The trolley tunnel is still closed as SEPTA tests repairs. When will it reopen?
About 60,000 riders traveled daily through the tunnel between 13th Street and its West Philadelphia portal at 40th Street.
Philadelphia’s trolley tunnel has been closed for two months, but SEPTA now is saying that it has completed most necessary repairs and could reopen the connection between Center City and West Philadelphia soon.
Crews currently are running trolleys through the tunnel to test fixes for damaged overhead wires and other equipment and to decide when it is safe for normal service to resume.
“We’re pretty close,” SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said Tuesday.
About 60,000 riders traveled daily through the tunnel between 13th Street and its West Philadelphia portal at 40th Street before SEPTA closed it in early November.
Since then, people have had to use slower shuttle bus service or the Market-Frankford El as alternatives.
At issue is a U-shaped brass part called a slider that carries carbon, which acts as a lubricant on the copper wires above the tracks that carry the electricity that powers the trolleys.
Earlier in the fall, SEPTA replaced its usual 3-inch sliders with 4-inch models in an effort to reduce maintenance costs, but the carbon in the longer units wore out sooner than thought, causing metal-on-metal contact that damaged the overhead wires.
The slider switch was meant to prolong their lifespan, but failed to work. Inside the tunnel, where there are more curves on the tracks and more equipment holding the wire to the ceiling, the new sliders and carbon burned through faster than earlier tests indicated.
There were two major incidents when trolleys were stranded in the tunnels. On Oct. 14, 150 passengers were evacuated from one vehicle and 300 were evacuated from a stalled trolley on Oct. 21.
The Federal Transit Administration on Oct. 31 ordered SEPTA to inspect the overhead catenary system along all its trolley routes.
The directive came in response to four failures of the catenary system in September and October, including the tunnel evacuations.
SEPTA has had to replace about 5,000 feet of damaged wire and make other repairs. It also switched back to 3-inch sliders.
On Nov. 7, SEPTA shut down the tunnel to deal with the issue, which had cropped up again, then reopened it on the morning of Nov. 13, thinking it was solved. But it discovered further damage to the catenary system and the tunnel was closed at the end of the day.
Other potential reopening dates were announced but postponed.
This story has been updated to correct the amount of wire replaced in the tunnel.