SEPTA says 5th crash in a week is ‘alarming and concerning,’ plans to investigate staffing issues

The day after SEPTA’s fifth major collision in a week, the transit authority was hesitant to name any commonalities between the disparate incidents, as investigations continue, but acknowledged ongoing struggles with staffing. The agency says it plans to get feedback from employees on safety issues.

“In terms of a trend among these five incidents, there isn’t really a thread that we can see connecting them, because they have many different characteristics, [and] happened in different parts of the system,” said Andrew Busch, SEPTA’s director of media relations.

On Thursday night, an out-of-service SEPTA trolley rolled out of a trolley yard and into the street with a mechanic onboard before crashing into an SUV and a historic home in Southwest Philadelphia.

The incident is the fifth accident involving a SEPTA bus or trolley in the past week. The transportation agency sends out over 1,300 buses and trolleys each day, carrying more than 350,000 passengers.

SEPTA’s investigation of the latest incident may take months to complete, said Busch, and will involve examination of trolley yard conditions. It’s normal for SEPTA trolley maintenance work to happen at that time of night, he noted.

The agency is also working closely with the union that represents bus and trolley operators to better understand what workers are seeing out in the field.

“That’s key because we need their feedback from what they’re hearing from their members,” Busch said, “because sometimes their members will be a little more candid with them than they’re going to be with the supervisor.”

TWU Local 234 represents more than 5,000 employees who work on SEPTA buses, trolleys, subway and El. They’re currently in negotiations with SEPTA for a new contract, as their current contract expires Oct. 31.

“Different factors were involved in each of these recent accidents,” Brian Pollitt, president of TWU Local 234. “The union is investigating the incidents of the past week so that we can advise SEPTA on how to avoid these events in the future.”

Busch called the recent collision “alarming and concerning.”

SEPTA reports data on all “major events” — such as the five recent collisions — to the Federal Transit Administration. The transit authority reported 310 such incidents in 2022 on buses and trolleys, and 63 in the first three months of 2023.

Most, but not all, of these major events in recent years involved at least one injured person, and few have resulted in death.

According to SEPTA, there were 884 vehicular accidents on buses and trolleys in the first half of this year (between four and five per day on average), compared to 1,521 in the first half of 2022.

The frequency of accidents started trending up in mid-2020, when compared to 2019, and it was much higher in 2021 and 2022. It seems to be coming back down in 2023, Busch acknowledged, but he said the system isn’t touting lower accident counts amid this week’s collisions.

“We’re very concerned about these very serious incidents. One person has died, dozens of others are injured,” Busch said. He noted Friday that one of the bus drivers involved in the crash on Roosevelt Boulevard on July 21 is now in stable condition, after being in critical condition earlier this week.

Katie Hulihan, 26, works as a nanny, and takes the trolley and bus from Belmont to commute to her job and travel around the region.

Although she usually feels safe as a commuter, she says the news of the recent crashes isn’t surprising.

“I’ve seen a lot of close calls, but never witnessed a crash myself,” Hulihan said. “But it always feels like there could be one anytime, imminently.”

Collisions have a clear negative effect on public perception of public transit, said Chris Van Eyken, the New York-based director of research and policy at TransitCenter, which studies U.S. transit systems.

Still, riding public transportation is safer than driving a car, he and other experts said.

“Your chances of dying in a fatality on transit are substantially lower than driving,” said Erick Guerra, associate professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design.

Crashes and fatalities for all kinds of vehicles are up in Philadelphia right now, notes Guerra. “It’s important to put these numbers in the context of overall crashes.”

Riders don’t need to adjust their commutes to avoid public transportation either, said Nick Zuwiala-Rogers, transportation program director at the Clean Air Council, an environmental nonprofit based in Philadelphia.

“We don’t believe that the public should be dissuaded from using public transportation at this time. It’s actually the safest mode of transportation on the roadway,” said Zuwiala-Rogers.

In terms of other cars on the road, Busch said, “it’s safe to share the road with SEPTA.”

SEPTA has struggled with understaffing across the system since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the region in 2020.

The number of operators — people who drive the transit vehicles — on payroll declined 15% across all transit modes from early 2020 to early 2023, according to payroll records obtained by The Inquirer. Attrition was similar across employees who drive all types of vehicles, including buses, trolleys, subway and El.

According to Busch, the transit system currently has 2,560 active bus and trolley operators, and is budgeted to cover the salaries of 2,700 operators. That’s a vacancy rate of about 5%.

Asked whether staffing levels have any connection to the recent accidents, Busch said, “We do definitely want to look at whether that’s a factor in these incidents,” but added that operators are under strict rules governing how long they can work on a shift.

Busch also mentioned that SEPTA employees have shared their own observations of other drivers in private vehicles driving more aggressively in the past few years, suggesting that may play a role in collision frequency.

Van Eyken, of Transit Center, said understaffing is a struggle many transit systems are facing. High turnover not only affects operators, creating a greater proportion of inexperienced drivers in the system, but it also affects maintenance crew, exacerbating safety issues.

“The incidents earlier this week, and last week, were a mix of newer personnel and veteran personnel. It doesn’t seem like it’s something that we can say specifically is, sort of newer people coming into SEPTA,” said Busch. SEPTA doesn’t yet have information on the years of service for the employee involved in the accident on Thursday night.

He also acknowledged that SEPTA has hired a lot of new operators and may look into adding more training if it seems to be needed.

New-hire training typically takes one or two months and includes classroom training as well as operating in the field with a supervisor, said Busch. Training can be shorter for employees who already have a commercial driver’s license. SEPTA is training 40 new operators per month to meet the hiring demands at the moment.

Meanwhile, SEPTA has been struggling to get ridership up to pre-pandemic levels, and Center City stakeholders are concerned about what that means for the future of the local economy.

Melissa Gray, 60, works in Center City and commutes on the bus every day from South Philly. She says the news of the recent crash made her feel shocked and stressed out.

“It’s really scary,” she said. ”What’s going on? Why are these trolleys and buses crashing, and all of these accidents happening?”

She could drive instead of taking public transportation but it’s cheaper to take the bus, so she won’t be changing her commute.

“We know that incidents like these shake the public’s confidence in SEPTA,” the transit authority’s board of directors said in a statement Friday afternoon. “We have stressed to executive staff that they need to be transparent with the public about the findings of these investigations.”