SEPTA Regional Rail - History - Original Route Numbering Plan

Original Route Numbering Plan

From 1984 to 2010, the regional rail lines were numbered from R1 to R8, with the notable omission of R4. The reasons for this were rather complicated, going back to the original planning stages.

Part of the planning for the Center City Commuter Connection was to decide on how trains would be routed through the tunnel and which branches would be paired up. The original plan for the system was made by University of Pennsylvania professor Vukan Vuchic, based on the S-Bahn commuter rail systems in Germany. Numbers were assigned to the PRR-side lines in order from south (Airport) to northeast (Trenton), and the RDG-side matches were chosen to roughly balance ridership, to attempt to avoid trains running full on one side and then running mostly empty on the other. The following lines were recommended:

• R1 Airport to West Trenton
• R2 Marcus Hook to Warminster
• R3 Media/West Chester to Chestnut Hill West
• R4 Bryn Mawr (on the same tracks as the R5 Paoli) to Fox Chase
• R5 Paoli to Lansdale/Doylestown – express from Center City to Bryn Mawr, with R4 running local
• R6 Ivy Ridge to Norristown
• R7 Trenton to Chestnut Hill East

In addition to the Center City Commuter Connection, it was assumed that SEPTA would build one more connection, the Swampoodle Connection. This would allow PRR-side trains from Chestnut Hill West to join the RDG Norristown line instead of the PRR mainline at North Philadelphia station. The Chestnut Hill West line and the Norristown line run adjacent to each other at that point, in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Swampoodle. The Swampoodle Connection was never built, leading (among other factors) to the following changes:

• R3 could not go to Chestnut Hill West, so R3 trains from Media/West Chester instead went to West Trenton along the R1. Service to Chestnut Hill West was picked up by the R8.
• R4 was dropped; The R5 Paoli runs local along its entire length most of the time, and Fox Chase became half of the R8.
• R8 was added for Fox Chase to Chestnut Hill West service, using the former R4-Fox Chase and R3-Chestnut Hill West halves.

One of the assumptions in this plan was that ridership would increase after the connection was open. Instead, ridership dropped after the 1983 strike. While recent rises in oil prices have resulted in increased rail ridership for daily commuters, many off-peak trains run with few riders. Pairing up the rail lines based on ridership is less relevant today than it was when the system was implemented.

At a later time, R1 was applied to the former RDG side, shared with the R2 and R5 lines to Glenside, and R3 to Jenkintown, and R1-Airport trains ran to Glenside rather than becoming R3 trains to West Trenton. In later years, SEPTA became more flexible in order to cope with differences in ridership on various lines. After the original service patterns were introduced, the following termini changed:

• R2 – Marcus Hook was extended to Wilmington and Newark
• R3 – West Chester was cut back to Elwyn
• R5 – Paoli was extended to Downingtown and Parkesburg, then later cut back to Downingtown, and later re-extended to Thorndale
• R6 – Ivy Ridge was cut back to Cynwyd