How's the public transportation in Philly? (Philadelphia, York: home, live, buses)

[CHIP72]

Glad to be of help, ChicagoRon.

I think the biggest negative with Philadelphia area public transit is SEPTA has not really updated their fare collection systems. I don't think they are too problematic for weekly/monthly riders, but for people visiting Philly for say 1-3 days, the lack of some sort of electronic fare card collection (whether it be magnetic strip like the CTA Chicago Card or the New York MTA Metrocard or a contactless fare card, like the Washington WMATA SmarTrip Card) is a real pain. SEPTA does have something like a day pass, the Convenience Pass (good only on heavy rail, light rail, and buses, but not Regional Rail, PATCO, or NJ Transit), but because it does not have electronic collection it is misnamed IMO. Probably the other big negative is SEPTA does not have a truly useful, FREE system map. They do have a pocket map showing the entire rail system (both heavy/light rail and regional rail), but that map doesn't show streets or landmarks for reference. The comprehensive system maps SEPTA does have (city map and suburbs map), which genuinely are very comprehensive (showing all SEPTA rail and bus routes, plus PATCO, the NJ Transit RiverLINE, and the small transit system in Pottstown), cost $10 each.

One other thing I'll note - if you take Amtrak to/from Philadelphia (to/from any origin/destination), you can use your Amtrak ticket stub to travel to/from 30th Street Station to/from either of the other 2 Center City Philadelphia stations on the Regional Rail system (Suburban Station and Market East Station). On the other hand, the SEPTA R7 Trenton train stops at all 3 stations on trips to/from Trenton (and as was noted by others above, you can do a cross-platform transfer to the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor Line at Trenton to get to New York Penn Station; the SEPTA and NJ Transit trains that are "connected" are timed to facilitate the transfer).

[VivaLaEvie]

The public transportation system is okay, but it is frustrating because it could be great.

It is in major need of an overhaul - mostly transfers, payments and other integrations that really need to happen. I hope Philly gets the Olympics because they would invest the money in the infrastructure it needs.

The Chinatown bus to DC/ Boston/ NYC rocks! $10 to NYC - leaves every hour non-stop.

[KoNgFooCj]

Originally Posted by FindingZen

I'd say that Philly is about on par with Chicago. I haven't been to Toronto so I can't compare. We've got several commuter trains (Regional Rail), light rail "trolleys" and two subway routes (one of them Elevated at spots).

Some people think having conductors on commuter trains is antiquated. Others find it adds an extra measure of security. Many people agree that it would be nice to have an "add-a-fare" card that can be loaded up instead of tokens, tickets and weekly/monthly zone passes. Fares are not cheap compared to other cities but it's still less expensive than driving.

To get to NYC using local transit, you can take Philly's SEPTA R7 Regional Rail line to Trenton and transfer to the New Jersey Transit train immediately ahead of it. The trip takes just over two hours and costs perhaps $25. Amtrak runs the same route although you'd pay way over double the price to shave off a half hour.

Check out SEPTA .

"Philly on par with Chicago" rotflmfao

I'd say it's more similar to Toronto since both cities have some heavy rail transit, but opted to keep their trolleys instead of replacing them with buses. Even Toronto's got a lot more than Philly does though.

[ThinkPositiveRespect]

Please do not label everyone. Enough said. Then some wonder why a reputation of a city exist.

What is wrong with a Toronto annalogy too. It has trolleys also. But lucky new transit gets financed there unlike here in the states.

Better some won't see my post. But having no time to defend Philadelphia transit means somone had a point one hit a nerve with. I do see the OP did not post on C-D since 2012. So guess thread was DOA to reawake.

[moneymkt]

Originally Posted by kyb01

Reviving a 12 year old thread because you are bored while thousands of people are infected and/or dying from a noval virus in this country and globally is so shallow it's hard to imagine what kind of person you really are.

Normally I would agree and call the person pathetic but with all the stuff that is going on right now, any activity on this site is a good thing lol Anything to help us keep our mind active and get through everything being shutdown. In the poster's defense, atleast he/she responded to a old thread with some input. I seen people respond to a old thread with......."I agree"

lol

[Wells5]

IMO, Chicagoland public mass transit CTA and Metra (and the South Shore Line) are far superior to SEPTA. CTA is so proud of their heavy rail system that they've made front end videos of all of their routes.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...XX5iRMCOasE1M9

[FindingZen]

Time flies.

While one can debate how SEPTA compares to Chicago and Toronto, I would still say that, combined with PATCO and relevant NJ Transit routes, Philadelphia has one of the top five transit systems in the country in terms of coverage and frequency with NYC, Boston, DC, Chicago and the Bay Area being above or below it. If including Canada, Philly's still in the top ten with Toronto, and presumably Montréal and Vancouver being in the conversation.

[KoNgFooCj]

Originally Posted by Wells5

IMO, Chicagoland public mass transit CTA and Metra (and the South Shore Line) are far superior to SEPTA. CTA is so proud of their heavy rail system that they've made front end videos of all of their routes.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...XX5iRMCOasE1M9

I'm so jealous of those videos. The most professional videos you'll see of septa are from Timosha21 on YouTube or some other freelance transit documentor. You say CTA is proud of their transit system, well I guess any transit company would probably be proud of their system lol. But anyway yeah septa should definitely do that. God I don't know how Philly managed to get by with only 2 RT lines into the 50s with well over 2 million people in the city. Chicago needed 8 lines for just 1.5 million more people.

I wonder if some would say Philly didn't need more than 2 lines with its expansive trolley system... But the why did Chicago get rid off all its trolleys? Did it want to be more like New York? God I wish Philly wasn't so backwards in the past with so many things.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by KoNgFooCj

I'm so jealous of those videos. The most professional videos you'll see of septa are from Timosha21 on YouTube or some other freelance transit documentor. You say CTA is proud of their transit system, well I guess any transit company would probably be proud of their system lol. But anyway yeah septa should definitely do that. God I don't know how Philly managed to get by with only 2 RT lines into the 50s with well over 2 million people in the city. Chicago needed 8 lines for just 1.5 million more people.

I wonder if some would say Philly didn't need more than 2 lines with its expansive trolley system... But the why did Chicago get rid off all its trolleys? Did it want to be more like New York? God I wish Philly wasn't so backwards in the past with so many things.

You apparently haven't been here long enough to witness the occasional flare-ups about the rapid transit system we were supposed to have had.

The city set up a department to build it after the city's first rapid transit line, the Market Street subway-elevated (1902-07), took longer to build than the city thought it would take and didn't quite get built as planned. This line has the distinction of being the only totally privately built and financed subway-elevated line in the United States; all the others were either produced by public-private partnerships or were purely public projects. (Chicago's elevated lines were also entirely privately built, like New York's were, but the city's "Initial System of Subways" — the lines under State and Dearborn streets through the Loop and adjacent areas — was a city undertaking begun during the Depression.) The city was also not happy with the difficulty the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company had paying for its construction; finances were one reason two of the subway tunnel's four tracks terminate in a loop around City Hall when they were to have continued all the way to Front Street.

The new Commissioner of City Transit (and head of the department of the same name), A. Merritt Taylor, was charged with drawing up a plan for a network of city-built and -owned rapid transit lines. The plan he presented to the Mayor and City Councils (the city had a bicameral City Council until 1922) in 1913 envisioned a new spine line under Broad Street, a loop subway downtown to serve as a collector/distributor for the Broad Street trunk and Parkway-29th Street-Roxborough subway-elevated, a new elevated line to serve the Northeast extending as far as Rhawn Street and Frankford Avenue, a new subway tunnel under Chestnut, and five branch lines. Four would run from the Broad Street trunk line: one to Germantown, one to West Oak Lane, one to the Northeast under Roosevelt Boulevard and one (added later, I think) to Southwest Philadelphia via Passyunk Avenue. A fifth branch would run from the Market Street el in West Phiily (and eventually the Chestnut Street line) to Darby via Woodland Avenue.

As you can figure out, only two of the proposed lines - the Broad Street trunk and a truncated Northeast el that ran only up to Frankford. The city never got the money to build any of the others, even though the Councils had approved the entire package. And the lines the city did build both took longer than the Market Street line did: seven years for the Frankford Elevated and 13 for the Broad Street Subway, though had the project not been put on hold for lack of material during World War I, it would likely have taken only five years to build straight through.

It has tried to build the Roosevelt Boulevard subway twice: once in the 1950s and again in the 1970s. Racial fears sunk the project the first time. The second time, the city had applied for Federal grants to help build two rail transit projects: the Boulevard subway and the Center City Commuter Tunnel.

When, on his last day in office as Secretary of Transportation in the Ford administration, Transportation Secretary William Coleman (a Philly native and the first African-American to hold the post in the department created under Richard Nixon) called his old friend, Mayor Frank Rizzo to tell him he could only fund one of the two, Rizzo told him to fund the Commuter Tunnel: "We can get to the subway in a later phase."

We may be waiting forever for that "later phase."

[jessxwrites89]

No. NYC and Toronto are much, much, much better. SEPTA is a bit of a joke.

You can ride the Trenton Line to Trenton, NJ and take NJ Transit to NYC. Or, you can take a bus or take Amtrak.