Hi all. I work in the city of Philadelphia. But driving into and out of Philadelphia is a nightmare. Parking is even worse. Fortunately, we have a good public transport system called SouthEastPennsylvaniaTransportationAuthority or SEPTA. But lately SEPTA has had many issues. If you talk to my wife, she would say that I led a very sheltered life when I was younger. My wife and I both grew up in India. But my wife lived in the suburbs of Mumbai and she used to commute by train everyday to go to college. So she has been through some really tough commuting situations. I also lived in one of the suburbs. But my college was 10 minutes away. I never had to commute by train until I started working in Philadelphia in 2012. Sometimes I used to take the train, subway or trolley when I was in graduate school. Back to the problems SEPTA is having. In the summer, in the first week of July, SEPTA noticed stress cracks in the body of their new train cars and they took 120 cars out of service affecting thousands of people. They cancelled trains, changed express trains to local trains, borrowed trains from nearby cities like Baltimore and finally at the end of September or beginning of October, they were able to get back to their normal schedules. But then 2 days ago, they had severe electrical power issues. So they switched tracks and people had to board trains inbound for Philadelphia on the outbound tracks. Then the outbound trains were delayed. SEPTA had to suspend service for most of the day, but were back to normal in the evening. Yesterday, one of the major workers unions went on strike. Now I take the regional rail line and our workers are still under contract, so our trains were running. But they were very crowded. This was because many people who took buses and other trains were affected by the strike. These people used the regional rails. However, the striking workers also decided to disrupt the regional rail by demonstrating at stations and blocking the tracks. Many trains had to be cancelled. They had huge lines at many stations and SEPTA was rationing the number of people boarding the trains. A judge issued a court order preventing the striking workers from blocking the tracks and so I am assuming service will be back to normal today. Fortunately I had planned on working from home today, but I guess I will find out tomorrow.

I sympathize with the workers, but I wish they did not disrupt other rail services. This has happened before in 1998 and 2009. I am not sure if SEPTA could go to non-union workers. However, they were prepared for the side effects of the strike, I don’t think they were prepared for the stress cracks and power issues, but it must be tough. I am glad that we at least have the option of taking the train or the bus to work instead of driving. Not only it saves us the headache of driving in and out, but it is also environmentally friendly. Not many cities have good transit systems.