Ad Disclosure
I Have a Small Note For This Guy Who Rode Every Regional Rail Line in 2 Days to Raise Awareness for SEPTA Funding
By Matt Schultz
Published:
I have a small piece of constructive criticism for this guy who spent a whole lot of time on trains this week:
Long story short, self-described public transit nerd Rich Temple challenged himself to ride every Regional Rail line in just two days with one goal in mind: to raise awareness of SEPTA’s “Accelerate” plan, a new proposal from the transit company that lays out the myriad of improvements they could make with more funding:
His mission statement is where I’d like to offer a small note. If Rich’s goal was to raise awareness of SEPTA’s funding issues and inspire people to help out, then he probably shouldn’t have talked so much about how smooth, fun, and basically perfect his two-day trip went — but that’s exactly what he did. Seems like a bad move if you’re trying to convince people SEPTA needs more money.
Going into the video, I thought for sure he was going to say stuff like, “I waited for two hours in the cold at the Doylestown stop before a train finally came,” and, “The digital board that was supposed to say an ETA for the Trevose R3 train just had a series of upside question marks and yawning emojis,” and “Instead of the Fox Chase ticket puncher simply asking for my ticket, he put me in a headlock and forcefully searched my person until he found it in my coat pocket. Then he punched the ticket, slid it into the seat’s little ticket holder, and continued down the aisle without saying a word.” That’s the sort of stuff that would make me think, “Whoa, SEPTA is a mess. They’re gonna need some serious funding. I support this. We need to get SEPTA more money. We gotta stop these train headlocks.”
But Richard didn’t say anything bad about SEPTA. He just gushed about how awesome all the employees are and the effectiveness of the current Regional Rail system and how impressive it is that SEPTA is doing so much with the funds they have. He also clearly had a blast. Look how happy he is:
For the record, I’m very glad Richard had a good time. That rules. I’m just saying, as a sales pitch/advertisement for the Accelerate plan, showing how fun and good the current system is probably wasn’t the best approach. The headlock route might’ve been the move. Anyway, just a small note. Trying to be helpful. Maybe something to think about for next time.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com