[Skintreesnail]

^^ I bet I'm remembering one of your posts then regarding chestnut hill west/BSL. I think it definitely makes sense given the bandwidth that BSL has. Would need to convert the catenary to third rail though, which I have no idea what that would take.

The under-utilization of SEPTA regional rail really frustrates me though. They've done all the hard work to make it a true s-bahn (electrifying the whole system, building the connector tunnel for through-running service that all the branches feed into, a 4-track trunk to allow local and express station calling). It just seems like after all that they just shrugged and called it a day.

I'm sure unions and mgmt are a big issue, but I don't think the funding is where it should be either. Also, I wonder if they could automate a large portion of the system. There are some grade crossings that would need to be fixed, but I think a lot of it is grade-separated. To SEPTA's credit, they're at least getting all the rates under septa key and adding raised platforms to improve loading times.