Multiple sources are reporting that SEPTA has officially announced the removal of the R designations from its Regional Rail lines.

Originally announced a few weeks ago by Harry Garforth at a CAC meeting, it was later revealed that Garforth got a bit ahead of himself and SEPTA had not yet made an official decision on the matter.

The Rs will be removed and the lines will be renamed based on their current endpoints. The one exception being the Norristown line, which will become the Manayunk-Norristown line.

Communications director Elizabeth Mintz insists that SEPTA will be swift in replacing all signage which currently references the R designations. Hopefully SEPTA will use this opportunity to put their new signage initiative into overdrive, finally eliminating dated and destroyed maps and signs that are still prevalent at some outlying and Center City stations.

It will be sad to see the Rs go away - it's the final nail in the coffin of a system that was never realized. I previously wrote that I would love to see the full through-routing system be implemented, but that will never happen. In light of that, this move makes sense. If the lines will never be paired off on schedules, then keeping the pairings serves no real purpose. No more pairings also effectively means an end to differentiating the Reading and Pennsylvania sides of the system, since each paired line contained one endpoint from each side.