Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 3: SEPTA Regional Rail Meltdown 1979-1992

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Featuring the one and only American Pacer! Slides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkWxbAoOK2o Today @aliceavizandum, @donoteat1, and @Landerson112358 talk about how what could have been the greatest public transit improvement in American history was completely bungled, due to mismanagement, lack of foresight, and union-busting.

All right, everyone welcome to the third episode of Well, there's your problem, which is a a podcast with slides about engineering disasters I'm Justin Rosniak We're gonna do a pronoun check net this time. We didn't do that last time Just just to annoy people also for inclusivity My pronouns are he him And I'm my screen names do not eat. I also do YouTube videos as well as this Yeah, sure

Liam Anderson my pronouns are he him I Retweet really weird national security Twitter and get in a fight in do not eat dimensions so Alice cold. Well Kelly she and her if you please I'm Alice Alves and I'm on Twitter all right, so This podcast about engineering disasters, right, but not every disaster is the sudden catastrophe Some disasters happen slowly over the course of years and we never really fully comprehend, you know, the full ramifications until You know way after

The fact so that we're going to talk about the septa regional rail meltdown between about 1979 and 1992 Oh hell, yeah I had a thought with this Originally having like one where we're not talking about like a column punching through something or something snapping Makes me think. Oh, well, this one's easy. It doesn't have like a death toll associated with it. No one died because yeah, people died And it One person died because of this. Okay, fine. Never mind

But my other thing was a second after that I realized the collapse of an an entire passenger rail system and therefore presumably shifting people onto cars In between air pollution and traffic accidents probably killed more people than either of our previous two episodes. Yes Yeah, pretty much without question. Yeah, so yeah Hmm Delightful love a structural factor. So anyway, let's uh, let's get into why old timers say SEPTA, you know, the southeastern pennsylvania transportation authority

Actually stands for the society for the elimination of passenger trains in america Mmm Roasted that's such a sad sack poster you've put up there too. It's like don't yell at me I'm trying. They still have those around philly and every time I see one. I'm just like guys. Come on, man And I'll be I'll be like on facebook or on twitter defending scepter. I'm just like man. What am I doing? Like I fucking hate taking scepter Being a scepter reply guy. That's cool All right, so let's do some background. There's these two railroads, right? We have the pennsylvania railroad

And the philadelphia and redding railroad, right? They ran commuter trains into philadelphia You know as well as doing a lot of other railroad shit, you know freight long-distance passenger trains And they had two separate railroad terminals the pennsylvania railroad had suburban station Which was underground underneath this office building and then the redding company had Redding terminal, which was you know an above ground terminal behind this big headhouse, right So they're both mostly electrified

They have the same electrical system powering both commuter rail systems And you know, they're but they're two separate systems like completely separate until 1968 the pennsylvania railroad goes bust it becomes penn central And then penn central goes bust in 1976 in the largest bankruptcy in the history of the world until enron And both these companies in the fallout are reorganized into a company called con rail, which is a sort of quasi nationalized freight railroad, which at this point It does not uh, it doesn't do passenger service anymore except for commuter rail in certain cities

Okay, so so very very much like uh rail track in the uk after privatization Where we just had all of the freight stuff and all of the infrastructure just siloed off. Yeah Awesome, also the logo got worse every time Yeah, I was gonna say it went from uh, you know, it went to penn central's logo sometimes called the mating worms You know what it makes me think of with the font too It's I feel like it's live a better life on the off-world colonies. It's very wayland utani. Yeah, I when I see the con rail logo I always think of uh A uac from doom and i'm just like i'm just waiting for con rail to open a portal to hell

Yeah, it's a portal to hell, but it's stored inside one freight car. Nobody knows why no one knows which one it is Just sleep back in the yard Yeah, don't go with that one. That's that's not the good one. Yeah So the history is a little complicated here, uh In 1974 all inner city passenger rail service except for a few outliers was folded into m track, right as it is today Uh, but some freight railroads. They're still responsible for running commuter rail Including con rail, right in the southern right because the southern Or am I wrong? No, that yeah the southern the southern railways still operated the crescent. There were a couple others

There's weird ones especially the georgia railroad in bank was the weirdest one because they essentially The state of georgia allowed them to run an unregulated bank as long as they provided passenger rail I'm sure this was fine like that that is that is a hell of a story. I don't think we can fit it in here So in 1982 con rails relieved of its commuter rail obligations, which you know It's losing a lot of money. So they're pretty happy to stop running them, right? So Municipalities had to pick up the slack and fund these commuter rail services if they wanted to right so Some cities like uh, cleveland Immediately discontinued all commuter rail, right then pittsburgh in detroit. They set up agencies which um

Funded commuter rail for a while and then those fell apart as well after a while in philadelphia We formed septa a few years earlier to you know handle the public transportation within the city limits, but Now it was funding the commuter rail too And essentially they're just giving money over to con rail to operate trains that have the septa logo on them, right? And we have a mix of electric commuter rail and diesel sort of quasi intercity trains, right? So, you know, they went that that that's a mold. That's a load bearing logo though. So that is important That is important. I mean, this is uh, emd f unit, right? And you know, it has this nice looking nose on it, right?

That's all made of bondo Yeah, it's just that little as the the chevrons that they ripped off from british rail just holding it together Yes, i'm sorry for my parochialism here. I'm just going to make everything about british Railways because that's the only kind I know about I mean, it is relevant. So in the so, uh, to give a little bit of context too, so back into 1958 the city of philadelphia enacted the philadelphia passenger service improvement corporation

Uh, which was essentially a subsidization plan for both the retic and the prs to subsidize service on both chestnut hill branches Uh, which didn't really help And then they continued to subsidize them, uh into 1970 and then Reading file for bankruptcy in 1971 That's such a municipal thing is this volcano is going off. How do we stop it? Well, we keep showing money into it But as a result the uh, the redding and the pennsylvania sides of the commuter rail system We're using very similar equipment which helped us out in a moment

So This guy is vukin vuchik, right? Who is a professor of transportation systems at university of pennsylvania still is now and he had an idea right So the idea was rather than have the pennsylvania and redding sides of the commuter system Which are uh, the red and blue lines on this diagram respectively Uh, go into two separate terminals. They would go into one tunnel that ran underneath center city

And then, you know, so the train would pass from one side of the network onto the other it would transform From a redding train to a pennsylvania train or vice versa Right. Hmm. This is uh, this was an old idea, but vuchik, uh, sort of built on this by saying we're going to run this like Uh, the espon in germany, right? Well, that seems reasonable people like the espon. That's not duplicating a bunch of stuff I've only used the one in munich, but it's very nice and they run like they they run Like a train every 90 seconds through a two-track tunnel. It's incredible I I think that's the mistake there is whenever anyone in america or britain for that matter tries to do like a european

technocratic solution to Anything it's always premised on the idea that this is going to be a country where stuff works and we aren't out Just for context reviewers who may not know what the espon is think of it like It's sort of like a regional subway system, right? And this is what they wanted to do with the septa regional rail system They were already most of the way there um

It would be all electric. It would be high frequency high speed operation, right? They already had the equipment to make it work Um, they were going to sort of phase in operations Unlike the espon where they call the trains s1 s2 s3 Here in philadelphia. It'd be r1 r2 r3 r4 regional um And then they were going to add one new line going to the airport Which would unbalance the two systems?

So they also wanted to in addition to building the tunnel They wanted to switch one of the pennsylvania railroad lines over to the redding side by building something called the swampoodle connection Back your boss. It's in a neighborhood called swampoodle. Okay fine It sounds like an airport novel, uh The swampoodle connection They got in england. There's no crazed names or anything Absolutely. Whatever

You didn't learn any of this from us. There isn't a town anywhere in england called fingering hoe. It's fine So they get the hard part done, which is the tunnel. They start building that in 1978. It's finished in 1984 Uh, the swampoodle connection which involves laying like a quarter mile of track Never gets done. Um So As these grand plans were being initiated, right? A lot of the network started to fall apart So we had county subsidies for septas quasi inner city service, right?

That was the stuff that went out to redding. It went out to quaker town in bethlehem. It went out to allentown Went to newark new jersey. Um, these the subsidies started to fall apart and the political support started to disappear so between 1979 and 1986 Of the 481 root miles that formed the regional rail network 201 of them were cut. So in 1979 we get rid of the train to allentown Uh, that was the first to go and in 1981 was the bad year They cut the pottsville train, which is up here. They cut the newark new jersey train

Some of the new jersey transit lines that also went into philadelphia were cut. Those were ocean city and cape may Those aren't on this map. You had your own sort of beaching acts You just closed a bunch of the like were these less profitable the um Sort of quasi long distance ones. They they were less profitable. They had old equipment The ridership wasn't so great because the equipment was old um And the one we're gonna focus on in a bit is this cut line here from fox chase to newtown um

Which i believe was also cut in 1981 And in 1986 they started cutting back Some of the electric lines, which was Stupid and incredible. Um So after 1981 there's no diesel service which makes implementing voochix vision a little easier And in 1982 conrail is relieved of its obligation to run commuter trains So septa be completely in charge, right? So the plan is bring the center city tunnel online

Add a bunch of train frequency Add a bunch of service improvements to the better customer experience that convert this system into the finest regional rail system in the united states And also what a nice utopian vision and also They were gonna bust the unions So Let's uh, let's introduce the players here, right? Uh, so this is david gun, right? He was later president of the mta in new york and also m track Uh, and then these two guys that that's joe biden

And that's senator tom carper. They're they're not as important. I just could only find a picture that also included them Uh, so at this time david gun is septa chief operating officer Uh, while they're transitioning from conrail operation to septa operations. Uh, this is 1983 and there's three relevant unions here There's the united transportation union little redundant, um Which is uh, represents the conductors, you know, they collect the tickets, right? There's the brotherhood of locomotive engineers and trainmen who represent the locomotive engineers And then there is the transport workers union, right? They represent city transit

That's buses trolleys subways elevated rail Trackless trolleys so on and so forth okay, so SEPTA under david guns leadership issues an ultimatum to the conrail employed utu represented conductors said we're only hiring 150 of you guys back out of uh, 400 odd conductors, right? This is because they wanted to instead of hiring Conductors with union benefits to collect fares. They wanted to hire part-time passenger attendants, right who'd be collecting the fares and they also tried to

Reduce people's pay otherwise they also told the uh Engineers who were represented by the bl et Uh, they would be reducing their pay to the same pay that subway operators got right since they figured okay Since we're doing rapid transit style operation You guys should only be paid like you're making like you're running rapid Rapid transit style trains, right? Now the average pay for the city transit division right now was uh 9 25 an hour Not very good

It's also worth noting that uh on the fox chase line Uh, they used for whatever reason city transit. We're getting we're getting to that Okay, okay, I sorry I have one I have one thing first Yeah, but before we get to the next slide Um, I have a crazy idea. What if instead of having Three different trade unions who each sort of jealously guard their trade privileges and can be played off against each other You had like one big union that could like possibly resist these kind of automations

In past no more unions is better. There's about 12 more unions Involved here. I see that's that's a good point if you do have one union then you only have one union That's less union. Yes Yes, it's like high strength steel like the more unions you have The the less strong they are and that's good. Everyone was a union of one person Hmm That would be the strongest So

All right, so at the end of 1982 regional rail passengers are told there's going to be two weeks of no regional rail service While the septa transitions to rapid transit style operation. So, uh, I love to take two weeks off work to transition. Yes So So the game begins, right? Okay, so we got to go one year back here Scepta needed to score some political victories to get their concessions and that meant pitting unions against each other, right? so In 1981 conrail discontinued service on the new town line past fox chase

That was where the electric wire ended, right? And then later that same year septa reinstituted the service as the fox chase rapid transit line, right? And they used monorail monorail monorail. Yes Monorail except the equipment was ancient and broken, right? They used 19 derelict bud rdc's That's this train right here Right and rather than hire conrail engineers to do the job Uh, they used city transit personnel who were represented by the transit workers union as opposed to railroad personnel, right? Uh, so, you know, they were running the line a little cheaper and by the way, they had 19 rdc's

They only needed two to run the service This worked sort of right at least to pit the unions against each other the very first fox chase rapid transit train never left the station There was a conrail employee picket line Which prevented it from leaving, right? Uh, scepta had the picketers arrested and the second train left 30 minutes late Uh, that sounds like scepta the idea was if you were taking the uh, city transit operated fox chase rapid transit line You would make a transfer at fox chase, which is this highly pixelated station here Um, you know to get all the way into center city

so if there was any excuse to Make that connection not work Conrail employees would take it, you know, a lot of times they would just leave the station as the rdc trundled into view Right and then you're like stuck there for 30 minutes waiting for the next train um furthermore the Brotherhood of locomotive engineers and train men and utu pointed out there were some serious safety issues with these rdc's they ran them in one-car trains

And these one-car trains were not heavy enough to trigger the grade crossing, uh gates, right? Uh, now we're getting closer to so That was that was accident right there. Okay, so this was 80s picture. I've never seen So anyway, as I said these these cars were in very bad condition. There's no air conditioning They required really frequent oil changes. They were essentially servicing them on the platform in front of passengers They had no experience personnel who knew how to maintain the diesel engines on them Conrail employees refused to help service them. Uh, they knew what to do. They just they're they're not going to do it

Right. This is literally the um I I know we kind of belabor the points about how a lot of american history is just the soviet union but worse and expensive But this is a joke in shinobu about a machine that consumes 400 tons of diesel an hour to cut napple into three pieces So and it was designed to cut into four pieces as the punchline So on january 2nd 1982 Just as the conrail unions had predicted One fateful day the gates did not come down and a train plowed into a vehicle on the grade crossing, right? Who could have seen that coming? Hmm. It just happened to be a loaded tanker truck

Of course it does. Yeah So the resulting explosion killed the motorman and created a plume of smoke that was just visible in the air for miles around Uh, the national transportation safety board stepped in and made septa run two car trains that actually triggered the grade crossings, right? They only needed two cars. They needed two train sets in total to run full service on this line And they had 19 rdc's, right? Hmm, uh, where did they where the hell did they get these from? Did they just have them lying around? I believe they basically just had them lying around There's a lot of rdc's just left over there

You just yeah, you just literally go in the back of the shop and you just have this like Hittiest like fucking thing that is also very light for some reason. Well, they were just left over from radic, right? Yes, though. I should say yeah Well, these cars were so shot to hell that all 19 of them were out of service by the end of the next year And they had to shut down the line At least nobody else exploded. Yes, which is the most you can ask for all right, so We're gonna fast forward to a few days

before New year's day 1983, right? So to this photo of a dsa meeting last week. Yes So septa It has made the riders pretty angry by saying they're gonna be out for two weeks to upgrade service, right? And the the united transportation union and the brotherhood of locomotive engineers and trainmen call their bluff They offer to continue running existing service until a real contract is agreed to right The commuters, you know, they're obviously in support of the conrail unions at this point

utu and bl et Because they want their trains, right? You know got to get to fucking work. This averts the two-week shutdown But uh, you know, there's reduced train service for a while because they weren't expecting to run the trains now The city transit union twu is also pissed at septa Uh, their guys had been running their guys had been running the fox chase rapid transit line And they'd been making a lot of money because they had to travel out so far, right? And uh, septa discontinued that service in january 14th of 1983 Uh, which meant their guys are out a lot of money

So they're All expecting all three unions are expecting to strike on march 15th 1983, right? But a few hours before the deadline septa settles only with the transport workers union I mean just the incompetence of getting all of them mad at you at the same time like We saw that we saw the idea of them trying to play them off against each other and they fucked it up Still, oh, that's incredible. No

Because they settled only with transport workers union. Oh, no, no, I I get that But I mean, how did they let it get that far that they had that for that brief shining moment They had accidentally driven three distinct trade unions into class solidarity Always after always after so, uh, at this point, you know TWU decides all right, we're not going to go go on strike But the utu and the blet and 10 other unions Representing former conrail employees decide to strike regardless They strike for 108 days. Oh, yeah, buddy. When you say 10 different unions

I'm just picturing like the kind of highly specific kind of trade union that we ended up in britain before that You're where it's like the international brotherhood of the guy who pushes the thing The international brotherhood of the other guy who turns the thing Pretty much. Yeah. I mean some of these unions have as little as 10 guys in them Ha ha ha ha That's fine though because that's as many people as you need to turn the thing and they have a distinct interest More unions is more good. Yes So, um

All these 12 unions are on strike because they want pay increases instead of the reductions that septa wants to give them They want railroad employees to do railroad jobs and of course they all want to keep their jobs, right? Yeah, they want to do things that are more better instead of becoming a Weird european rapid transit s-bound thing. Yes so with city transit operating the strike is kind of neutered right because A lot of septa regional rail lines end within the city limits So, you know, you just take the bus um

So we wind up in a situation where the strike goes on for a long time not all of the union's demands are met Because it hasn't hurting as bad as it could have been um But crew sizes and pay scales remain comparable to conrail pay and crewing at the end of it Rapid transit operation doesn't happen instead. We're have the same low frequency trains as before Uh septa wins the right to shift employees between the former redding side and the pennsylvania railroad side, which they didn't have before there's staffing regulations across crafts that are relaxed and then because of the 108 days of no regional rail

ridership drops significantly And it doesn't recover to its previous levels until 2008 Good god No, no one really wins That's the best you can say for any kind of a trade union. I feel like sometimes is it's better than nothing maybe Like they they didn't get there like fully automated Like waxed to a high sheen s barn fantasy. So that's something. Yeah

So and uh just a disclaimer This is actually a picture of a septa strike from a few years before I couldn't find a picture of the 1983 strike Which is weird because they had a strike every like year and a half. Yes, they were they went on strike very frequently Very serious The next year the center city tunnel opens Um, and this is a monster of a piece of infrastructure, right? This is a four track tunnel through the middle of a major city

Uh, it has a new line to the airport If you had modern signaling you could easily fit 60 trains an hour through this tunnel each way um But instead we run 16 trains per hour at peak hours through this tunnel and usually about six trains an hour Um, the trains aren't frequent enough for reliable transfers and ultimately we've we've invested a lot of money into a system Which doesn't necessarily benefit commuters Uh that much more than you know, just having redding terminal and suburban station as two separate stations

Yes, but you can't not do like a grand plan to improve your city's infrastructure. Yeah, look at it Look how big it is You can't not have a ridiculous sort of vane glorious idea And and expect people to like leave well enough alone. No, you have to do this thing Otherwise, where else are you gonna? Find what stick the you know hundreds of millions of dollars. I have to flush my hundred dollar bills somewhere Exactly. Well, maybe we could have like, uh, maybe we could have like not done the union busting part That's good union busting good

Both and not either or Yeah, no, I mean That's the thing though is we have to like lay this squarely at all of the union's doors It's entirely therefore that you have this dismal low frequency operation rather than trying to do this Like gigantic restructuring and also bust the unions at the same time Uh, yes So Well, while I built this tunnel

Everything else was falling apart. This is the uh, the viaduct that used to run into redding terminal, right? Um, and they were just while they were building this big expensive tunnel. They were deferring maintenance everywhere else Uh four four days after the tunnel opened the bridge at columbia avenue, which is now Cecil be more avenue Uh, it was found to be unsafe And had to shut down the whole system Um, because that was all four tracks leading into the tunnel had to be taken out of service. Well, they fixed the bridge Right, uh, they installed temporary fixes in about a month Then later 1986 they, uh, have to take out the uh lines to ivy ridge and westchester because the track had decayed so badly

Uh, neither of those have been restored since Um, and in 1992 someone decided maybe we should take a look at those temporary fixes we put in at columbia avenue And uh, notice that the bridge was visibly sagging as trains went over it Oh, yeah Question to what extent is this sort of being Encouraged what to what extent is this plans neglect and to what extent is it just incompetence? That's it's it's debatable, right? Um, because you would expect

This this is probably the most one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the system I mean, there are people who suspected like sep that just wanted to get rid of regional rail if they couldn't run it Like that the transit right well like I I get that with the outlying lines because they're a drain You can just be like well whatever and you just leave them to decay to the point where you say, uh, this is no longer viable I I just don't know whether it's um Institutionally cynical enough to be like, yeah, we'll just have this bridge that just sort of is made out of like old biscuits or whatever and just dips There's also the issue uh, if I can just speak for a second that septa is organized in a baffling way

That it's not organized as a state Uh, or a federal or even like a city agency. It's a five county agency Uh, and the four counties surrounding philadelphia are traditionally republican counties And they're not big fans uh of septa And have made themselves known in that uh in that like when septa tries to build new projects They're all just like meh, but the black people committing to work are scaring me Uh, and I think that does contribute to like the just sheer nonsense ness

If you will Yes, also for whatever reason the uh the Four counties other than philadelphia provide the vast majority of the funding. I think the city pitches in like A couple percent of the budget at most Yeah, it's like I know for the uh for the the center city connection. It was like 3.3 percent That the city of philadelphia pitched in so 1992 they find this bridge is completely unsafe Um, and they have to hastily put together a project called railworks, right? um

So this was a 10 month shutdown of the entire rating side of the system They have to build an emergency station, which we now know as fernrock transportation center Which lets regional rail passengers transfer to the subway and they have to build new tracks in the subway to Add additional express subway service, right? um They bring back diesel trains for a brief period of time Which they run over a handful of conrail branch lines They just you know stabilized and put together at the last second so that they could get folks into 30th street station

um american paces amazing Oh, no the paces are coming soon Oh, okay. This was a big this these were big diesel locomotives that new jersey transit was retiring Uh, I see we borrow those for a second. It's just you you say sort of left over diesel to run outlying lines As a patch over something and I think pacer. Yeah so they rebuild

uh Two stations as a part of this The columbia avenue station, which is now temple university station, you know, they build a nice They build a nice, you know two platform high level platform station It's much nicer than what it was before because that serves, you know temple university And then north broad station is downgraded to a patch of asphalt next to the tracks So So and of course in the meantime regional rail isn't the only part of the system that's getting the shaft

Uh septa started temporarily suspending trolley routes all across the city Including ones that had like, you know, sort of quasi dedicated lanes and high quality infrastructure A lot of those were temporarily suspended in 1992 Um, and well, it's a very long temporary suspension because they haven't come back yet Um any day now. Yes Any day now just waiting for the right time. Yeah, so they finished the project and You know, here we are today

Uh since 1979 you know When we lost 201 route miles, have we clawed anything back? Uh, no There's there's been zero improvements in the number of route miles. There's been slight improvements in train frequency but there's there's been You know, there there's been no investment whatsoever In 2013 we nearly lost another half of the system because the pennsylvania state legislature didn't want to

Provide septa with any any funding for, you know Emergency repairs to infrastructure that were required, right? So you see this is this is the current system This is what almost happened in 2013. I mean, this is it's sort of I want to lay this at the door of uh, the american system of basing all of your state legislature and government in A city that is not the largest city in the state and just having it be in what harrisburg harrisburg. Yes Yep Delightful. So this does not affect you at all if you're a pennsylvania legislator Basically, yeah

Now next year we may get three miles back. Um, they're gonna extend the service From elwin to wawa. So we'll only have lost 198 miles But ultimately where we could have had, you know, this nice rapid regional rapid transit system. We we we got More the same And you know, everyone sort of lost because you know septa wanted to union busting And and the guy who who ran that ended up being president of amtrak. You said yes And you know, the the regional rail service isn't even that fast, right? Um after after uh After they installed that emergency station at fernrock, right?

If you take fernrock to center if you take the subway from fernrock to center city it Takes 17 minutes. It costs two dollars, right? If you take regional rail It takes 16 minutes, but it costs twice as much That's a that's a high tax on liking trains that go above ground Is ultimately like the difference between regional rail and city transit ferris is because Regional rail is supposed to be for suburbanites

While, you know, city transit Is for the rest of us Hmm, I mean city transit runs the buses too, right and the theoretical trolleys. Yes We have trolleys okay, but Also also the ones that are in a state of like, uh, uh, long-term hiatus The reunion show is coming. Damn it It's like it's like the king in the mountain under a giant hill outside of philadelphia is a buried trolley

He's waiting for his chance. Yes somewhere deep in the trolley tunnel had a little spur by city hall station And no one knows what that's for Anyway, that's you know, what happened. We have all the infrastructure in place to run a lot more trains We just choose not to You know, it's it's basically it's Why is there no they're they're everything's in place. They could just do it. They're not gonna do it. It's frustrating. No But and one person died, um From being exploded. Yes. So, you know, that's that that's a fun sort of

Reminder is even these really small collapses. They have like these huge institutional Uh, uh consequences and also someone explodes Yes, but I would be remiss to not mention The american pacer Oh Oh hell. Yeah, buddy I have seen this car with my own two eyes It's now at the connecticut trolley museum

Uh in windsor locks or across the river from windsor locks. So in 1985 there's a brief attempt to start service to newtown again They want to try because newtown rapid transit worked with light vehicles so well the first time Yes, except it decides only exploded once the only exploded once. Yeah. So septa decided all right Um, these rdcs are worn out What if we contact british leiland? Yes And get a rail bus from poor poor british leiland It's just a guy in a sweater vest sitting by a phone waiting for it to ring

And then after six years it does and it's a gola. Would you sell it? Yes. Yes. I will sell you a rail bus It's all coming up millhouse So so they They buy a pacer This is actually a prototype pacer, right? I think by this time pacers were in service So this was like one of the prototypes And pacers were in service. Well 81 tense now. So yeah And and and a pacer is for the record a literally it's a bus chassis

That they have put on a train car because it's very cheap and it runs on diesel and it it's Noisy and it's terrible. You can't get into it if you use a wheelchair, but we still use them on a bunch of Uh regional british rail lines because basically we can't figure out anything else So this thing is shipped over from britain, right? Uh, they put it on the tracks at fox chase And they do a test run from fox chase to newtown He comes back and They never do it again. Um

Yeah, that that's about the review that you expect having been on these. Yeah, it's it's loud. It's uncomfortable Uh, it it's just no it's it's it's no good You don't want a bus that has rail wheels on it. I mean american track isn't as high quality as Don't say britain don't No, no It's uh, it absolutely not. It's a little little bit rough So I can't imagine what the pacer was Feeling on this this track that hadn't seen a train in two years. Yeah

The whole sort of shitty british leiland built defunded monocoque body just fucking shaking itself to pieces Just terrified Ten million dollar plan ten million dollar plan. Uh-huh just filled with diesel fumes What would have been mercy to run into another tanker truck? So it has spent the time since then languishing in a battle back lot at the connecticut trolley museum with a bunch of other rusted out hulks um and

That is the story Of the septer regional rail meltdown. Yeah from 79 to 1992 and spare a thought for Uh, rural english people who have to deal with this car that was so shitty that Scepter which we've established was not good Is not good took one look at it and was like no, this isn't gonna this isn't gonna work That that's the only rail car that we have in large areas of our country. It's awesome It sounds great. I'm pretty jealous honestly. Is it a train? Is it a bus?

Yeah, it's it's so nice to like see this thing just sort of coasting into the station and just sort of reverberating It's wonderful. Oh those places. We discontinued service to uh allentown is now the fastest growing city in pennsylvania um New town saw a lot of development in the same time period mostly suburban garbage um and you know same same with westchester uh and

Greting and all these places like it there there was a lot of development that occurred Right after the train was shut down Hmm and all of that's All of the logistics all of the transport for that has to go to Cars and maybe buses, right? Uh Yeah, I mean everyone loves taking the 125 bus out to king of prussia, you know can confirm. Yeah I I had to commute on that for a while. So this is a quick aside the 125 bus

runs from center city philadelphia To king of prussia, which is about I think I'm correct to say about 20 miles away. Um It is far and away the worst fucking bus I've ever taken But what if but what if you put it on two bogies and you put those bogies on a track that's been like systematically neglected I see you're speaking about the doors town high speed line Which which dammit they are going to run out to king of prussia no matter how much the mainline moms hate it So I guess the conclusion we can draw from this is train

Goods, but when funded well, yes, british train not good. Not good very bad Do do not buy british train. Don't buy pacers Don't know. I know you look at the pacer and say that looks like a good idea. No. Yeah It's cute and and people have affection for it. No, it's it's forged in trauma. We have stock home syndrome with this Isn't there a pacer preservation society now? Yes Look, some people like steam trains some people like this. I I don't claim to understand it There's no accounting for taste, but they're no they should make yes And I guess another another

Thing we learned is uh, you know, maybe your service improvement shouldn't be based on busting unions Yeah, maybe You know, maybe you shouldn't have 25 different unions for each guy who pushes the button and pushes another button I think it's I think it's reasonable to say okay We're gonna staff trains with fewer people but run more trains Right and still like employ the same amount of people and pay them the same or even more Right. That's you know, that's crew reform, right? Because you don't strictly need the amount of people you need on the train right now to run every train

You don't need three conductors for a two-car train, right? What's what's wrong with a good old-fashioned make work job Like just have a sinecure give people a uniform and like have them walk up and down the train doing nothing That's fine. What's wrong with that? We can afford it But uh, if we're gonna do if we're gonna do crew reform Don't do it in such a way that you're gonna tell everyone we're gonna pay you less. Also a bunch of you are getting fired You can use the same number of people differently. Yeah. No, no, there's there's one meaning of efficiency and efficiency is when you Ruthlessly

Dehumanize people and try to take away their livelihoods Yes, it's it's not using the same amount of resources for more stuff You have to cut the resources. Yes Yes cost cutting first The most important thing we can do and on that note Uh Next week we're doing the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster Oh, yeah, yeah excited. Yeah, I've been waiting for this one great. Yeah

So that was Decepta regional rail meltdown. Uh, I'm just in Rizniak also do not eat on the youtube's and on the twitter Uh, anyone got anything to plug before that good we go Listen to trash future my other podcast That was that was it. That was that's the sole effort that i'm putting into this. Yeah, all right On that note, I think uh, are we good? Yeah, all right. All right. That's the end everyone