SEPTA’s New Multi-Level Cars Revealed

Philadelphia, PA: Progress on SEPTA‘s new multi-level regional rail cars from CRRC was finally revealed to the public.

For years, fans and riders have been left in the dark about these new cars. Rumors even circulated that this order was cancelled due to declining ridership on the regional rail. However, after years of delays from labor issues to parts issues to COVID compliance issues, we now have an actual idea as to what these CRRC cars will officially look like.

Thanks to this Facebook Post from the Beijing Youth Group, we get a glimpse into the SEPTA regional rail future.

As you can see, these cars will take inspiration from SEPTA‘s existing Silverliner V cars with the interior color setup as well as the color scheme and steel finish.

CRRC has also considerably been picking up on MBTA‘s Orange and Red Line car deliveries, with quite a few cars entering service over the past month. Despite them having been removed from service twice due to on-going safety issues.

This reveal shows not only the progress of the cars, but the fact that a full car is near completion. SEPTA‘s new multi-level (or double decker for those who see it that way) cars from CRRC were due to be fully in service by 2020, but now will begin entering service starting in 2023.

Update April 14th, 2024

As of April 14th, 2024, this order has been cancelled. Although SEPTA has invested $50m into the cars already, this order was plagued with delays and issues.

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.