repairing damage<\/a> to the overhead catenary wires that supply power through the tunnel \u2014 damage caused by a switch to longer sliders that caused carbon inserts to wear down faster than expected. Crews have replaced some sections of wire but not all five miles of it, because SEPTA can’t acquire the clips and section insulators quickly enough.<\/p>\nDuring a media tour of the tunnel on Wednesday, Assistant General Manager Kate O’Connor said test trolleys have been running, but no reopening date has been set.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure that we don’t reopen before we feel that the risk has been reduced as low as possible that we could have another event in the tunnel,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Why wasn’t the wire outside the tunnel damaged? Jason Tarlecki, acting chief deputy engineer for power, said the catenary in the tunnel is held by more rigid attachments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s no shock absorption,\u201d he explained. \u201cEssentially, the wire flexes out in the street a lot better and that’s why we’ve been able to maintain service out on the street. But in there, it’s just much more harder wearing.”<\/p>\n
For now, SEPTA said the trolley tunnel will remain closed through the end of December.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have a goal that we would like to reopen after December,\u201d O\u2019Connor said, \u201cbut we have to get through this full safety risk assessment that we’re doing right now to make sure that we are in a safe position to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n Featured Image Photo Credit: Mike DeNardo\/KYW Newsradio\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 SEPTA’s trolley tunnel has been closed for more than a month as crews work…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":454503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-454502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115737955308397615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}