The 34 Trolley is back! SEPTA completed the 34 track renewal project that lasted all summer and during which trolleys were substituted by shuttle buses. The trolley was back running all the way to the end of the line on 61st Street yesterday.
During the project SEPTA excavated, renewed and paved approximately 7,500 track feet eastbound and westbound.
Whoo hoo! Let’s give it up for SEPTA!!!! Baltimore Ave looks much better and they brought it in on schedule!
SEPTA did a great job with this. The only bummer is that it couldn’t be coordinated with Streets/DOT so that the entire road surface could be repaved and even. Trolley service will be way better but riding a bike on Baltimore is now even worse than before. :/ Win some, lose some.
It is always a cause for celebration when trolley lines are restored!
I’m pleasantly shocked. It almost makes me look forward to going back to work tomorrow.
This is awesome. I also was very impressed with SEPTA’s work on this. I kinda love SEPTA actually. Weird.
Unacceptable that they sliced into the bike lanes and just slathered a strip of tar down them. If they couldn’t replace the lane, they should have cut outside of the bike lines, not right down the damn middle of our lane.
Yep, remarkable that they undertook this project and completed it on schedule. However, as mentioned in previous posts, the lack of coordination with other agencies is embarrassing.
In some countries, it is a legal requirement for utility companies to collaborate with each other on scheduled repairs and improvements. If a road is dug up, everything is scheduled to be updated at the same time. In a situation like ours, the road would be repaved upon track work completion.
That aside, Baltimore Avenue is a beautiful street that has been made thoroughly unpleasant by its current configuration. I would complain about the bike lane situation, but the lanes were never terribly useful to begin with. This is a street that needs a complete redesign.
Apparently since the track area and 2 ft on either side is owned by SEPTA, they would not resurface the rest of the road. The rest of the road in the bike lane will be reground, repaved with less of a seam in the coming months.