SEPTA’s alert about the incident on Twitter.
A car traveling eastbound entered the trolley tunnel at 40th and Baltimore on Thursday morning at 11:30 a.m. and caused a temporary disruption of service when routes 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36 were put on diversion, according to SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch. SEPTA riders using those routes could take the trolleys as far as 40th Street, then transfer to the Market-Frankford Line to continue their trip, which is customary when there is a disruption to service in the tunnel.
The fire department, police and SEPTA personnel were called to the scene. The vehicle was removed, and the tracks and other infrastructure were inspected for any potential damage. No problems were found, and service was restored at approximately 12:15 p.m.
The police didn’t identify the driver since there was no collision involving the vehicle and SEPTA trolleys and there were no injuries reported.
The crazy thing is that this happens kind of frequently.
“It’s not that uncommon,” said police spokesperson Tanya Little.
March 30th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
i can’t even picture how someone would go that far astray.
March 30th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
if tank traps apparently don’t stop bad drivers, it’s time to bring back the spikes. there is no reason to be nice to idiots.
March 30th, 2012 at 10:08 pm
the 40th street portal should have a sign : NO CARS!
March 31st, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Hmm where should I turn? I’ll just drive up over the curb, past this really obvious trolley platform down this narrow tunnel with big red stop lights that isn’t paved and is really obviously a train tunnel, of course.”
The frequency with which this happens really frightens me about how distracted/blind/stone cold stupid some of the other motorists driving around West Philly must be for this to keep happening.
March 31st, 2012 at 5:16 pm
“It’s not that uncommon.”
:-/
April 2nd, 2012 at 10:51 am
yeah, the same thing happenned on a friday night in december, about 9 pm or so. we were heading into center city and we got to the portal to find all sorts of police/emergency vehicles there. looked it up on the news the next day and it said some woman in a lexis SUV drove 5 BLOCKS into the tunnel before stopping.