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to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.Transit strike begins in Philadelphia
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 9:57 am - by Alan Tu. Filed under: Community, Transportation.
Election day mess
The largest union for workers at Philadelphia’s transit agency is striking after negotiations on a new contract broke down. The Transport Workers Union Local 234 says the strike began at 3 a.m. Tuesday. It will all but cripple a transit system that averages more than 928,0000 trips each weekday.
All bus, subway and trolley service in the city, as well as the Frontier Division buses in Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester Counties, will be stilled by a strike. Regional Rail service won’t be interrupted because those crews are covered by separate contracts.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Biked the strike this morning. Then again, I’ve been doing that for several years now and in the few months that I’ve had my current route (12th and Dickinson to 16th and Locust) I have never seen such bad vehicular (and bike) traffic. In fact, there were times this summer when I could saw maybe 5 cars the whole time when riding at about 8:30. Most of the roads in South Philly are torn up for resurfacing (woo-hoo! Stimulus!) and a few blocks were closed down so that the actual resurfacing could take place. Add that to the folks who were driving because of the shut down of the BSL, C, 23 and other routes and it made for a real circus. Glad to be able to zip through it on the Trek. (Thanks, again to Rich B. for the Trek! Came in real handy this morning.)