SEPTA Route Deep Dive: The 29
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- Inspired by the plethora of quality transit content on RUclips these days, I decided to dig up the history of a route that's near and dear to my heart: the 29, a South Philly stalwart running from Pier 70 to 33rd and Dickinson Streets!
Let me know what you think! (Please be nice; I have a "delete comment" button and won't hesitate to use it!!)
Some internet resources that I found particularly useful during the making of this video:
Philadelphia Trolley Tracks (www.phillytroll..., a thorough and lovingly-compiled website dedicated to Philadelphia trolley history
The Henry J. Adamcik photo collection, housed on the Electric City Trolley Museum website (www.ectma.org/a..., a very comprehensive collection of vintage Philly trolley photos
Free Library of Philadelphia digital collections (libwww.freelib..., home to very many vintage Philadelphia transit maps and photos
Tassiebaz on RUclips ( • Philadelphia - Brill T... ), a photographer who took many useful 1970s photos of trolleys and trackless trolleys
DashTransit on RUclips ( • SEPTA's Proterra Buses... ), a channel that's an excellent source of videos of Philadelphia's transit vehicles from the last 20 years
Every video or picture not credited was taken by me!
WHY'D YOU HAVE TO RELEASE THIS WHEN I HAVE A TEN-PAGE LITERATURE REVIEW DUE IN TWO HOURS?????
Anyway, I'm SO happy to see transit content from you, and this is the perfect format to exercise your incredible Philly transit knowledge! I love the music, the specific details about how the route changed over the years (surprisingly often for something that seems so innocuous on the map!), and the unfortunate quote from that blogger guy who somehow liked the potatoes (???). Your personality really shines through in the presentation and I'm so excited to see what else you do!
Also I don't know if you saw, but it's looking like with the proposed Bus Revolution map, they're gonna extend the 29 up through Grays Ferry and across the Schuylkill to 49th and Woodland! That seems like a GREAT change to me - they're keeping the route short enough that it'll still be pretty reliable, but putting the western terminus in a spot with more trolley and bus connections can only help with connectivity and ridership.
Really wish that blogger guy would update his post now that he's come around on battery buses...
Haha thanks Miles!!! I was gonna text you about it tomorrow - I know you’ve got tons of homework and I didn’t want to be distracting!! But thanks SO much for watching anyway, it means a lot 💕 I’m so excited for the 29 to extend to West Philly - that ALMOST makes up for the 17 and 33 being combined 😍😍
Very well done! SEPTA seems to hate electric transit because they destroyed so many streetcar and trackless lines. Wish they would bring back the efficient, non polluting electric vehicles and get rid of the stinky, nasty diesel buses.
Wasn't septa, it was GMC
"I'm excited to see what SEPTA comes up with..."
SEPTA making decisions for the future... *are you sure about that?*
I hope you make more of these, they are really good! The production, music, intricate-but-interesting details, great voiceovers, clip balance, everything really works to create an informative but really entertaining creation. Can't wait to see more!
Thanks so much for watching Cedric!!! :) And haha, you're right - SEPTA's decision-making process isn't always the most logical, so any more developments for the 29 do seem like a long shot
This was my home bus for 7 years. Memories going to Pier 70 to get food at Walmart & back 😢
They were supposed to restore the trackless however due to bad planning it didn’t go through. I used to operate the 29 and79 in 1994
Thanks so much for watching!! And wow, it must've been a trip driving those AM Generals!!
Bill Wurtz if he was a transit RUclipsr. Great piece!
Thanks for watching Caleb!! :)
SEPTA is known for “temporarily” suspending trolley bus routes/actual trolleys.
yeah look at the 15
@@yellowld9912 mhm
So awesome! Good job 🎉
Super well researched with excellent use of Free Library photos! I remember seeing the street scraped up near 10th-11th and saw the old tracks and cobblestones which goes to show that Philly has a lot of history right under the surface. I would love to see one on route 23, but if not, then anything you decide to do would be great with your in-depth research!
Good work, Jackson. Very enjoyable video
Thanks so much for watching, Harry - it means a lot!!!
Fantastic video. Brought back great memories of walking the line and taking pictures of the trackless trolleys during their last days in South Philly. I had some memorable rides on the 29 as well including a school trip from 32nd and Tasker to Broad after dismissal at Audenreid.
Oh wow, it's so neat when people's daily commutes involve bits of notable transit infrastructure! I envy people who take the Mattapan-Ashmont line every day to work, for instance!! Thanks for watching :)
Well this video seems quite well researched and well executed! Well done!
Thanks so much for watching!!
Great work, Jackson! It must feel a little unnatural, but you're definitely well on your way to having that easy flow that you already share when you're an unscripted guest star in other people's videos. One technical suggestion, and one that's probably not that easy to accommodate: animating the routes you're describing when you show the historical maps. I know less than 0 about Philly streets, so a lot of that was just pleasant abstract art. Keep it up! New subscriber here!
Haha I'll have to figure out my equivalent of the "Miles head" to animate routes! Thanks for watching :)
5:00 the tunnel had provisioning for a line that was supposed to go west from there but never happened. that explains that weird curve.
14:46 Septa New Flyer D40LF #8039 Wrap Lunchables Bus on Route 29.
You should do more transit video buses, trolleys, subways, rails,
Southern does have some DE40LFs acquired from other depots but there's like around 4 or 5 maybe. So they're a rare sight.
Yeah, it looks like there's only 8 of them at Southern Depot according to this site! philadelphiatransitvehicles.info/current-assignments/
Great video. I grew up in the Philly suburbs and the transportation infrastructure used to drive me nuts. Thanks for this info!
Oh yeah, the suburbs aren't connected particularly well! I grew up in the suburbs too and it wasn't particularly accessible! Fortunately, SEPTA is making SOME progress on that front
This video was in one of those watch also "related, if you may" lists, I greatly enjoyed it.
It brought back memories of my first real duty station at the shipyard on the Forrestal, I had just gotten my second car, but wanted it treated well, I'd watch the newspaper and news on TV of things.. I saw a report on the trolleys heating source coming from underground I believe, some cars had excessive heat and some cars had no heat at all, apparently there were louvers if you call it that, which were stuck one way or the other, and SEPTA was considering making this a bus route instead, abandoning the tracks. Whichever route this was ran north/south where I remember it, off of Oregon, again I'm stale on the details.
I also remember driving down Germantown after coming in 309 from Allentown, and being stuck behind a electrified transit vehicle.. this was a common trip for us.
Later on I came to visit the city more of a tourist until I completely moved out of the region.
Thanks for the memories, but it also brings back memories of a dear friend and partner who remained in Allentown and passed away 4 years ago.. Philly was different after coming back 5 years later BTW and I'm sure it's way different now. I forgot to mention something earlier when talking about my car, I had heard of how crimes were being committed on one way streets where a car would be trapped by parked cars, someone would be a accomplice and hit your car enough to make you get out of your car, while a second accomplice would prevent you from moving forward and then they'd roll you.
Thanks so much for watching! And you might be thinking of the 23? That was a trolley route on 11th and 12th Streets until 1992, and there were plans during the 90s to convert the southern part of it to trolleybuses!
Oh my god when i clicked this video i was extremely hoping the beginning was going to be a song intro and it WAS
I'm not from Philadelphia. I'm not even from North America. A nice interesting video though, glad I found Miles and then your channel recently!
Welcome, thanks so much for watching!!
It is verry normal for trolley wires to be around after many years the last trackless trolley in the city that I live in ran 16 years ago some of the wires are still around.
Your first clip on the 29 is a DE40LF but as of now they do not run on the 29
Can you do Route 23
That does seem like a natural next step - there's tons of info out there on the 23!
Bustitution, ouch, is that English or a Jacksonism? I hope that SEPTA restores the catenary wires and we get the trackless trollies again, sigh.
It started in the UK something like 25 years ago, as a contraction of "bus substitution", and seems to have crossed the Atlantic recently.
I’ve seen it used a bunch, particularly describing the postwar explosion of trolley line removals!!
@@MarkWaller2 I've been on the scene for decades and 'bustitution' has been around through all of it. And I ain't no brit.
13:18 No wonder the Proterras dissappeared like my da- nvm he actually came back
I like transit but music not that much🙈
everytime i take the J to go to school i run into those lunchable buses ( i call them bread buses)
Hi Jackson. With all due respect, you have several errors in your facts. I would be more than happy to go over it with you so you could make corrections. By the way, in my collection of vintage transit vehicles are four Philadelphia trackless trolleys. One of my coaches is a 1947 Brill that ran on Rt. 29. Unfortunately, there is no way to post photos here. I have an enormous collection of transit memorabilia, which includes much from Philadelphia, back to the horse car era in the 1800's.
The late Henry Adamcik was a friend of mine. The person who uses the name Tassiebaz, originally from Philly and now living in Australia, is a friend of mine.
𝕡𝐫ｏ𝕄ｏ𝔰𝓶 💖