Ivy Ridge station

Ivy Ridge is a SEPTA Regional Rail station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Located at Umbria Street and Parker Avenue in Northwest Philadelphia, it serves the Manayunk/Norristown Line. The initial station was built in a minimalist design similar to that of Elm Street, Norristown. The current station has a 204-space parking lot. In FY 2013, Ivy Ridge station had a weekday average of 602 boardings and 582 alightings.HistorySEPTA constructed Ivy Ridge in 1980 when service was extended an additional miles past Manayunk West station, the passenger terminus of the Pennsylvania Railroad's (PRR) Schuylkill Branch since 1960. Up until then, the of track had been used by Manayunk trains to change direction within a remotely controlled interlocking where the Schuylkill Branch (by that time, abandoned north of this point) went from two tracks to one. The single-platform Ivy Ridge station was constructed within the space occupied by the abandoned second track, removed in the early 1960s after the PRR discontinued passenger service to Norristown. A moderate-sized park-and-ride lot was included.SEPTA suspended service beyond Cynwyd in March 1986 because of deteriorating track conditions; a shuttle bus ran from Manayunk on the Manayunk/Norristown Line. In August SEPTA constructed the current platforms along the ex-Reading Norristown line down the bluff from the ex-Pennsylvania line. For a while, the park-and-ride lot sat unused until SEPTA erected a 39-step stairway connecting the derelict PRR upper level and RDG lower level station sites. In the beginning, the steep staircase discouraged ridership, but this changed as ridership grew in the 1990s.