It’s not every day you go to work and see a car on the trolley tracks instead of, you know, a trolley. This rare occurrence was spotted in Philadelphia on August 15th, where the trolley service was interrupted by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) after a Jeep Grand Cherokee was found inside the tunnel.
Most people are perhaps wondering how did that happen. Well, according to SEPTA, the driver went into the tunnel through the 40th Street trolley station open portal at the intersections of Baltimore and Woodland Avenues and got stuck on the tracks.
For those of you who might not know, the 40th Street Portal is an open tunnel accessible through Woodland or Baltimore Avenues, where four of the five Subway-Surface Lines enter the Woodland Avenue subway tunnel after running on the streets in Southwest Philadelphia.
According to local reports, that's how the Jeep got inside the tunnel where SEPTA employees discovered it on Sunday morning, at about 5:00 a.m. With that cleared up, the only question left is “Why?”. Usually, there are big warning signs that tell you where the roadway ends, so they are pretty hard to miss.
When a Twitter user asked SEPTA about the reasoning behind the driver’s actions, the public transportation authority said that it does not have any “additional information available.” So, it’s safe to assume, we’ll never know what could have possibly been on the driver’s mind.
Of course, jokes about Elon Musk’s Hyperloop didn’t fail to emerge after this crazy stunt. Described as a sealed tube with low air pressure through which a pod may travel at hypersonic speed, the Hyperloop is a concept that is yet to be implemented.
There are still plenty of things that must be thoroughly tested out and developed until we get to see people travel through near-vacuum tunnels at speeds of 1,200 kph (745 mph). But until that happens, some of us seem to want to get a taste ahead of what it’s like to go on an underground journey.
For those of you who might not know, the 40th Street Portal is an open tunnel accessible through Woodland or Baltimore Avenues, where four of the five Subway-Surface Lines enter the Woodland Avenue subway tunnel after running on the streets in Southwest Philadelphia.
According to local reports, that's how the Jeep got inside the tunnel where SEPTA employees discovered it on Sunday morning, at about 5:00 a.m. With that cleared up, the only question left is “Why?”. Usually, there are big warning signs that tell you where the roadway ends, so they are pretty hard to miss.
When a Twitter user asked SEPTA about the reasoning behind the driver’s actions, the public transportation authority said that it does not have any “additional information available.” So, it’s safe to assume, we’ll never know what could have possibly been on the driver’s mind.
Of course, jokes about Elon Musk’s Hyperloop didn’t fail to emerge after this crazy stunt. Described as a sealed tube with low air pressure through which a pod may travel at hypersonic speed, the Hyperloop is a concept that is yet to be implemented.
There are still plenty of things that must be thoroughly tested out and developed until we get to see people travel through near-vacuum tunnels at speeds of 1,200 kph (745 mph). But until that happens, some of us seem to want to get a taste ahead of what it’s like to go on an underground journey.
lmfao https://t.co/WUiH0BRwvs pic.twitter.com/bcsBP3JHJq
— Large Big (@rudetanks) August 15, 2021