From the General Manager

Service

PATCO Celebrates 50 Years of Service – On January 4, 1969, PATCO first offered its state of the art service between Lindenwold and Camden, NJ.  By February 15, service expanded to Center City Philadelphia.  Over the past 50 years, PATCO has provided over 511 million trips for our customers.

To commemorate this very special milestone, we have already stocked our ticket machines with 50^th anniversary tickets.  On the 15^th of February, we will greet our customers at eight stations with festive balloons and a small token of our appreciation.  Passengers will be riding to work that morning at the 1969 fares – 60 cents from Lindenwold, Ashland or Woodcrest; 50 cents from Haddonfield, Westmont, or Collingswood; 40 cents from Ferry Avenue; 30 cents between Broadway, City Hall and the Philadelphia stations; and 40 cents between any two New Jersey stations.  Celebrations will be held monthly throughout the year, focusing on individual stations.  The February focus will be at Woodcrest, where a DJ will play tunes from the 60s and community leaders will join in the festivities. 

Improved Communications – For years PATCO has utilized e-alerts to communicate timely information to customers who subscribed.  The original system had become less reliable and could not be maintained efficiently.  Corporate Communications developed a new Text Alert system, which has been promoted through social media, alerts through the former system, LCD signage, and flyers.

Customer Feedback – “Patrick” reached out to PATCO with the following:

I would like to extend a warm thank you to the PATCO train operators, Fran, and other staff that make the lost & found so effective. A few months ago I left my wallet on the train, called “0” on the station phone, and got it back the next day. Today I picked up my gym bag from Lindenwold, which I left on the train yesterday.

Also I regularly use the bike racks in the City Hall and Philadelphia stations, and the tire pump in the Philadelphia stations. Great idea! 

Ridership – Ridership for 2018 totaled 10,789,374, a decrease of 49,685 (-0.46%) compared to 2017.  Although this was a negative variance, the numbers are still very strong and exceed total ridership for every other year from 2000 to 2016.  In 2018 the particularly challenging winter weather in January, the Conrail train damage to our signal line, loss of power when SEPTA techs inadvertently cut subway station power, and the Super Bowl celebration significantly affected our ridership numbers. 

The average weekday ridership in 2018 was 38,582, an increase of 256 rides compared to 2017.

Ridership in January, 2019 was 904,555, an increase of 55,092 (+6.49%) when compared to January of 2018. 

Availability of Transit Equipment – PATCO closely monitors the availability of equipment to meet the needs of our peak service customers.  Our car availability has significantly improved.  Because of this improvement, in mid-February we plan to implement a new schedule.  The new schedule will provide added service.  Two additional trains during the morning commuting period and one additional train in the afternoon/early evening will alleviate some crowding and improve our customers’ riding experience.

On-Time Performance – In January, 2019, our on-time performance for the 5,997 scheduled trips was 96.78%.  January weather usually presents extra challenges and our performance typically is lower than in most other months.  However, this January our on-time performance far exceeded that in January of recent years. 

This January we conducted a comprehensive inspection of the rail on both tracks from Lindenwold to Broadway due to extremely low temperatures.  Unfortunately, this important initiative resulted in 19 late trains.  This month was also very unusual in that four medical emergencies resulted in a total of 4 annulments and 22 late trains. 

 Community

Girl Scouts – The annual eight-week cookie sale has begun.  Scouts from troops sign up for one Friday night through their Council cookie chairman so that many, many troops have the opportunity to sell their cookies in PATCO stations.  To support this community initiative and to increase interactions with social media, the Authority’s Corporate Communications Department has coordinated a campaign through which customers can vote for which cookies they like best.  Each week the LCD signs and Twitter offer a different choice. 

 STEWARDSHIP

Availability – We again met our goals this month.  Availability of all elevators was 99.55% for the month of January.  Several of the units had no outages at all.

Availability of all escalators was 97.63% for the month of January.  Fifty-one percent (51%) of the escalator outages were at Lindenwold, where the gear box needed to be replaced.  During that time, however, the elevator was working.