Dahon.Steve

SEPTA buses won’t stop in malls now

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 9:57 AM EDT
By John M. Roman, jroman@delcotimes.com

At the request of five area malls and commercial centers, SEPTA will discontinue bus service on its property and provide service for bus routes 92, 107, 111, 114 and 115 along roads near the centers.

MacDade Mall — bus Route 107 — will now operate in both directions along Ashland Avenue, MacDade Boulevard and South Avenue without making stops into the MacDade Mall. Route 107 bus stops located in the mall will be removed and relocated at the intersection of MacDade Boulevard and South Avenue.

Route 107 will no longer serve Academy Avenue in the Briarcliffe section of the township.

MacDade Mall — all bus Route 115 trips coming from the Delmar Village will stop at South Avenue and MacDade Boulevard. The Route 115 will also be extended over MacDade Boulevard, Ashland Avenue and Academy Avenue.


Route 115 bus stops located in the mall will be removed. Mall passengers should board buses along South Avenue.

Franklin Mint Office Park — bus Route 111 — will now operate in both directions along Baltimore Pike without making stops into the Franklin Mint Office Park. Route 111 bus stops located in the office park will be removed.

Eddystone Crossing Shopping Center — bus Route 114 — will now operate in both directions along Chester Pike without making stops in the Eddystone Crossing Shopping Center. Route 114 bus stops located in the shopping center will be removed.<<<<<<

This is an outrage! These malls are getting rid of bus stops forcing the buses to stop on the highway! Incredible! With the stops located on the highway, what carfree person in their mind would want to stand on the highway at night or during terrible weather? I keep reading more stories just like this where malls are trying to charge the bus companies for the privilege of driving into the mall parking lot. The whole situation is insane.

https://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2...4205813464.txt

Roody

Why do the malls not want the buses to bring them customers? That doesn't make sense.

gosmsgo

Makes sense to me. IN my hometown of Columbia Missouri the busses on Friday nights were full of teens and preteens on their way to that free baby sitting service called "the mall."

There they fought, yelled, screamed, curses and shoplifted until no adult in their right mind would go there to shop. Now there is a rule in the malls that anyone under the age of 16 has to have an adult along with them.

I assume that is a problem with the bus system. It brings along poor and unsavory "customers."

I say this as a "car free" person.

Roody

You're kidding, right?

wheel

It was a mistake and will be corrected once they find out bus people won't go there or buy anything.
And when they do the bus should charge them.
If the bus stopped there in the first place there is a need for it.
It might speed up the overall bus depending on route.
Google map?
However I use unfriendly people out sheer need.

sykerocker 

I've got a funny feeling he's not. Malls want people in, spend money, get out.

'In' is real easy. 'Get out' is eventually doable, the question is how much are they using mall facilities before getting out, and how is that being offset by personal spending.

'Spend money' is a lot harder, and I've got a feeling somewhere along the line someone has done a study showing that the odds are a lot greater of someone actually spending money in a mall if they got there . . . . . . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . . . . . . . in a car, as opposed to getting there in any other form of transportation.

And yeah, I understand the 'anti teens' attitude - and at the age of 58, I have a hard time disagreeing with it. The hang out crowd definitely wore out their welcome years ago.

BarracksSi

I don't think gosmsgo's kidding, either. The one time my friend and I rode the bus to the mall -- this was probably 25 years ago -- it was loaded with rowdy kids. Honestly, that's not an experience I'm willing to put up with. Without their parents to control them, kids will go out of their way to be more obnoxious than their friends, and regular people get caught in the crossfire.

There's probably more to this, too. The few coherent comments on that article's page allude to things like insurance costs (possibly additional insurance just to let buses on the property), malls that are dying anyway, and -- oh, get this -- "Granite Run Mall...has been nothing but trouble since certain buses have been dropping off there."

wahoonc

Nope...been going on for years. Malls all over the place are starting to restrict anyone under the age of 18 that is there without a parent/guardian after certain hours. There was a huge brawl at a mall in the large town north of me several months ago that lead to the restrictions, the brawl involved teens and had to be broken up by shotgun wielding state troopers. They have been restricting buses since it opened several years ago. I don't shop malls, except as a last resort. As usual the actions of a few affect many.

Aaron

mike

Same thing in a lot of malls across the USA. Students are not allowed without parents. I am not a mall shopper, so I missed the whole hubbub but I guess it was a real problem.

Unlike the 1980's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" glory days when kids used to hang out at the mall and shoot spitballs at the Orange Julius shop, today's kids are apparently more troublesome - causing trouble and not spending money. Humbug.

I-Like-To-Bike

Maybe the mall management has made their decision based on their evaluation of "the type of people" who ride the bus and have guessed what they might do while at the mall. Ya know, like your impressions of "the type of people" who park cheap bikes at a public bike rack.

https://67.201.16.77/showpost.php?p=7854676&postcount=4

supcom

Perhaps not so insane. Perhaps the mall parking lots were being heavily used by commuters as a park and ride location. If those commuters tended to park close to the mall entrance to be near the bus stop, they would be using parking spaces that the mall tenants would rather be left open for customers. The mall also pays for maintenance of the parking lot, so if commuters are using the lot all day for their car storage, it would be fair for the mall owners to seek some compensation.

gwd

I'd try this if I had a problem with teenagers:

https://www.kidsbegone.com/

Platy

Young people have always caused trouble, but this not spending thing needs to be nipped in the bud. Not spending money at the mall is only the gateway. Unchecked, it inevitably leads to not spending on cars and not spending on big houses. Those little hoodlum slackers will be the ruination of our non negotiable American way of life.

chipcom 

I avoid going to malls because I got tired of fighting crowds of damned kids!
Now I go to the buffet so I can fight crowds of seniors with coupons!
If I want real fun, I can always go to any convenience store or gas station and fight crowds of lotto ticket buyers of all ages!

Roody

Well, for every rowdy kid who buses to the mall, there are at least 5 older people who are going there to shop. Buses run to all the Lansing area malls and to the main big box areas. In fact, three bus routes exist solely to serve the malls. One is even called "the grocery bus." My bus company just got a millage tax increase approved by the voters 64-36. Their main argument was that good bus service is good for retail sales, and they had figures to back this up.

BarracksSi

^^^ It certainly depends on the location, then. My closest mall, Pentagon City, gets a lot of traffic from tourist buses -- you'll see a small fleet of them parked out front almost every day. Plenty of kids, of course, but also a lot of chaperones and parents. There's another one at Tyson's Corner that's pretty high-end and just doesn't seem to have that kind of "teenage daycare" traffic (don't know whether it's just that way or if they have policies about unaccompanied kids).

But, there are plenty of others that aren't good destinations anymore. wahoonc's recollection of a big brawl should be a solid example of how they can suck.

Honestly, these reactionary threads get old. There's some headline that seems anti-pedestrian or anti-cyclist or pro-car, somebody jumps on it and brings it here for us to bash, and nearly every time it's rebuked with responses like, "Well, yeah, they had to do that here, too."

Roody

I would much prefer regulations/policies that make individuals accountable, rather than punishing innocent people for the actions of rowdy teens--who are a small subgroup of a subgroup. The downtown shopping districts have good police protection. Malls chose to set up private enclaves outside of city limits in order to dodge taxes. They don't want to pick up the slack by paying for adequate security. Instead, they enact exclusionary policies that are borderline unconstitutional, such as "no bus riders" or even "no teenagers." I'm glad that malls are retailing dinosaurs that are rapidly becoming extinct in most parts of the world.

wahoonc

Used to be parents were responsible for their teens and their actions, but not anymore, a portion of our society refuses to be responsible for their actions or much of anything else.

Unfortunately too much of our retail has moved away from where people live into hard to access zones. For a brief time I worked at our local mall (back in the late 70's) we had the teens there then, but didn't have the shoplifting, fighting and other issues that seem to have escalated today. The bus service to our mall still sucks 30 years later. If you are a mall worker you are SOL if you have to work a closing shift. There is some nearby housing but I doubt you could afford to live there on a retail salary...

FWIW malls have a "life expectancy" of 25-30 years depending on the locale. I have seen many dead malls where newer malls had been built somewhere else and the retail sector followed, there are a few exceptions. I would like to see malls converted to small towns with retail, restaurant and housing all in the same building.

Aaron

Roody

I believe you, but it's hard to explain this. Overall crime rates are much lower today than 30 years ago, and I believe juvenile crime has decreased even more. I don't know why this trend doesn't apply to malls. Maybe young people feel like malls are beyond the law, since they're policed by private security?


Inaccessability is still the best reason to hold onto a car. People are letting these private concerns dictate public policy. The towns should tell the malls, "If you choose to restrict buses and bikes, we will remove the public streets that lead to your parking lot. You're welcome to build and maintain streets at your own expense." Then they should also cut off water mains, sewerage and police/fire protection.

Not bloody likely!

Dahon.Steve

Alright you got me! Maybe my type of words were not correct but that doesn't change the situation. The worse place to park your bicycle at a mall or train station are the bike racks! It's due to the fact there's no security at all and the mall's attitude is you park at your own risk. From personal experience, I cannot recommend anyone use a bike rack. It may have been a good idea 50 years ago but not anymore.

The bus is a different story. The overwhelming people who use the bus are women, children and the elderly followed by men and teenagers. The malls today are looking for profit centers and figure they can charge the bus companies extra for what used to be free becuase of insurance issues.

If there are problems with teenagers, it's due to malls not providing enough security. There are numerous malls located in bad neighborhoods but they are not stopping public transit from providing service. As I said before, it's not the crime issue that's forcing these decisions but the insurance companies trying to make more money. If that's the case, the state should tax the insurance companies 3 times what they are charging the malls and this money should be handed to the transit companies to pay the malls. That would end the problem real quick!

Dahon.Steve

The whole problem is simple to resolve. The state government should tell the malls, they will receive a surcharge tax to pay for the "Extra Fuel" the buses must use since they cannot take a short cut through the mall. I can assure you, those buses will be allowed to enter as no one wants their taxes raised in any manner!

JeffS

No, they really do not. If not the malls, the patrons do not. Around here, I have heard people complaining many times about buses going to the malls, buses running into a certain suburb town (with veiled references to the project there), and open comments about the type of people buses bring to the malls.

People who ride the bus are seen as scum by the white suburbanites - and the women seem to be the most vocal about it.

JeffS

Yea, I just moved out of north Raleigh, very close to Triangle. I never really paid attention to the "big fight" to even know who was involved, but this is the story that led to most of the racist comments on WRAL's site I was referring to. The ones that really stuck in my head were along the lines of "we chose to live in Wake Forest to stay away from these people". Crabtree has been fighting the bus stops there for decades it seems like. Maybe it's just talk though since all the major malls that I can think of still have stops.

mondaycurse

Real World Example: Mills Mall, in the suburbs of St Louis, is right off a public transportation route and it almost immediately became a hot center for gang activity. Quoting from one of the security guards (who uses the PT from downtown) "I've never seen a place turn downtown so quickly."
It's an unfortunate reality, but some people think that people riding the bus are more likely to shoplift or spend less money than people in cars.

gerv 

Of course, few are aware that hoodlums, teenagers and other general riffraff are predominantly car drivers. Keeping bus traffic away from the Malls is unlikely to solve any problem at all and it will of course reduce the amount of traffic to the Mall and hurt those who use public transportation.

When I look at bus traffic to the local Malls, they do look like just about any other citizens... just that they don't have cars to park. You'd think not having to provide parking for all these cars would be a bonus...