Getting Around: Philadelphia, PA

When I first went to Philly, riding transit was… complicated. It felt like a system for locals only and took a lot of local knowledge to navigate successfully.

Recently, they’ve completely revamped it with new names for the lines and new signs.

I really gotta give props to the team at SEPTA. As a visitor, it is night and day, so much easier and more pleasant to ride now.

The subways are pretty good! I’d love a bit more frequency, but it’s fine. Also, the tracking tends to be really optimistic… it usually came 3-5 minutes later than expected.

Do pay attention to the stations. On at least some of my journeys (maybe all of them, but I don’t recall), there were no announcements nor displays telling you where you are.

The trolleys are really weird and really cute. Single car, high floor trains with steep narrow stairs. They go fast. Too fast for me to get a clear shot of them, apparently.

Trolleys run underground in center city, and above ground further to the west.

Sometimes you pay at a turnstile in the station. Other times you pay as you get on the trolley. If you went through a turnstile, you can board the trolley using any door. If you’re paying as you board, get on at the front.

The G trolley north of center city runs really cool vintage trolleys, similar to the ones in San Francisco on the MUNI J line.

Unfortunately, this trolley only came every 30 minutes. I was going to ride, but lost track of time while enjoying a cheesesteak. Oops!

Now you just tap to pay. No tickets, no guessing whether a 3-day pass will be better than a 1-day or adding value to a card. I just tapped my phone and got on.

In the past couple years, Philly added letter naming to its lines. It’s so much easier for me as a visitor.

Now it’s remodeled, nice escalators, bright mezzanine, good navigation. As many visitors’ first impression of the city’s transit, it is actually welcoming now. This is new.

There are two subways that seem like they cross perpendicular, but one of them does a kind of swerve so they cross at an angle.

City Hall is the end station for several trolley lines, which do a really wide U-Turn before heading back where they came.

There are multiple stops for some of the lines, I think. It’s unclear and I didn’t explore all the depths of the station.

There are weird staircases and corridors and catwalks and funky shortcuts.

This is all stacked on top of each other at funky angles like someone just lost at Jenga.

There were missing signs. Inaccurate signs. Random closed corridors.

To transfer subways, one time I went through a metal gate that was held slightly ajar by a makeshift… something.

It was intimidating, creepy even. I ended up on the wrong end of the platform, or the wrong level, several times. Random locked gates. Hastily printed temporary signs.

All of that, and the lines just had names. Market Street. Broad Street.

Mostly I just had to ask locals, who were helpful. Philly people are amazing.

It’s taken a complete 180. There are signs everywhere and they are all accurate. The lines all have letter names.

The long creepy corridor to nowhere? Now it’s a long corridor to the L, with reassuring signs along the way as if to say “you’re doing great, sweetie!” That alone makes it feel less creepy.

The first time I exited one of these stations (Lombard maybe?), I got off the train and there were just long underground corridors in every directions. Maybe some stairs.

I picked a random corridor, and started to walk down it. A voice from the very end (I think someone had set up camp there) shouted “There’s no exit this way!” Appreciated!

Now, there are signs everywhere at that station. And not just exit signs. Each sign also tells you which bus lines you can connect to at that exit.

I rode PATCO a couple stops, just to see how it is.

It was fine! Typical regional rail. It runs on a schedule, every 30-60 minutes.

PATCO isn’t integrated with SEPTA’s fare system, so I couldn’t tap my phone to enter like I did with the subway and trolley.

I bought a paper ticket from a machine. You feed the ticket into a turnstile when you get on, then feed it into another one on the way out, and it calculates how much you owe.

I paid the exact amount for my trip (just $1.40). Since my ticket didn’t have any leftover value, the machine gobbled up my ticket when I exited. Om nom nom!

It was an easy underground transfer to the L subway at Market St.

I didn’t ride the bus on my most recent visit, but I’ve taken them before. I’ve ridden the bus within the city, and I’ve done a couple of round trips to King of Prussia, about an hour away, for conferences. They’re perfectly good buses, fairly reliable, nothing too remarkable.

My first trip, right after I got on, a car cut off the bus. The driver yelled “Watch where you’re going, jackass!” out the window.

I thought, “Philly is all right!”

Philadelphia, at least center city, is unusual for walking. In the older core, there are no pedestrian signals. Just traffic lights. It’s a bit disorienting at first, until you realize that you just walk the same direction as cars. The streets are rather narrow, so it only takes a couple seconds to cross.

It’s very pedestrian friendly, for the most part, and the scale of everything just feels… friendly.