Once again, the Silverliner V cars are being delayed due to production issues.  More of the typical problems, such as design flaws, workmanship issues, and labor relations problems, are holding up the cars even longer as the aging Silverliner IIs and IIIs struggle to make their runs.

More info here in this Inquirer article: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20110524_Delivery_of_new_SEPTA_railcars_lagging.html

Since the arrival of the 2011 order of New Flyers, there has been some massive movement of New Flyer diesels throughout the system. The massive movements includes, but are not limited to, 5471-5491, 5500, 5503, and 5613-5627 has been reassigned back to Southern.  These buses started their useful life operating out of South Philadelphia for the first few years of service.  Since the arrival of the 2005 New Flyers (8000-8119), these buses were displaced to other depots. Now they are back at southern. In exchanged for the 2002 and 2003 New Flyers, Southern sent their entire fleet of NABIS up to Midvale. To make things more interesting, Callowhill has sent most of their fleet up to Midvale as well. Currently, Midvale has 87 NABIS in service.  As it stands now 5268 is the only NABI operating out of Callowhill. 5301 is assigned at Callowhill as well; however, 5301 has been at Southern to receive some repairs. It has been reported that 5301 was sold to another transportation agency.

On the Eldorado front, currently there are only six (6) Eldorados in service out of Frontier. It is expected that these units will be retired by the end of the month. The replacement of these Eldorados, are the 2005 New Flyer D40LFs 8000 series that were moved from Southern depot in South Philadelphia.

While at Midvale, there are 6 to 7 Eldorados which are currently operating in service. These Eldorados are expected to be replaced with 40 foot buses as well. It is mentioned that the route on the 35 will be changed to be able to accommodate 40 foot buses. As result, the new route 35 will once again operate down to Wissahickon Transfer Center to connect with the other routes operating in the area. The route 35 will no longer operate on, Fountain Street, and several others. The changes will be in effect on June 19th, 2011. Read more about it here :

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/neighborhoods/roxbourough/item/20082-route-35-bus-changes-&Itemid=1.

On the 2011 New Flyer Delivery front, 8507 is the highest 2011 hybrid to be delivered. 8502-8507 are currently at Germantown awaiting for the usual equipement and inspections making it possible for SEPTA to run these buses in revenue service. They are expected to be assigned to the Comly depot.  As the hybrids arrived at Comly, Comly sends another 5400 down to southern. This in return enables Southern to send more of their 8000 series New Flyers up to aid in the retirement of the Eldorado fleet.  Once Comly has received 8509, 8510 up to 8559 are expected to be assigned to Midvale depot. According to some rumors, some more massive bus changes may take place during the month of June or July.  Stay tune for the latest.

About one year since the release of busviewer, SEPTA has introduce Transitviewer. Transitviewer is the upgraded the version of busviewer and now it includes most of the bus and trolley routes, which SEPTA operates throughout the Delaware valley. The way transitviewer works is, it takes both the location of the vehicle to determined where the bus is located. Then it takes the designation sign to determined which direction the bus or trolley is operating. There are some bugs to transitviewer. For example, sometimes the designation may not be correct, for example a bus going westbound could in fact be going eastbound. Second on buses like 8307, the bus icon is displaced about one mile off where the bus is actually located. I doubt that 8307 is in Delaware river or in someone's pool in Camden, New jersey. Hopefully, SEPTA can address these bugs in a timely fashion and also implement more features of transitviewer such as real bus arrival at a bus stop. CTA in Chicago has been using real time data for over a year so far in bustracker, I am sure it is possible with SEPTA.

http://www3.septa.org/transitview/44

At Woodland depot, car #118 was spotted with new Amber LED signs, similar to the ones on the SE LRVs that operate on the Subway Surface Lines.  We don't know what the schedule for the sign replacement for the DE LRVs will be...so stay tuned!  Check out the photograph of #118 here, taken by Callowhill8152:

Septa Droid, the Android Application that features SEPTA bus/train/trolley schedules and maps, has now added "Bus Tracker" to its list of features. "Bus Tracker" is based off of SEPTA's Transitview that was recently released to the public.  While the interface is similar, Septa Droid works very smoothly.  However, the "bus numbers" are only the block numbers, so it isn't a tool for busfans looking for specific buses like 5251 and 7101.

Download the updated version of Septa Droid on Android Marketplace.