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SEPTA cancels dozens of trains surrounding Eagles' game Sunday

Published  September 30, 2016 5:44pm EDT
US
FOX 29 Philadelphia

The region's struggling transportation giant, SEPTA, says it doesn't know if there is a connection between the Eagles' game Sunday afternoon and the dozens of regional rail trains it was forced to cancel Sunday.

SEPTA'S social media postings of canceled, or what it calls "annulled" trains, shows the Authority began to post cancelations starting at 3:40 p.m. Sunday afternoon. The Eagles and Steelers kicked off at 4:25.

SEPTA continued to drop trains through 9:30 p.m. Sunday evening.

SEPTA spokesperson, Carla Showell-Lee, said she wished she had an answer when asked if SEPTA saw a link to the game and the annulled trains. She told FOX 29 the Authority is struggling under a historically low number of engineers trained and able to work, but added SEPTA is training more now.

FOX 29 first reported in July that SEPTA was canceling weekend trains. Those cancelations arose after SEPTA was forced to pull 120 of its Silverliner 5 trains from the rails for safety reasons.

Since then, SEPTA's postings on annulled trains on its social media page have been. Monday FOX 29 noticed those 25 trains had been pulled Sunday.

SEPTA says it hopes to return to a normal weekday schedule by early October as it puts the repaired Silverliners back on line. Carla Showell-Lee apologized to riders of the canceled trains and thanked them '"for sticking with us."