Some SEPTA commuters were left out in the cold on Tuesday as delays and cancellations hit the Regional Rail service.<\/p>\n
Chopper 6 video Tuesday night showed repair crews working on overhead wires on the West Trenton Line that were pulled down by an inbound train just before 8 a.m.<\/p>\n
Some passengers were stranded on board for about an hour without heat while waiting for a tow.<\/p>\n
“It was a complete meltdown with the trains today,” said AJ Essington of South Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The outage had a ripple effect on service throughout the day.<\/p>\n
Essington says he barely made it to a doctor’s appointment after getting caught up in the delays.<\/p>\n
“It’s very frustrating. I’m relying on it to get to a very important appointment here at Penn,” Essington said. “I’m taking a Lyft home. I learned my lesson.”<\/p>\n
While the coldest air in nearly a year settled into the Delaware Valley on Tuesday, SEPTA characterized the incident as routine and said it does not appear to be weather-related.<\/p>\n
“It’s certainly a situation we never want to see happen. Occasionally, issues like this do come up, and we respond as quickly as we can. We’re doing a full investigation to determine the cause, but at this point we don’t have anything specifically that points to the cold,” said SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch.<\/p>\n
Busch added that Tuesday’s disruption has been addressed and is not expected to impact service moving forward.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, city agencies have activated cold-weather resources and warned of potential impacts on homes and infrastructure.<\/p>\n