Several heavily damaged vehicles remained along the eastbound lane of the 4700 block of Spruce Street this afternoon after an early morning accident that sent a SEPTA bus careening out of control and into a row of parked cars.

A westbound Route 42 bus collided with an SUV that ran a red light at 47th and Spruce at about 4 a.m., according to 6ABC. The driver, who along with four others was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for “non-life threatening” injuries, lost control of the bus. The collision pushed the bus into a tree and nearby parked cars. About a dozen cars in all were damaged.

The accident is under investigation.

chinwag (noun) – Light informal conversation for social occasions.

The idea of this site has always been conversation – about the news and about the neighborhood. “West Philly chinwag” is a conversation starter. Drop a rant, a rave or a well-reasoned comment below.

Today’s topic:

SEPTA ridership is at its highest level since 1989. Gas prices probably have something to do with it, but SEPTA officials surmise that the increase has much more to do with the increase of young professionals in the city. Folks took some 13 million more trips on SEPTA this year over last year. The overwhelming majority of those trips, 12 million, were on SEPTA’s “City Division” – city buses, subways and trolleys.

Are you using SEPTA more? What do they need to do to lure you aboard more?

You know the feeling: Standing at a stop some time in off-peak hours, maybe a Sunday morning, looking up Spruce Street or Baltimore Avenue or the El tracks – wondering when the bus, trolley or train will be arriving. You forgot to check the schedule and you’re late and getting later.

Well, SEPTA has unveiled a couple of new services that might ease your angst a little.

A new SMS service will allow you to punch a code for your stop into your phone, send a text to SEPTA and get the next four scheduled stops for your bus, trolley or train. Each of SEPTA’s 18,000 stops regionwide has a code. For now each code (called a “StopID”) is only available on SEPTA’s website here. This summer signs will be installed at all the stops with the unique code number.

The code is key. For example, the eastbound 34 trolley stop at 43rd and Baltimore has a number (it’s 20875). Send that number to 41411 and you will get a quick reply (it took eight seconds the first time we tried it) with the next four times a trolley is supposed to get to your stop. OK, supposed, is a key word here. There is no guarantee it will be on time. But, hey, they’re getting there.

If you like a little more precision, then look into another new service, TransitView, which is available for 116 bus routes and all of the trolleys (no trains) that service West Philly. For this one, you go to the interface and select your route. A Google map will pop up that will show you the location of all of the vehicles on that route by location. For example, on the map of the 34 (see image) the little red icon is a westbound trolley and the blue icon is eastbound. Using GPS updates, the locations are refreshed every three minutes.

There is a catch. The SMS services won’t work for T-Mobile or Sprint customers, which is a fairly big chunk of the Philadelphia market (about a quarter).

For those who can use them, the services will at least help you kill time while you wait.

A fire early this morning at a transformer at the SEPTA sub-station at 33rd and Market Streets disrupted rush hour El and trolley service. As of 9:30 a.m. service on the Market-Frankford Line had been restored, but shuttle buses are still carrying passengers on several trolley lines.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that one SEPTA worker sustained a “non life-threatening” injury.

Philly.com reports that 14 people reported injuries this afternoon when a Route 11 trolley collided with a SUV on Woodland Avenue near 48th Street. Eight trolley passengers, three passengers in the Mercury Mountaineer involved in the collision and three people outside the trolley reported minor injuries. The collision was the second in as many days involving a trolley and another vehicle.