Alex Wong: Getting there, the long way

In the world of public transportation, you're not going to find too many people like Vukan Vuchic.

The Penn systems professor is one of only a handful of engineers whose ideas about buses and subways are drawn from both academic and practical experience. In over 40 years of studying and designing transportation systems, this people-moving guru's mark has been left on commuting routes in cities across five continents.

He was the first ever recipient of the Friedrich Lehner Medal, considered the Nobel Prize for transportation engineers. That medal awards lifetime achievement. He won it 20 years ago. He was in his forties.

With these overwhelming credentials, it makes you wonder why SEPTA and Penn don't listen to Vuchic's advice when it comes to improving Philadelphia's notoriously flawed and horridly overpriced transportation system. It makes him wonder, too.

"It can be frustrating at times," Vuchic said, referring both to Philadelphia's inertia on recommendations he made in a 1994 report and to Penn's virtual abandonment of SEPTA as a viable resource for students.

Vuchic said that SEPTA's problems don't stem from the usual suspects. Contrary to popular opinion, there is actually nothing wrong physically with the city's rail and bus infrastructure relative to other cities.

What has crippled SEPTA since its birth (and indirectly resulted in perhaps history's most embarrassing marketing slogan -- "We're getting there") is a state law that requires SEPTA to make back 50 percent of its operating costs from ticket fares. That percentage is the highest in the nation, with many states mandating only 30 percent.

What this high percentage sparks is a vicious cycle of declining ridership and rising fares. As more riders shy away from high fares, SEPTA takes in less revenue. As SEPTA takes in less revenue, it must raise fares in order to make back 50 percent of its operating cost. This fare hike then drives away more riders and the cycle begins anew.

The latest hike bumped the fare up from $1.60 to $2.00 this summer -- with no guarantees it won't climb higher.

Doing his best with a flawed product, Vuchic says the only solution is quite simple. "Get more riders," he says, "and the system will get better."

Vuchic says that SEPTA needs to put more effort into simply letting people know that, first of all, SEPTA works. Secondly, they have to know how it works for them.

He proposes installing more informative signs that detail all the myriad places SEPTA can take you at high traffic hubs such as malls, train stations, stadiums and airports. He also says that ridership would increase greatly if major stations were just spruced up a bit with shops and flowers that make them look less like, well, subway and bus stations. And something must be done about the inscrutable nomenclature of SEPTA's regional rail and bus system, with its collection of Rs, CCTs and WHIRLs.

These suggestions would cultivate a culture of ridership -- like the one found in Boston with its hallowed T system -- and at least freeze, if not reverse, SEPTA's cycle of rising fares.

But this simple suggestion may just be a little too simple for the administrators at SEPTA and Penn to grasp. It seems they've tried their darndest to make SEPTA as inconvenient as possible for commuters and students.

For example, even though SEPTA's service from Philadelphia International Airport runs to 164 locations in and around the city, the only sign directing disoriented newcomers to the system reads "TRAINS TO CENTER CITY." Anyone want to share a cab?

SEPTA's regional rail service also leaves you puzzled. Why, one may ask, does SEPTA call the line that runs to Trenton -- connecting to New York City -- the R7 on weekdays and the R8 on Sundays?

"I gave the trains those names," said Vuchic, who designed the regional rail system in 1985. "Now they're confusing them."

Penn hasn't done their part either. It wasn't until last year -- at the urging of Vuchic -- that Penn police stopped telling freshmen during orientation to avoid using SEPTA even though evidence shows the system to be safe.

And with 20,000 potential riders at this university, Penn hasn't incorporated SEPTA into any of its new construction initiatives. Instead, the University chooses to focus on immensely more expensive parking garages, something Vuchic finds "scandalous."

Wouldn't it be sensible to promote the Green Line stop right next to Cos¡ as the "Sansom Common Stop?" In Penn's obsessive efforts to attract people to West Philadelphia, wouldn't it make sense to label the 34th Street Market-Frankford Line stop as "The Penn Gateway" and make it more inviting?

Change is coming about slowly, said Vuchic, and may be sped up with Penn's commissioning of a new transportation coordinating group on which he sits.

But he's not expecting miracles.

"When you live long enough, you find out that some things do change," he said. "But slowly. And that's only some things."

Alex Wong is a senior English major from Wyckoff, N.J.

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