SEPTA is one of the few agencies in the U.S. that operates a multi-modal transit system, with buses, trolleys, trackless trolleys, high-speed lines and regional rail.

SEPTA is one of the few agencies in the U.S. that operates a multi-modal transit system, with buses, trolleys, trackless trolleys, high-speed lines and regional rail.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is the nation's sixth-largest public transportation system. SEPTA's estimated 2,202-square-mile service area includes Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties. The system serves more than one-half million customers daily and provided approximately 330 million (unlinked) passenger trips in FY 2009. SEPTA's service also extends to Trenton and West Trenton, N.J., and Newark, Del., via its regional rail system.

SEPTA is one of the few agencies in the U.S. that operates a multi-modal transit system, with buses, trolleys, trackless trolleys, high-speed lines and regional rail.

In Philadelphia, its city transit operations serves a network of 84 subway-elevated, trolley, trackless trolley and bus routes. In FY 2009, approximately 928,000 (unlinked) passenger trips were generated per weekday.

SEPTA's railroad operations serves all five counties with a network of 13 regional rail lines, serving approximately 124,000 (unlinked) passenger trips per day.

Suburban operations (Victory and Frontier Divisions) provides service in the suburbs, north and west of the City of Philadelphia, with a network of 47 bus, trolley and heavy rail routes generating approximately 68,000 (unlinked) passenger trips per day.

SEPTA's paratransit service, Customized Community Transportation, serves Philadelphia and the surrounding counties and schedules approximately 7,100 customized weekday trips for seniors and persons with disabilities.

SEPTA's seven small bus circulator and shuttle services connect fixed-route operations to business, health and educational centers, as well as to park-and-ride facilities. In Fiscal Year 2009, these services provided transportation for approximately 4,000 passengers per weekday.

SEPTA GM Joseph M. Casey has headed the agency for the past three years and, come January, will have worked for the agency for 29 years. He began his career at SEPTA as a senior auditor, moving up the ranks to CFO before becoming GM. Casey spoke with METRO Executive Editor Janna Starcic about changes at the transit authority and his vision for the future.

METRO: where do things stand for you budget wise and how have you been impacted by the economy?

We are unique in the industry. Across the country, people are cutting service and having fare increases, well above inflation rates. We've been impacted by the economy, but not at the level the other agencies in other cities are. On the expense side, healthcare continues to have double-digit growth, prescription drugs and our claims have been higher, which I believe is due to the economy, but overall on the revenue side, our revenue has been holding its own.

Last year, aside from a seven-day strike and the winter storms we encountered, ridership was pretty much where it was the year before. And so far, it's up a little bit, so we are very encouraged that the economy didn't adversely affect our ridership.

However, on the subsidy side, it is a drop, the overall sales tax for the state is down and, therefore, the amount that we receive from the state is also down. So, that is a problem going forward. On top of that, the transportation funding package assumed that they were going to toll I-80 and provide much needed funds for both us and the highway folks. That was turned down by the federal government, which has created a big hole on the capital side for us. So, on the operating side, we are doing relatively well. But on the capital side, it's disastrous for us.

And as you know, we are probably one of the older systems in the nation and need significant capital dollars for state of good repair.

Tell me about SEPTA's state of good repair initiatives.

We have about 350 bridges that we are responsible for. Half of those bridges are over 75 years old and half of them are over 100 years old — they have to be replaced. I have 19 substations on the regional rail, 16 of them are over 75 years old and, generally, they have a useful life of 50 years.

I'm also replacing 70 of my railcars, which are 47 years old, with 120 new Silverliner V railcars [manufactured by Hyundai Rotem USA Corp.]

Unfortunately, we have spent most of our capital dollars on the brick and mortar of the system. We rebuilt the Market-Frankford Line from Market Street north and west of City Hall. So, we really spent a lot of capital dollars on that at the deference of some of the new technologies, such as smart cards systems. We needed to rebuild our systems from scratch.

We deferred a total of 22 projects until our funding on the capital is resolved. It's a lot of critical projects: City Hall Station is one of them, Jenkintown Substation is another. The Jenkintown Substation will be responsible for 50 percent of our regional rail passenger service, and, if that fails, half of the system will go down. So, those are critical projects that we have to proceed with.

[PAGEBREAK]Looking beyond funding, what are other significant challenges your system faces?

One of our challenges is getting into smart card technology. What we are trying to do is have a system that has an open payment technology, which not only allows a proprietary card issued by SEPTA but also any banking card or, if you are enrolled in the EZ-Pass program, you can access your account and use transit against that account. We submitted a TIGER II grant application to fund this project.

One of the other challenges is positive train control [PTC] on the regional rail systems. We have a contract out there, but I think the deadline is aggressive and that the industry, as a whole, believes that it's aggressive. We aren't even sure that the technology is out there to accomplish this, so we are trying to get the agencies together to convince the FRA that they should do a pilot in this arena and make sure that it's successful and try to roll out that system to all the properties.

In the meantime, we have an engineering firm under contract to develop [PTC]. That project bumps a lot of other projects off the table because of the mandate that we are required to meet.

How have you improved customer service?

That's one of my priorities for this organization — to improve customer service. I've identified four areas that I call the four C's: Cleanliness, communication, convenience and courtesy. We have specific goals in each of those areas to improve the experience for our riders. Number one is courtesy. We bring our front line people in and discuss what their issues are and what we expect of them. Basically, trying to live by the golden rule, to treat others as you would like to be treated. We think we've had a positive effect on the experience that our customers have. The commendations we've received since I implemented this program have gone up and up. And, the letters that I get are really fantastic, like someone that used to live in the area but moved out and has returned and their experience is a lot more positive.

One of the things I did in downtown locations was, rather than have the customer service area in the corner office where you can barely find it in the station, I moved the kiosk front and center in the middle of the station, so it's readily accessible. It's little things like that that have really made a difference.

We also have a SEPTA Connect [program], where we have SEPTA managers going out to various sites and listening to the issues our customers have and working with them. We also have a passenger etiquette complaint campaign, so they focus on their own behavior and how their behavior affects other passengers. That's been moderately successful.

We have a Youth Advisory Council that we started to help deal with the next generation of riders and the issues they are concerned about - whether it's safety or communication - to get them interested in the transit system. I've been riding the system since I was in high school. I know as a customer what I expect, I believe I know what our customers expect, and we needed to train our employees to meet those expectations.

Discuss how your Website has changed and how it fits into the customer service picture?

We redeveloped our Website; we have what we call, Chat Now, where you can have a live chat with customer service. We also have short videos providing rider information. A lot of that was developed in conjunction with the Youth Advisory Council as to what the younger generation is looking for. We are also developing various things where you can upload information from the Website onto your mobile phone, such as route planning and schedule information.

What other improvements have you implemented on the system?

We introduced the Quiet Car two years ago with the regional rail. We are looking to expand that because it has proven to be quite popular.

Recently, although some people weren't too happy about it, we changed the names of the regional rail system. Some people would come into Center City, — and virtually 95 percent of our trips come into [this station] — and when they go home they look for the R designation R5 or R3 [trains], not realizing that we have two trains with that designation, so they end up getting on the wrong train going in the wrong direction. It was problematic for us, for the conductors and for the individuals. [Having customers] focus on the destination of the train and not focusing on the R designation is one of the things that we developed. It was for the occasional riders, so that they will have a positive experience when they use our system.

[PAGEBREAK]Discuss your vision for sustainability.

Sustainability is one of my strategic goals. We have a generator [in the administrative building] that converts excess steam during the winter time into electricity. We installed motion detectors so the lights will turn off when there is no movement in the room. One of the easiest things I did was put the cleaners on the day shift, so rather than having to keep the building heat and electricity on after five o'clock, I can shut down the system at 5:30. That was fantastic for energy savings; I saved 20 percent on energy consumption. We also have LED lighting in the building.

In addition to our [New Flyer] hybrid buses, which have helped to reduce our energy consumption, we are also doing a lot of recycling. For the consumers we have recycling at Center City stations. We also do a lot of recycling in the shops — scrap metal; mercury is recovered from fluorescent lamps; used ties are disposed of; water is reclaimed at the washing operations; antifreeze and waste oil is recycled.

We also have a partnership with a new energy company Viridity, where their [energy storage and software system] will capture energy through "train braking" on the Market-Frankford Line. So, when we brake the energy will be stored in a battery, to be either used on our system or it can be sold on the power grid. We are testing this at one substation to see how effective it can be, but the overall goal is to put it on the whole system. We think that we can reduce our energy consumption by 20 percent. And, we think there might be another 10 percent in selling it on the power grid. So, you talk about cost reduction/revenues of 30 percent.

Tell me about other projects in the works.

We are looking for a subscription type [program] where an individual can subscribe to a particular line, so if there are any delays on their line they can receive an email notification. We are looking at rolling that out pretty quickly. We are also exploring NextBus technology; we'd like to at least put that at key stations.

What are you doing to generate revenue?

You've probably heard about the [naming rights deal at] AT&T station with Titan Advertising? That was a pretty production deal. The total yield will be over $5 million dollars over five years and that's strictly naming rights. We are pursuing a couple of other deals. Hopefully, they will be as productive.

We also are looking at our billboards wherever we can. We are required under state mandate to proceed with alternative measures for advertising generation. We are looking at digital billboards on SEPTA property, digital ads on the new Silverliner [railcars]. We are also exploring Website advertising.

In addition to your rail roadeo, you recently held your bus and maintenance roadeo. Tell me about it.

I think the roadeo is a big morale booster, it provides positive competition amongst the different depots and this event that we had was probably the most-attended event ever. At the same time, we celebrated receiving the 1,000th vehicle from New Flyer and their 30,000th production vehicle. We think it's healthy to have a competition; the camaraderie around the drivers and the mechanics is just fantastic. It's an overall appreciation of the best of the best in our company.

How do the new hybrid buses fit into your sustainability program?

Currently, we have about 350 hybrid vehicles purchased through New Flyer. We've had a positive experience with them in terms of reduction in fuel use. We're talking about a savings of 25 to 30 percent fuel efficiency. Also, we've had a positive experience on the maintenance side as far as the parts lasting longer.

What is your overview of the state of the public transportation industry?

Let me take a global approach. I did a little traveling in Europe last year, and the systems are great over there. The money is invested over there to make them great, to offer good service to encourage people to take it. When you have $8-a-gallon gasoline — and that's pretty common in Europe — they use that money to improve their transit system. That's a good thing for the environment and for reducing consumption of oil. It's very cheap here to operate an automobile, versus in Europe. As long as we continue those policies at the national level, transit is never going to pick up.

They did a study here in Pennsylvania where each rider owns on average 1.3 automobiles. That's ridiculous! We need a policy that encourages transit, whether that's increase the gas, or like what they do in London with congestion pricing. So yes, you can operate an automobile, but [it's going to cost]. You are going to pay for the damage you do to the environment and for the consumption of the limited resources of oil. And, we are going to put that toward public transit to make people use public transit. That's the way the country has to go.

 

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