The Best Thing That Happened This Week: We Made It Through the SEPTA Slowdown

Some of the 120 Silverliner V railway cars taken out of service by SEPTA shown in the Powelton storage yard in West Philadelphia.

Can we be frank? We thought this was going to be much, much worse, people. 

So much so that on Sunday, July 3rd, we woke up at 5 a.m. in a total SEPTA panic and went online and bought a monthly parking pass, sure that the Silverliner V debacle was about to make our lives sheer hell for the next, oh, year or so. We expected hours-long Schuylkill backups, rioting train commuters, throngs of newbie bike riders getting struck by buses, subway Armageddon, and just about every other form of mayhem imaginable as the city ground to a halt.

Know what? Didn’t happen. Philadelphians, as we always do, coped, managed, adapted (oh, and grumbled. How we grumbled!). We’re through Week 2 of the Great Summer SEPTA Slowdown, in the midst of one of the worst heat waves in recent memory, with the spectacle of the Democratic National Convention looming ahead of us, and … we’re okay. We’re getting by. So swallow the urge to clip that cyclist, suburban driver. Keep on scrunching close to fit your neighbor in, rail rider. Remember, it could be worse. SEPTA could have kept the Trolley Tunnel Blitz on.

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