SEPTA Route 205 Discontinued

Yesterday, August 30th, was the last day of operation for SEPTA route 205, which operates from Paoli Station to Chesterbrook. Route 205 has undergone several changes since creation, originally as far as Main Line Industrial Park

In 2007, when the route was originally introduced, the 205 was part of a massive reimagining of West Chester’s bus network (alongside a new route 306, and versions modified routes 92, 118, 133 (which was merged with the 92), and 314)). The purpose of this new route 205 was to provide timed connections with the Paoli/Thorndale Line at Paoli Station to the then-bustling Main Line Industrial Park, with connections to Valleybrook, Great Valley, and Atwater along the way. In 2008, service to Atwater was discontinued.

In 2010, the 205 was again rerouted. This time, service to Main Line Industrial park was completely discontinued, and service was extended into Phoenixville via PA State route 29. This bridged a gap that was originally created when the 118 was removed from Paoli as now there is a direct connection from Montgomery County to Chester County. This was also done around the time when SEPTA was greatly modifying service into Phoenixville and Pottsville (the 99 bus would be cutback to Phoenixville around this time).

In 2015, once again SEPTA configured the whole line. Once again, the route would remain the same between Paoli and Great Valley, but this time service operated via Swedesford Road to Chesterbrook Corporate Center, which also provided a new connection to SEPTA route 124, making it possible to get from Center City to Great Valley without getting on the Paoli/Thorndale Line. Unfortunately, this version of the line was the least utilized as ridership would drop to as low as a few passengers a day.

However, it’s not a complete loss as the utilized parts were absorbed by route 206, and the underutilized parts are part of route 124, but it’s still worth mentioning as now thing brings the total number of Krapf operated SEPTA routes to one.

About the author: Dash

I have been with Virtual Transit Center since it's conception as the "Dash Forums" back in 2008. Since then, I have been writing and doing YouTube side by side, focusing both on Transportation and Gaming. Most of my knowledge comes from SEPTA as I lived in Philadelphia for most of my life. As of 2021, I am on YouTube as DashTransit, Dash5155, and TheDashOfficial.

As for the name DashTransit itself, it actually stems from my YouTube channel.

DashTransit was originally called "njt5329" and the channel was just clips of buses. Mostly SEPTA and NJT. A Fujifilm Finepix was used in this era.

Starting in July 2011, the Canon SX130IS camera became the camera of the channel, bringing HD documentary-style videos much like my buddy (trainman1971) did for DVD for many years past. This is when the channel became known as "Transit Action Series"

In May 2012, the original Canon SX130IS retired, and then all videos were recorded off a mobile phone until eventually uploaded proved too difficult due to hardships IRL

Starting in 2017, I used a Canon SX200IS from Bastranz to reboot the channel that otherwise was dead for a whole year prior.

Between April 19th, 2019, and January 21st, 2021, all videos were recorded by a Canon SX710 HS camera. The channel was renamed DashTransit 4/19/19.