Greater PRT

What might have been. Rapid Transit in Philadelphia.

Timeline of Philadelphia Transit Lines

April 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

2025 UPDATE

With the recent re-re-opening of PATCO’s Franklin Square Station, it felt like a good time to revisit the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Timeline. I’ve updated the timeline to include Franklin Square’s reopening and added the proposed Roosevelt Boulevard Subway to the timeline. I’ve also made several corrections.

About a week ago, I came across a reddit post displaying the timeline of Washington DC’s Metro development. Needless to say, I set out to create a similar graphic for Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Rapid Transit Timeline spans 145 years, three transit authority eras and four lines that qualify as rapid transit. The majority of development happened prior to World War II with 54 stations being opened before 1940. Since then, another 27 stations have opened, the majority of them being related to PATCO.

No station has opened since the Broad Street Spur’s Chinatown Station replaced Vine Street in construction necessitated by the building of the Commuter Rail tunnel in the 1980s.

Philadelphia’s Transit Plan vision for 2045 does include several projects that have been added to the timeline as proposals. Only the reopening of the Franklin Square station on the PATCO line seems guaranteed at this point.

Check out the timeline, and of course, let me know if you have any corrections or comments.

Play Ball! The Story of Pattison Station

March 27, 2024 / / 0 Comments

This 1973 newspaper ad for Opening Night for the Phillies has always tickled my fancy. The Billy Penn statue sporting a glove and bat, the generic baseball player from an earlier time and even the fancy crosses (X marks the spot!) for the express stops on Broad Street line. Noticeably absent from the stations, Lehigh Avenue, which would have been the destination just three years prior when the Phillies called Connie Mack Stadium home. And not just an ad, this graphic includes lots of useful information, such as times to City Hall from 69th Street and Bridge Street, When the express trains leave Fern Rock. Important phone numbers that start with letters. Just don’t ask me what is up with the illustration of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

This was all brand new (well except for the Broad Street Subway train cars, SEPTA was still running cars from 1938 at the time), though this was the third season for Veterans Stadium and the Spectrum had opened in 1967, it wasn’t until opening day for the Phillies in 1973 that you could take the subway to Pattison Avenue.

Snyder Avenue had served as the southernmost station on the Broad Street Subway from its opening in 1938 till the 1973 when service was extended to Oregon and Pattison Avenue stations. The opening was a big deal with ribbon cuttings, special trains and even an appearance by the Phillies Hot Pants Squad!

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Philadelphia’s Subway Surface Lines

December 3, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Greater PRT started looking into the history of Philadelphia’s Subway Surface Subway lines, in part because the name itself will make your brain melt. From the city that gave you Street Road, of course there is a Subway Surface Tunnel that doesn’t carry subways, but trolleys. Are you following? Really? Because have you seen the maps? Below is the current trolley map which primarily shows the Subway Surface lines.

2018 SEPTA Subway Surface Map
SEPTA’s current trolley line map including Subway Surface routes and the Route 15 Trolley on Girard Avenue

The map is bad. It’s busy, doesn’t convey any idea of where the trolleys run in the physical world, and if you wanted to connect to anything but the Market-Frankford Line, well good luck.

Official SEPTA System Map

But short shrifting the trolley lines isn’t just a fault of the route line map. On the official SEPTA system map, subway-surface trolleys only rate a couple of arrows and some cramped text, representing five lines. Hardly appropriate for a system with more than 71,000 riders per weekday.

This isn’t exactly a new problem. SEPTA’s 1982 map wasn’t much better, though it did at least acknowledge that the trolleys did indeed run down streets.

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Transit Map Tuesday

SEPTA Introduces Transit Map Tuesday

September 22, 2020 / / 0 Comments

SEPTA is redesigning its transit maps and way-finding systems. As part of the effort, the transit authority is sharing some SEPTA maps done in the style of other transit systems from around the world in a feature they’re calling Transit Map Tuesday.

The work is evidently being done by SEPTA’s Strategic Planning intern and they have done a fine job through two weeks. For week one, the inspiration was the iconic Transport for London’s Tube map. That’s been followed up with Boston’s MBTA map, and includes frequent bus lines in addition to the rapid transit lines.

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1914 5-cent transit map

Free Transfers A Dream We All Dream of

January 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Abolishing paid transfers has become a rallying cry of progressive transit advocates in Philadelphia, #freetransfers is the rallying cry. “The transfer is regressive” spout transportation pundits. They point out that the transfer hurts poorer people most because the cost hits the pocket harder and low income sections of the city require more transfers to reach job centers, taxing the poor even more.

What would you say if I told you there was a city employee who was devoted to eliminating transfer penalties and ensuring “the advantages of rapid transit will be extended as equally as practicable to every front door in Philadelphia. ” And what would you say if I told you that proposal dated back to November of 1914?

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Walking Under Market Street Has Been a Thing for More Than a Century

October 1, 2019 /

Billy Penn’s Michaela Winberg successfully navigated the path from the just opened Fashion District all the way to the glistening Comcast Technology Center. There were some missteps along the way but in the end she made it.

It’s a trek I’ve made numerous times in my youth and wanted to do myself since the Gallery reopened (lets face it, it’ll always be the Gallery). So I’m a bit jealous Winberg beat me to it. But if I cannot be first to document the journey, I’m happy to share some history of the path.

The underground passageways date back to the opening of the Market Street Subway in 1903. Back in those early days (and even much later), Market Street stores utilized the concourses with display windows and entrances to their shops. Into the 1960s, Gimbels promoted Tuesday sales in its “Gimbels Subway Store.”

As a hoarder of Philadelphia transit maps and photographs I have some items to share from a 1908 book on the Market Frankford Line. Unfortunately, I haven’t always been great about documenting where I found these images. So if anyone knows where the source material was, I’d appreciate the insight.

This 1908 photograph shows live plants, patriotic bunting and window displays in the subway concourse.
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version 1 vs. version 2 of frequency map insert

SEPTA Updates Frequency Map

July 11, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Back in February SEPTA updated its bus map, attempting to show regional rail, subway, elevated rail, trolleys and buses all on the same map. Additionally the map showed frequency of bus transit via color and thickness of lines. SEPTA then asked for comment on the new maps to flavor the next round of maps.

Today, the transit agency released maps that took into account that feedback and some significant changes have been made.

The rail lines now more closely resemble the existing map and the Center City insert now includes the subway stops but still not the actual lines.

Personally I’d prefer the lines be represented on the inset but I do understand the attempt to streamline the amount of information shown.

SEPTA gets bold with new transit map [WHYY]
SEPTA Frequency Map v2 [png]

SEPTA Unveils Frequency Map

February 27, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Just a little more than three years after a private citizen produced a frequent service map for SEPTA, the agency has a frequency map of its own. Coming on the heels of updating its frequent bus routes from 10 to 19 (buses with a headway of less than 15 minutes) the map is the agency’s first attempt at a newly styled bus map in decades.

It’s actually two maps that have been released. The first is a new system map showing the 80+ bus routes that connect with the city of Philadelphia. The most frequent routes are shown in red, the routes that run every thirty minutes or less are in teal and those that run every 60 minutes or less are denoted in gray.

The maps are posted to SEPTA’s website and a survey is provided for feedback. This is the latest step in SEPTA’s reworking of its bus network.

15-15-5 Networks [SEPTA]
Frequency Map [png]

Better Line Maps for SEPTA

February 19, 2019 / / 0 Comments

The overall SEPTA system map has long been maligned as a “blobby mess.” Transit Maps gave the 2011 edition of the map a stinging one-and-a-half star rating.

SEPTA should feel lucky that no one has rated their line maps for the Broad Street line or Market-Frankford line. These are abominations in their own right. No consistency with the overall system map, confusing letters, colors and variable thickness in lines all gather to lessen the usability of the system.

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