Just When You Thought SEPTA & PPA Couldn’t Get Any Worse

Stumbled onto this beauty of headline this morning on Philly.com:

Cars are blocking bus stops everywhere in Philly. The PPA has a simple fix

I live along a bus route. I rarely see anyone parked in a bus lane. But, apparently, there’s an epidemic of ride-sharing cars, taxis, and delivery vehicles parking in the “No Stopping” designated Bus Zones. These parking/stopping violators are allegedly holding up traffic and putting SEPTA riders at risk by prohibiting the buses from entering the Bus Zones and allowing traffic to flow normally while passengers ingress/egress directly and safely to the sidewalk.

“You want to curb that behavior,” said Scott Petri, who became the PPA’s executive director at the beginning of the year. “You want it to drop dramatically.”

“Just reviewing our cameras showed loads of parking violations in bus zones,” said Frank Kelly, SEPTA’s assistant general manager for government affairs.

(via philly.com)

SEPTA and the PPA’s solution? They want to use the cameras on SEPTA buses to document violators and issue tickets via the mail. The bus drivers would basically become part-time PPA ticket-writers.

Here, bus drivers can use a trigger on the bus to take pictures with the forward-facing camera, Petri said, and those pictures of violators could be sent to the PPA, which would then issue a violation to that license plate. (via philly.com)

Violators would be fined $76 in center city and $51 in the rest of the city. This is an egregious attempt at a cash-grab by the PPA, probably with kickbacks to SEPTA. Would the bus drivers receive raises for the extra work they’re performing? Do we really want bus drivers looking for violators and their trigger while approaching a bus stop? If they waited until the bus wasn’t moving they would most likely be alongside the violators or slightly in front of and impossible to catch the license plate.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more concerned with a bus driver coming to a safe and complete stop at intersections, which often has awaiting passengers standing in the street.

When is the last time anyone has seen a SEPTA bus pull into a bus zone, load passengers, then attempt to merge back into the flow of traffic? I’ll tell you the last time I saw one while living along a bus route and frequently visiting center city…NEVER.

To prove my point, here are some photos I took this morning over the span of about 30 minutes at a corner bus stop.

The perspective makes it look like the Civic may be in the Bus Zone, but it is deceiving. Here is the same parked car from a different angle.

And another angle:

So what happens when a woman with a cane flags the bus down at the stop?

Of course the bus doesn’t use the Bus Zone BECAUSE THEY NEVER DO.

Here’s another picture of another corner.

SEPTA may argue that the construction crew in the middle of South Street prohibited the bus from pulling over, but that’s not true. That may have been true if there wasn’t an open parking spot just in front of the Bus Zone. There was plenty of room as shown here:

Oh, and here’s another bus not using a Bus Zone and blocking traffic on 4th Street while a passenger disembarks the bus. Nice 76ers wrap, though.

These examples were all in the span of about a half an hour. I could find dozens more just as easily.

The reality is that Bus Zones are waste of parking spots in a city where parking is scarce simply because they are never used. They are good in theory, but they aren’t practical. Bus drivers do not want to pull into the zone and then rely on polite drivers to yield to them so they can safely merge into traffic.

Passengers also routinely wait in the street to enter the buses. They aren’t standing on sidewalks.

This proposed move by SEPTA and the PPA has nothing to do with safety and is all about money. Shame on the PPA and SEPTA, two organizations who seem to continually have financial troubles, especially the PPA.

If the PPA is gonna screw Philadelphians more than they already do, at least be upfront about it. Don’t give us the safety and traffic disruption argument when buses never use those jawns. They are simply looking for a way to generate more revenue without hiring more ticket-writers.

Just when you thought they couldn’t get any worse.

*if you have any photos of buses not using bus zones tweet me or email to jawnville@gmail.com