Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Philadelphia - Transit Tour
Philadelphia, one of America’s oldest cities, blends rich history with a dense, walkable urban core. Its transit system, operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA), includes subways, trolleys, buses, and regional rail that connect neighborhoods, suburbs, and key destinations like the airport and multiple universities. While aging infrastructure poses challenges, Philly’s compact layout makes it one of the most transit-accessible cities in the U.S.
• SEPTA's tap-to-pay system proves convenient for making connections across multiple modes
• Roosevelt Boulevard corridor plans include potential BRT, light rail, or subway extensions by 2040
• Historic trolley system provides frequent service but faces capacity challenges with packed cars
• Visiting Camden via PATCO and returning by ferry adds a multistate dimension to Philadelphia transit
• SEPTA faces a critical funding crisis with potential 45% service cuts and fare increases threatening system viability
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Doors are closing. We do Philadelphia in a day using only public transit, From buses to the subway, trolleys and more. We put SEPTA to the test. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents. All right, this is day two of our kind of northeast transit tour. We just got off the train late last night Late last night, yeah, After a long northeast regional trip from Boston to Philly. Yes, Only gripe is no cafe car for most of the ride, which we'll get into later in a further episode. But we're currently on our way to catch a bus up to Independence Hall. Yep, that's a good place to start.
Speaker 1:I think in Philadelphia. Yeah, and from there we'll kind of update you on a rough plan for the day, but we're excited to be doing Philadelphia in a day using only public transit. We're guessing that this is to clean your shoes, but if you think it's something else, let us know in the comments. As you're watching this episode of us here in Philadelphia, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you think so far. You can also give this video a like and consider subscribing to support the show.
Speaker 2:So we started the day in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Philadelphia, went and had breakfast and then we hopped on the 47 bus, take a couple stops up to Independence Hall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and pretty easy getting on the bus. Nice thing in Philly. It's becoming a new trend here Tap to pay with your credit card on buses, trains, all sorts of stuff. So happy to see that. One little funny thing with the bus already is we had showed up at the bus and there were two of the exact same bus right next to each other, so it seems like bunching of some of the buses can be a thing.
Speaker 1:And at one point the bus behind us, leapfrogged us at an intersection, but that definitely happens quite a bit.
Speaker 1:It seems like the frequencies are pretty high though, so you know very well used though Lots of folks on the bus From here. We're going to kind of go all over the city today, but we're going to start off by hopping on the subway, the orange line headed north, and we're going to check out an area around Roosevelt Boulevard where there are a lot of different proposals for more mass transit options up in that part of the city. Whoa, out of the corner of my eye, while I was looking at that bus, I'm pretty sure I just saw Nicolas Cage grab a brick out of that and grab some weird glasses. I just saw Nicolas Cage grab a brick out of that and grab some weird glasses. We missed being able to show you us getting on this train after some confusion, which we'll get to in a second, but we boarded an orange line train headed north from the 8th and Market Street station, so we missed the signs that we just saw behind us at the previous station, the first one was jumped on an express train.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we expressed right past where we were three stops aiming to go. It was nice how fast it was going and honestly, like having express service like that is a net benefit for folks who live further out for sure, but better signage better signage and, in general, that station we got on at I'll make sure I insert it was like eighth street I believe, but I'll insert the correct one.
Speaker 1:if it wasn't, the signage was terrible. We accidentally went in to the wrong side and then we were looking for where do we get onto this orange line and we walked around for a while before we found it. That's why we didn't have footage getting on the train, because we were like where the heck is this train?
Speaker 2:But pretty likely used for the Express, I mean on a. Tuesday yeah, but one really cool thing we did see an abandoned subway station along the way we did. We did which I'm always really fascinated by, and want us to do an episode that's just about abandoned subway stations.
Speaker 1:I think that that would be a fun episode. I think our train is going to be approaching here in a second. We're going to pop a few stations back south to Huntington Park, where we'll then catch a bus and go along Roosevelt Boulevard where we'll talk more about some potential transit expansion plans there.
Speaker 2:So we arrived at the station but weren't actually sure when the train was coming. You could look online, but there are no boards telling you when the next train's arriving Really, odd, especially like despite the fact that there are digital signs all over the place like yeah. Yeah, there are digital signs.
Speaker 1:They don't actually tell you the time, and there's also a lot of digital signs that are advertisements, right, After our brief mix-up, we made it back down to the appropriate station and got off the orange line right at Roosevelt Boulevard.
Speaker 2:We made it to our third separate station now.
Speaker 1:Yes, Um, one thing we noticed so far is all of them have been a little like, a little gross, I don't know.
Speaker 2:They're a little stinky Like we talked about how, like, New York is gross and there's no real reason that it should be, except there's just a ton of people. This is pretty quiet and Still gross.
Speaker 1:Still kind of gross, but the trains have been coming pretty frequently though, so we'll take that as a win.
Speaker 2:but um, but they're quiet. There's not many people on the train yet again. We're kind of almost midday, yeah, on a work day so it kind of makes sense, but it kind of makes sense, uh, but the station's also just very quiet.
Speaker 2:But from here we have arrived at huntington park, which is where we intended to go before we jumped on the express. We're gonna pop up to roosevelt? Uh boulevard and tell you all about a plan for that street. And uh, roosevelt Roosevelt Boulevard is a huge thoroughfare through the city. At one point it's like a 12 lane highway. It's so big. It's also designated as US 1, which is notable because it travels from Maine all the way down to the Florida Keys. This is also part of the Lincoln Highway, which we have talked about a couple times on episodes, but the Lincoln Highway was really one of the first transcontinental highways. Actually, it was the first transcontinental highway in the US that ran from New York all the way to San Francisco.
Speaker 1:And what's pretty exciting about Roosevelt Boulevard is right now there are a ton of different plans kind of being proposed to redo the corridor and a lot of them include different proposals for transit, ranging from BRT to light rail to subway to all sorts of different things kind of operating in that corridor. So definitely excited to see what the future of Roosevelt Boulevard could look like Absolutely. Just to get into a few more of the specifics here, there is a three-phased approach the city is currently using along this corridor. Phase one the boulevard today would add speed cameras, additional bus services and intersection improvements by 2026. Phase 2, the Boulevard Tomorrow would improve pedestrian crossings, add bike lanes, make better turning infrastructure as well as add bus only lanes and bus stop improvements. Lastly, phase 3, the Boulevard Reimagined would aim to study a variety of options which would be completed by 2040. These include a capped, sunken highway, which is less exciting, but other options include a BRT, light rail or even a subway extension down this corridor.
Speaker 2:All right. So we picked up the 82 on Roosevelt Boulevard right by Huntington Park and then took that all the way over to the Frankfurt Transportation Center where you can kind of connect all kinds of things. You have trains, you have buses here kind of gets you back into the city or other destinations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely a major hub. There were a ton of buses waiting downstairs. There's also like a bus depot down there too. So a few things to note. So that 82 bus was more of a crosstown route that kind of goes between different rail lines and more major thoroughfares, and it was running about every 15 minutes plus or minus a little bit Came basically right on time. It was also busy. It was a very busy bus, very busy, and I would say it actually like moved pretty good, like we were. We made pretty good time getting here. A lot of city struggles with cross town routes and that was like a plus one for Philly there. So good to see that.
Speaker 1:We boarded our southbound blue line train headed to Girard. One fun thing about trains, at least on the blue line here in Philly, is that you can actually look out of the window at the very front and very rear of the trains, next to the driver. We managed to get a spot in the back, right at the window. If you've enjoyed this episode so far and want to support the show directly, the best way to do so is via our patreon, linked in the description below. You can also check out our other city in a day, episodes also linked below in a playlist all right.
Speaker 2:So we took the blue line down to girard and our goal was to try to catch the G, which is the rebranded 15 line here in Philadelphia. This is a trolley line that originally opened in 1859 and has gone through a ton of changes in its past, where it switched to bus service, it shut down, it's back to trolleys, it went back to bus service and supposedly it is back to trolley service with these sort of refurbished, beautiful old trolleys that we wanted to show you. But so far we've only seen two buses using this route and we're not exactly sure why.
Speaker 1:It seemed like there was some sort of maintenance going on. Philly folks, let us know if this is normal or not, or if we're getting this wrong. We are now back at Gerrard station after going to check out what we were hoping was a streetcar. It seems like it is some days, but today was just buses.
Speaker 2:There might be a delay or a detour causing the buses to fill in for the trams, we decided right, but we're gonna go try our luck with another type of kind of streetcar type thing in a bit here.
Speaker 1:We're gonna take the blue line back to to City Hall, which is right in downtown, and transfer on to the trolley lines, which I'm pretty excited to check out. It seems like similar vibes to the green line in Boston, where you've got underground tunnels in downtown and then it kind of comes out of the tunnels and kind of spiders out into the neighborhoods at street level.
Speaker 2:So we will see you at City Hall you at City Hall.
Speaker 1:Slight change in plans. We're actually going to take the PATCO train, which is operated by a different agency, over to Camden, new Jersey, just to check it out. We're just doing a short ride over to the City Hall station. Then we'll come back to Philly and go to what we said we were going to do on the Green Line. So we made it to the station here. We've got about 12 minutes before the train comes, but we'll pick it up once we make it over to Camden.
Speaker 2:So we're on the platform for the PATCO train that's going to take us from Philadelphia over to Camden. One thing we did notice is that, looking at the service schedule, you can actually catch this train almost 24 hours a day coming from the 8th street station of Philadelphia. However, it obviously is going to have reduced times in the evening, like once every hour in the early early hours. The other thing is, when you switch from Philadelphia SEPTA system to PATCO, it is like stepping back in time the five feet that you walk over to the PATCO kiosk because you actually do have to enter in a credit card. There is no tap to pay for the station or for the credit or for the ticket machine. You get a paper ticket and then, when you get to the little gate, you have to run it through the gate like a old school.
Speaker 1:You have to do it the right way.
Speaker 2:And you have to do it the right way, as Lewis found out. So, yeah, it's like a little bit like stepping back in time when you have such a modern alternative like what SEPTA has with tap to pay. All right, we took the PACCO, which is the Port Authority Transportation Company, or transit company, from Philadelphia over to Camden, new Jersey. This is the second time that we have crossed state lines for the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, the last time was in Kansas City, going from Missouri into Kansas. Yeah, that one was a lot less pleasant than this one. This one's much nicer.
Speaker 2:So thank you, Camden, for being a much nicer city.
Speaker 1:Wow, that was a real slam, I was mostly talking about the weather and everything else.
Speaker 2:You just really slammed. Kansas City, kansas. We're here at the City Hall, which is also right near Rutgers, camden University, and what we're gonna do is kind of walk around a little bit, head towards the waterfront, maybe see the ferry that runs between Philadelphia and Camden, and then also see the blue line, which we didn't know about until we got here, which is a streetcar line running in this area. So this is part of the aquarium. What I don't understand is you're looking at the cutouts and it's seahorse, and then corn, seahorse, corn.
Speaker 1:It's also sadly abandoned. It looks like Just stumbled across this nice little spot where they must do some music and whatnot during the summer. Nice Philly backdrop, all right. So we were gonna try to catch the little Camden light rail and check it out and see what it's called the River Link. River Link, yes, but we just noticed that the ferry that goes back and forth between Camden and Philly, which only runs every hour, just happens to be running in six minutes. Yeah so, and we're right here.
Speaker 1:So we are going to give it a shot. Also, it's nice day to be on the water, so we're relying on the link. Sorry, we're relying on the line. Got it noted. I've called it the blue line. We've called it the river link. It's actually the river line, yes, but we'll get some nice visuals on the ferry and maybe we'll grab some lunch on the other side before going to check out some of the trolley lines over in Philly. This is our first transit tangents ferry.
Speaker 2:We've talked about them. We have a whole ferry episode, but this is the first time we've actually had a chance to take one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no one watched that episode also, I think that is our.
Speaker 2:So here's the One of the worst episodes we've done.
Speaker 1:Oh well, the worst performing.
Speaker 2:One of the worst performing. I think it's a good episode.
Speaker 1:Some of the worst performing, yeah so if you want to go, give that some love, you can, but look at the lovely views of Philly on the. What is this called? Is this called the Freedom? Wow, the Freedom. We had some weird mic interference on the bus, but Chris was explaining that after the ferry ride we grabbed some lunch before catching a bus to head back across towards Philadelphia City Hall. Philadelphia City Hall is a huge, beautiful building dating back to 1894. This building has a great center courtyard to it and when it was constructed it was actually the world's tallest habitable building. In the 1950s there was actually a plan to tear it down, believe it or not, to build a new city hall elsewhere. Thankfully, that plan did not come to fruition. We just checked out City Hall, which was very elaborate. Palatial, that's the right word. It does look like a European palace, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yes, they also had a portal so we could see some people in Poland for a while. Yes, kind of cool, but right now we're finally actually getting on the green line. We're going to head to the University of Pennsylvania. We managed to get a trolley right away, as they are extremely frequent downtown. Despite the frequency, though, these things were packed tight, which made made getting on and off as you're about to see here pretty tricky.
Speaker 2:So we took the green line or the underground trolley system from downtown Philadelphia City Hall all the way out to the University of Pennsylvania, and we are currently sitting in a train station that looks like a trolley. This station, which is really unique in the city of Philadelphia and, honestly, one of the most unique stations I've ever seen, was actually built by the class of 1956 from the University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:From here we walked around campus a bit before going to check out a spot where the trolley lines emerge from being underground and turn into a street running system at the 40th Street Portal. So this is currently the place where the trolleys coming from Philadelphia pop up back above ground and here it splits into four different routes.2, T3, T4 and T5 all come from this tunnel and go off and branch and then run on the street level for the duration of the routes and when they get to the end they'll come back and either do a loop and head back out here or they'll head into downtown Philly.
Speaker 1:Something that people wanted us to talk about is the fact that SEPTA has been facing a huge deficit over $200 million worth of deficit and if they weren't able to find new funding sources, this was going to force SEPTA to take really dramatic steps, and dramatically reduce service and some of those reductions we're talking 50 bus routes slated for elimination, five regional rail lines, some subway and trolley lines seeing reduced services, night services being cut, special event services being cut, as well as fare increases from $2.50 to $2.90, which, overall, will just make things more difficult for folks. In total, to summarize it, it's about a 45% reduction in service and a 21.5% fare increase. Yeah, so not great.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, these cuts are still on the horizon for Philadelphia, as well as similar cuts in Pittsburgh. Not all hope is lost, but time is running out. Steve from the YouTube channel how we Get Around has been covering this as he is a local to Philly, and we are working on scheduling a time to do a remote interview with him to get the latest. If we get it scheduled, we'll get that episode out the following Tuesday on YouTube and ASAP on Patreon. If you're looking for ways to get more involved with this, we'll make sure there are some links in the description of this video.
Speaker 1:All right, we are back in downtown Philly. We took the green trolley, the T. We've had the name different every single time, I think, but let us know what you actually call it. I read I think it's the T, but we took the T back to City hall area here and from the university. Yeah, overall we had a pretty good day. I mean, we hit a lot of modes, we. We snuck the ferry in there, we did both the orange and the blue lines, we did a couple buses, we also never really waited for anything.
Speaker 2:everything was pretty much on time. In some cases we were kind of rushing up to make sure we didn't miss something, yep, uh, but didn't really wait long for a trolley at all. There were so many of those, yeah, even walking straight onto the ferry, which I know was a happenstance.
Speaker 1:We got lucky and it's more.
Speaker 2:it's less of a transit ferry, more of a tourist ferry, but it was still lovely yeah.
Speaker 1:So highly recommend it, if you're here, for sure, but overall Things were pretty smooth. Tap to pay was a nice addition. We also with the exception of being on the not the Petco line but the Patco line over to Camden, so yeah, overall pretty good. I mean, yeah, even to your point, like the buses we didn't wait for there was like in the morning I thought maybe we'd be off to a rocky start because we saw like the two buses bunched together and that might've been something we ran back into again. But it wasn't so philly redeemed itself. Yeah, uh, for sure. I think some of the more negative things that we noticed was just like we talked about a little bit earlier the stations were all like little little.
Speaker 2:Every station smells like pee and I hate to say that I know that's not an uncommon thing for transit systems, but it was just consistent. Yeah, it really was, um, but I started to wonder if it was me or lewis yeah, maybe it was.
Speaker 1:I don't think it was. Yeah, it might have been you.
Speaker 2:No, I'm fully kidding, fully kidding um, but all in all, uh, that was. That was really one of the more negative parts. Um, it was pretty quiet at the beginning of the day, but it definitely picked up around our shower, so a lot more people, I would say. One other thing to note was that the trolleys seem like they could be articulated. Maybe that's a design limitation with the way that the tracks are laid out here and the turns, but every single trolley was really full.
Speaker 1:They were packed, yeah, like to the point where it was hard to get off. And we actually had a funny moment getting off. We were like trying to get to the doors, we started driving away and everyone was like yelling to stop so we could get off. But the folks made some noise and we could get off, which was good. Even Chris, losing a couple articles throughout the day, we were able to, you know, using transit, go back and get them.
Speaker 2:Transit's good enough that I could forget something on one side of town and then run back to go get it. So that was great, yeah it was, but all in all, really good time. Here in Philadelphia we are going to continue our trip down the northeast. We started in Boston, we've been in Philadelphia. Next we're going to Baltimore. We're gonna learn more about the red line and some other cool stuff that's happening there. But before we make our trek down the coast, we have to rank Philadelphia on our list of transit cities and keep in mind we have only been to 10 right of the city, so far.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I'm already having some conflicts in my head of if we ranked our top couple the right order, I we put Boston ahead of DC. I think it stays there for now. But I I'm already having some conflicts in my head of if we ranked our top couple the right order. We put Boston ahead of DC. I think it stays there for now, but I'm always questioning myself throughout the night last night.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll poll the audience. We'll put out a poll and say how would you rank it.
Speaker 1:DC or Boston, but I do think a lot of the early cities we went to were lower tier transit cities, which we kind of did intentionally of like, hey, you know, you don't have to be negative on your city's public transportation, it probably exists in some form, you just need to learn how to use it. This is a much bigger city with an actual transit system, so this is going to fall into our top few cities here, I think. As far as coverage goes, it is pretty widespread.
Speaker 2:A lot of commuter lines didn't even touch today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, um, you have all the different subway lines. The buses were actually running pretty smoothly, especially like on the graded streets. You definitely saw some of them sitting in traffic, but we fortunately didn't get too caught up in that. Um, but I think the like we mentioned, like the cleanliness of the stations and whatnot, definitely knocks it down a couple pegs, um, and the rail coverage didn't seem as much as what we saw in Boston.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what we do is we try to rank this based on not only the coverage and the options that you have and the ability to get around, but also the experience that you have. And so, based on our experience and based on what we saw and learned about here, we ranked Philadelphia number three on our list so far, so right now, the top three are Boston, washington DC and Philadelphia.
Speaker 1:I'm going to make Louis say them every time so he gets the hate mail. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but definitely let us know what you think. If you're from Philly, let us know what we should have checked out. We did a mix of like seeing sites, but also, more so, trying to hit some different modes of transit today. So, yeah, let us know what you thought of the episode. If you haven't liked the video already, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. We also love reading your comments as well, and if you want to support the show directly, you can do so via our Patreon. Buy me a coffee or by supporting us in the merch store. Absolutely, but without further ado. Thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of.