driving is nerve wracking, takes an hour and 20 minutes and Center City parking costs a brutal $12 to $20 a day, she said.

A SEPTA weekly TrailPass from Thorndale costs $50.50 plus a dollar a day to park at the station.

The train is quiet. The “regulars” keep cell phone calls short, Kring said. Occasionally there is a talker, but for the most part, commuters respect each other.

“Thankfully, the station is so convenient for me,” Kring said. “I just wish there were a few more trains in off-hours.”

SEPTA’s R5, which stops at 10 train stations in Chester County, is the heaviest traveled SEPTA rail line with 6.7 million riders in 2007 compared to 5.3 million a decade ago.

Thomas H. McIntyre, director of government and municipal services at the Chester County Economic Development Council, also believes SEPTA should step up service at the western end of the R5, including new service to Coatesville and Parkesburg where Amtrak has stations.

“It’s frustrating,” McIntyre said of the council’s attempts to interest SEPTA in Coatesville.

The ridership is there according to the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which forecasts the demand for train service to grow by 456 new daily riders by 2020.

And there are other issues with train service in Chester County. The most significant is the long anticipated Paoli Transportation Center, a proposed central location for trains, buses and taxis. The proposal, which calls for a larger station, offices and condominiums, has been in the planning stages for the last 16 years.



The wheels on the bus ...



Sylvester Whitmore has been riding the A bus to work for 10 years, five days a week from Coatesville to his job at the Laborer’s District Council Education & Training Fund in West Whiteland.

But not every day is easy.

On payday, Whitmore takes the bus to Exton, picks up his check, takes another bus back to Coatesville to a check cashing business, cashes the check and gets across Lincoln Highway in time to catch the same bus on its return trip to Exton so he can go to work.

Whitmore is saving for a car.

“I’m tired of this,” Whitmore said. “It’s a lot of waiting.”

Whitmore takes Krapf’s Coach A bus, which gets 1,000 riders on weekdays.

Krapf has operated the A bus since 1992 when it took over the line. The line is not subsidized by the government. It operates solely from fare box revenues. Mechanical problems happen, which sometimes require passengers to be shifted to school buses.

Making it work “is a stretch,” said Gary Krapf, president of Krapf Coaches.

Krapf is also the subcontractor for SEPTA’s 204, 205, 306 and 314 bus routes and for the Transportation Management Association’s SCCOOT and Coatesville Link buses.




The long wait



Across the board, from Section 300 of Route 202 to the Paoli Transportation Center to public transit, the business community is tired of the lack of infrastructure funding, say chamber presidents, economic development experts and elected officials.

Improving infrastructure takes money, money Pennsylvania’a Act 44 was designed to generate.

The Legislature approved Act 44 in July. The plan calls for raising turnpike tolls by 25 percent next year and an estimated 3 percent a year thereafter and imposing the same toll rates on I-80, which has been opposed by I-80 corridor leaders.

The measure to toll I-80 is before the Federal Highway Administation, waiting for a decision on approval.

If the federal government denies tolling I-80, the amount of money available to improve the state’s ailing roads, bridges and public transit systems will be significantly reduced forcing lawmakers to find another solution.

Right now, waiting is half the battle. The agency has been studying road-tolling requests by two other states for the past three years and still hasn’t decided.

Even if I-80 tolls are approved, it would provide significant, but not sufficient, funding for transportation needs, the DVRPC said.

To begin to address the gap, the commission assembled a laundry list of funding options that include: fees on rental or leased vehicles, cigarette tax, earned income tax, fuel tax, hotel room tax, parking tax, regional toll surcharge, sales tax, tire tax, toll exit fees, among many others.

“Transportation is critical to the success of the region,” the commission concluded.

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rider65
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Sidetracked: Chester County’s frustrating commuter rail saga
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer

Barry CassidyAll aboard the saga of train service in Chester County.
Some 191,855 Chester County riders boarded Amtrak’s Keystone line that links Philadelphia with Harrisburg with five stops in Chester County in 2006, the most recent numbers available. VIDEO: Riding on SEPTA
VIDEO:Route 202 Commute

SEPTA’s R5, the commuter route from Thorndale to Center City over the same tracks, served 5,311 Philadelphia-bound commuters each weekday from 10 Chester County stations in 2007. The most riders got on at Paoli, 1,214.

Riders, the business community and county planners alike would like upgraded stations, more frequent and extended service from both rail providers.

Though there have been attempts at new rail service, most have failed. But new ones have popped up in their place.

The failed list starts with the Schuylkill Valley Metro — a long talked-about rail line connecting Philadelphia and Reading with a stop in Phoenixville.

It has been sidelined.

In its place is a scaled-down version now being studied by a Montgomery County task force that is called the R6 extension.

The R6 is the SEPTA commuter rail line that runs from Philadelphia to Norristown.

What the task force is studying now is the feasibility of having passengers change in Norristown onto a diesel engine passenger train that would run through Reading and terminate in Wyomissing. A Chester County stop would be in Phoenixville.

The rough estimate for a plan that uses diesel engines and existing track is about $800 million.

“We’re looking at everything, private money, public money, federal money, money from the state, everyone would have to bring something to the table,” said Leo D. Bagley, transportation section chief for the Montgomery County Planning Commission.

There were also plans to revive a West Chester line.

Alas, that was sidelined as well.

The newest glimmer of hope for rail riders from northern Chester County who want to go to Great Valley and the Paoli train station is Barry Cassidy, the Phoenixville Main Street Manager who wants to make tracks.

Cassidy has put together a proposal that would establish the Phoenixville-Main Line Rail Link.

“We’re studying a line from Phoenixville to Paoli through Great Valley Corporate Center that would hit Atwater and go through five brownfields,” Cassidy said.

Eventually, it would be extended north to Oaks in Montgomery County, he said.

The proposed passenger rail line would use some track owned by the freight company Northfolk Southern that goes from Phoenixville to Devault. The plan would then entail building tracks over right-of-way land dedicated to rail use and link up with rail service at the Paoli train station.

He is not doing it alone.

Cassidy has established the Citizens for the Train, a steering committee that started with 26 people and grew to 66 at its first meeting.

“We’re still seeking coalition members,” Cassidy said, adding they will be needed when the group breaks up into subcommittees.

Consulting company Gannett Fleming is doing the study to see “if we have a project,” Cassidy said. Study results will be ready April 11.

The study that will identify trip generation, technology, service plan and potential costs is costing the Citizens for the Train $15,000. Cassidy raised the money privately.

“We’re moving with breakneck speed,” Cassidy said. “We’re doing this with private money to avoid (government) agency politics.”

If the study shows there is viability, the next step is a feasibility study at $200,000, which Cassidy is confident he can also raise privately.

Amtrak does not get good reviews from Ronald T. Bailey, executive director of the Chester County Planning Commission.

Expanded service and train station improvements are a “chronic problem for Amtrak,” Bailey said.

The Amtrak station in Lancaster has needed upgrades for the last 17 to 18 years, Bailey noted. As for Paradise, Parkesburg, Atglen and Downingtown, Amtrak has done nothing.

Not so, says Amtrak.

According to Rich Esposito, district manager for Amtrak’s Keystone line, the Philadelphia suburbs have not been forgotten.

In October 2006, six more trips were added to the Keystone schedule, bringing the total to 28 trips on weekdays and 16 trips on weekends. Keystone has gone from diesel to electric power which increased speed, and therefore allowed more frequency of trips. Major infrastructure improvements were also made so that trips on both Amtrak and SEPTA’s R5 were would be smoother, Esposito said.

The train stations at Elizabethtown and Lancaster are being renovated. Those projects will be completed by the end of 2008. Plans to renovate Mt. Joy and Coatesville are also getting under way and, hopefully, Parkesburg will also be started soon, Esposito said.

Meanwhile, stepping up SEPTA service on the R5 was studied by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. It published a report in 2007 to examine extending SEPTA rail service west of Thorndale to Atglen, Parkesburg and Coatesville.

Those stations had service once but it was discontinued in 1995 due to low ridership of about 120 daily.

The study found that by 2020, because of all the new residential development in western Chester County, some 456 new riders would use the extended service.

Depending on the scenario, the DVRPC said it would cost a minium of $9 million and a maximum of $24 million to extend the service. Operating costs would range between $1.7 million and $5 million a year.

Felipe Suarez, SEPTA spokesman, commented, “we don’t have immediate plans to expand the R5 rail service in Chester County.”

Thomas H. McIntyre, director of government and municipal affairs at the Chester County Economic Development Council, acknowledged his efforts to interest SEPTA in the extended rail service that he believes would help in the redevelopment of Coatesville is going slowly.

“It’s frustrating,” McIntyre said.

SEPTA’s R5 is the main commuter rail route to Philadelphia, moving 5.5 million riders a year, the transit agency’s most heavily used line.

Melissa Arnold lives in Tredyffrin and walks to the Paoli train station a couple of times a week to take a SEPTA train to her job at a photo studio in Philadelphia.

“I like it more than I hate it,” said Arnold, who reads the newspaper on the train, or listens to music and talks on her cell phone.

While Chester County residents can find their way to Philadelphia — and in 2000 there were 10,568 of them on the average weekday according to the U.S Census, the 7,810 Philadelphia residents commuting to Chester County are not served as well.

People would take the R5 to Malvern, get off, look around and say, “where’s this Great Valley place,” remembers Gary Smith, president and chief executive of the Economic Development Council.

Such is the disconnect between public transportation and the Route 202 corridor, the largest concentration of corporations and employers in Chester County.

While Great Valley Corporate Center shares a ZIP code with the Borough of Malvern, the business park is in East Whiteland, several miles away from the borough and its train station.

The same is true with corporate centers in Uwchlan, West Whiteland, Tredyffrin and Willistown that have Exton, Paoli, Berwyn or Devon mailing address but are miles from the train stations with those names.

It was Willard G. “Bill” Rouse, developer of the Great Valley Corporate Center, who figured out how to get the money through each new business that came into the park in order to provide the buses from Paoli train station to the employers at the business parks, Smith said.

“Now you see the jitneys with all the logos sitting at the Paoli train station,” Smith said.

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