Ardmore (SEPTA station)

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Ardmore

Station statistics

Address

Station Road and Lancaster Avenue
Ardmore, PA 19003

Lines

Amtrak:

Keystone Service

SEPTA:

Other information

Code

ARD

Owned by

Amtrak

Traffic

Passengers (2007)

40,581 ▼ 10%

Services

Preceding station	SEPTA	Following station
Haverford toward Thorndale	R5	Wynnewood toward Doylestown
Preceding station	Amtrak	Following station
Paoli toward Harrisburg	Keystone Service	Philadelphia toward New York

Ardmore Station is an above-ground commuter rail station located in the western suburbs of Philadelphia at Anderson & Coulter Aves, Ardmore, Pennsylvania 19003 [1]. It is served by Amtrak Keystone Service trains and most SEPTA R5 Paoli-Thorndale trains with the exception of a few express runs.

The station is a one-story brick building with a flat roof built in the 1950s. It replaced an older building that burned down. There are plans to build a new transit-oriented development in the area, and this would include a new station building.

The ticket office at this station is open weekdays 6:10 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. excluding holidays. SEPTA permit parking is available at the station, and the township provides additional metered parking in nearby lots.

This station is 8.5 track miles from Suburban Station. In 2003, the average total weekday SEPTA R5 boardings at this station was 822. In Federal Fiscal Year 2006 there were 45,261 Amtrak boardings plus alightings at this station [2].

Lower Merion Township has considered plans to replace the station as part of a larger economic revitalization plan for the neighborhood. However, the plan relied on using eminent domain to force the purchase of private property, which would then be transferred to a private developer. For this reason, it met significant opposition among some members of community. ^[1] As of 2005, the project seems unlikely to come to fruition.

Nearby attractions include the Suburban Square shopping center, Cold Stone Creamery, Ardmore Farmers Market, Brownie's 23 East, and other businesses in the downtown Ardmore shopping district along Lancaster Avenue.

A popular place to eat, across the street from the station, is the Ardmore Station Cafe.

This station was the nearest station to the home of Stuart T. Saunders, the final CEO of both the Pennsylvania Railroad and Penn Central. Despite his proximity to the station, Saunders preferred to travel to his Philadelphia office by chaffeur-driven private car rather than riding his own trains; his detractors used this as an indication of both the inhospitable conditions of the train cars and management's detachment from the riding public.