Late-80s message boards that also now display next to arrive train information | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin
On Monday afternoon, for various unimportant reasons, I flew into Newark Liberty. Found my way to the AirTrain, two stops to the New Jersey Transit/Amtrak station, and down to the platform. The southbound train was just arriving. Unsure how quickly I would make it through the airport I had booked a later train, which I explained to the Amtrak conductor. “But there’s no ticket counter here,” I said, “so I can’t change it.” He said I needed to call 1-800-USA-RAIL to book a different train.
I huffed a little and then shrugged. The next train was the one I had booked. It would come in an hour. So what? I wasn’t really in any rush.
Then something almost magical happened. The conductor called me over. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“30th Street.”
“Get on.”
It was only two stops to Philly.
I crossed the weird maze of traffic islands and over to the L station, content with the knowledge that in a year or so, once renovations to Amtrak’s 30th Street/William H. Gray Station are complete, it will once again be possible to get there underground.
When SEPTA’s 30th Street L and trolley station reopened last year, then SEPTA chief Leslie Richards said it was the new model for service amenities. Well-lit, clear signage, clean tiling, almost disorientingly modern. There, you can find a full range of SEPTA’s elegant updated maps, showing bus frequencies and graphics, and line maps that suggest how easily the so-called Metro network might function.
SEPTA’s excellent new line maps and graphics | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin
The greatest gift of the afternoon, however, was the real-time information available: the circa-1989 message boards displaying next train arrivals. Accurately, too, which hadn’t been the case as SEPTA began to implement this messaging about a year ago—several decades after most other transit systems.
Two minutes until the next eastbound train! No more than seven or eight minutes and a free transfer later I was on the 47 bus heading south, walking in my door in less than an hour-and-a-half from boarding the train at Newark.
All this to point to what’s at stake, as Pennsylvania Senate Republicans hold funding for mass transit in the Commonwealth hostage: the potential for Philadelphia to actually perform, even dazzle, and therefor grow. What will happen, should lawmakers fail to do their duty to serve the needs of the people, forcing SEPTA to cut entire train and bus lines and reduce service by 45 percent? Quite likely a new age of decline. Think Detroit, think Baltimore, think St. Louis. Because no dense, legacy city can fulfill its potential without adequate public transit.
When I was an urban studies student back in the era when SEPTA installed those rectangular digital signs in L and trolley stations, we used to talk about the advantage old cities had over the likes of Denver, LA, Phoenix…because we already had so much transit infrastructure in place, the grand legacy of the streetcar and railroad age. Those other cities could never afford to create it new. But, in fact, they’re doing so, particularly in the west, spending tens of billions on public transit, because they have to. Otherwise, they too will stop growing.
In Philadelphia, should the PA Senate force SEPTA to dismantle this inheritance, discontinued train lines will begin to deteriorate immediately, meaning they will become even more expensive to restore (all the more reason why the ploy to use capital funding for operations is so cynical).
So this is an existential moment. Which is why I find the radio silence from Mayor’s Office odd. A mayor who evidently possessed positive relationships across the aisle with legislators in Harrisburg hasn’t bothered to articulate to them why this matters, not in public, anyway. Hasn’t bothered to organize the business community, the tourism industry, the eds and meds, to deliver a unified message. Hasn’t shown up for transit advocates who very clearly see the writing on the wall.
5th Street L Station | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin
Philadelphia has been here before many times, as Hidden City reporter Kyle Bagenstose pointed to in his excellent contextual piece on the transit funding crisis. But possibly the best analog to this moment isn’t a time when SEPTA scrambled to preserve barely adequate support, but the moment, in the second decade of the 20th century, when various machine politician mayors abandoned a carefully engineered plan for 60 miles of subways across more than a dozen lines, a plan meant to dazzle the urban imagination. What happened next, after it took twenty more years to complete just one line, the Broad Street Subway, was urban stagnation (with various intermingling causes, of course): Philadelphia essentially stopped growing. And the opposite of growth, in an urban context, is decline.
The answer is No. SEPTA has a right to run its transportation network, not the other transit locations who have so little commerce.
Pittman is a troublemaker. He knows how good SEPTA is yet he was fond of repeating how many fires SEPTA’s trains were having. Answer is SEPTA’S regional rails only had two trains with fires.
I don’t know what the Governor is thinking by keeping everything secretive, yet I am very angry at Pittman’s unfounded accusations against SEPTA.
To protect itself, SEPTA needs to take legal action against those who want to destroy them and give people who do not have cars nothing other than buses and trains sidetracked.
El…as in elevated
Yes. El
Yes, to better transit and service in Philly from SEPTA. The only city I use mass transit is in Berlin where there are electronic msg schedules at every bus and train stop, glass enclosed elevators for us PD folk. Our European guests are always appalled we don’t have better svc. Once I bought a ticket form a kiosk in Berlin for 17 euro for the month. It was in German and I didn’t know what it was, nor did a single driver. They said they had never seen such a ticket.But each recognized me as a non-Berliner who had paid 17 euro for something and each gave me directions in English to my next connection urging me to take the PD seat near them and alerting me to my stop. I felt tres soignee. And you are right about big western cities: a few years before we left Phoenix for good, a wonderful light rail system was completed. From a stop near our Central Phoenix home we could get to the airport in half an hour for a dollar or, say, to the First Friday throngs downtown without using our cars. It was the first time I felt like I was in a city and not some sprawling burb. And the first time we talked to strangers in Phx, where everyone seemed to keep to themselves. You could hear everything from French Canadian tourists who asked for advice for restaurants to gay caballeros who might ask you to dance on your way downtown.
There is no reason to eliminate SEPTA as it has the funds to operate. The problem is that the Pennsylvania Senate Republicans refused to appropriate funding of SEPTA. I believe that it was just SEPTA and not the other transit operators in the state.
The Governor and the Mayor of Philadelphia remaining silent as if a cat seized their tongues.
I believe that a nefarious faction contacted a Republican and conveyed a message to him or her to see if SEPTA could be disbanded because Donald Trump wanted to cancel the July celebration so that the President could wiggle out of accusations that he was scheming to rewrite American History.
I don’t have access to his phone number but I do find such silence from all independence minded people too troubling coming from such aggressive people.
The Governor has the authority to take action via the courts to compel judges to take action barring hostile parties in the Republican Party to cease taking action to destroy SEPTA as a viable transit entity. Cause can be found on the harm done to children having to walk miles or staying home from school and senior citizens unable to take the bus to go to the doctor or to buy groceries.
We don’t have to wait until January to see SEPTA cease operations. We should be pressing our elected people to take actions to pressure the courts to stop this unneeded marlakey being perpetuated on us by the Republican Party.
It is time to give SEPTA the money held by the Republicans.
I don’t understand why the entire state tax payers must continue to fund a dirty crappy dangerous entity. If Phila and its region want to throw money at a losing proposition let them. Not me. Ps. Took public transportation most of my 70 years. It sucked!!
Do you know that Southeastern PA, that region that is served by Septa is the the largest tax contributor base to the Common of Pennsylvania? So of course it’s going to need the largest public transit funding in the state because it has the largest population in the state. Now are you sure you want to go ahead and refund Septa? If Septa failed, the economic domino effect will effect the the Phila region. How do you think that will effect the the state’s coffer?
An underfunded service sucks, so let’s fund it even less.
What Alex Ducomb said…El…as in [E}levated.
Good article. Thank you.
Hey Nate.
SEPTA has needed much reform for years, yet the spineless representatives in Harrisburg keep cutting near blank checks to the Authority with no reform.
Simple things such as throwing Amtrak out as the middleman, requiring NJT pay up to use a rail-yard in PA, and questioning the taxpayer money that went up in smoke for the boondoggle of Battery Electric Buses (whose manufacturer has since declared bankruptcy). SEPTA is trying to strong-arm on their time frame. The authority knows damn well it doesn’t have to do any cutting now, but they instead choose to make a big production knowing local media, and the public will kick and scream like children that refuse to take their cough medicine. Not only doesn’t this work, nor should it!
We need to hold SEPTA far more accountable for the poor decision it makes, for the lack of expanding it’s Railroad to areas that want Regional Rail service, and why it’s expansion costs are frankly insane, due to it’s cozy relationships with firms that will knowingly publish inflated cost estimates. No business would do this on purpose.
SEPTA is a great system, and it can continue to be great if the criminals that run it are booted out. Talk to any Conductor or Engineer, they will tell you how deeply corrupt SEPTA is.
Also why be angry at Pittman? That train was known to have electrical issues yet it was allowed to run anyway. Likely so SEPTA could get yet more blank checks. Why put that above management to do such a thing? You must do more critical thinking than to just take sides and assume SEPTA is not deeply corrupt, which it is. Leftists marxists want you dependent on them, Republicans in PA actually have legitimate concerns.
From 6ABC on 8/26/25:
Several state Senate Republicans from the region also issued a joint statement:
“Despite all the rhetoric and misinformation coming from the other side of the aisle, we appreciate Governor Shapiro’s clear acknowledgement yesterday that PTTF funds can be part of the solution to SEPTA’s financial crisis. That was the very intent of our August 12 legislation-to utilize these funds available while implementing stronger accountability and safety measures. The needless stress being placed on students, families, riders, and workers is both absurd and entirely avoidable. Now it’s time for those same elected officials that are spreading falsehoods to stop playing politics and join us and the governor in working toward a solution SEPTA desperately needs.”