PHILADELPHIA — The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has asked the Federal Railroad Administration for more time to complete inspections of its Silverliner IV car fleet, a SEPTA spokesman said today (Oct. 29, 2025).
Public broadcaster WHYY reports that the SEPTA has asked for an additional two weeks to complete the inspections of the 223 Silverliner IV cars — inspections ordered by the FRA in response to fires on the cars built between 1974 and 1976, and the subject of a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation that all the cars be removed from service [see “FRA issues an emergency order …,” Trains.com, Oct. 2, 2025].
As of today, inspections have been completed for 108 of the cars. So SEPTA has asked for the additional time, a move spokesman Andrew Busch told the station was no surprise.
“We had expected we were going to have to do this in order to complete the inspections,” Busch said. “We’ve been talking with the FRA throughout this process.”
Whether the FRA will grant the request is uncertain. In an Oct. 23 letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that if SEPTA didn’t meet the deadline, the FRA “could exercise its authority to order all unrepaired Silverliner IV rail vehicles out of service,” and that he would take “all necessary enforcement action to protect SEPTA customers from unsafe conditions.”
SEPTA has been completing inspections on about eight cars a day but believes it can finish the process with the two additional weeks, Busch said.
Of the cars inspected so far, only 35 have been returned to service. The others require repairs, and while Busch said most of those repairs are minor, they have not yet been started because of the focus on completing the inspections.
SEPTA has talked to other agencies, including Maryland’s MARC and NJ Transit, about purchasing or leasing cars to help address its equipment shortage, Busch said, but nothing has been finalized.
