Intercity bus stop will move to Spring Garden Street/Christopher Columbus Boulevard in one week.
Moving to the middle of nowhere. Typical Philly.
Edit: I spoke too soon. This is a temporary bus station while they find a permanent solution.
The east end of Spring Garden Street is not “the middle of nowhere.” It’s actually right next to I-95, in the median of which is the Spring Garden “el” station on the Market-Frankford Line of the SEPTA subway. It is not as central as the temporary station at Independence Square, but it is still very convenient to transit. Contrast that to the Greyhound bus stops in Columbus OH and Cincinnati, which got moved to random parking lots on the edge of town.
In the long-term I hope that intercity bus services move to somewhere at or near 30th Street station, which is the most logical location. Boston and Washington DC are good models for combining bus and train in the same building.
I imagine they’ll move the Greyhound station to 30th Street once construction there is finished. Freed up pickup/dropoff areas would be perfect, along with the obvious benefits to being at 30th
The return of trolleys to Girard Avenue continues to be postponed again and again. What an embarrassment for SEPTA. It’s not only humiliating but also shameful.
Philly has a serious brain drain.
What an odd choice of location. Completely disconnected from the city because it’s on the wrong side of 95, served only by the 43 and one of the least accessible stations on the El. Very bizarre imo
Everything is very knee jerk about this. Flying by the seat of their pants.
New SEPTA regional-rail station in Claymont, Delaware will open next week.
This will replace the existing barebones SEPTA station that is further south down the line (1991-2023).
Amtrak trains will roll through this station but will not stop there.
source: New Claymont Transportation Center Dedicated - State of Delaware News
Quinn Kirkpatrick / Delaware Public Media
source: The new Claymont train station opens next week | Delaware First Media
Gee Johnson/Special To Delaware News Journal
Gee Johnson/Special To Delaware News Journal
Gee Johnson/Special To Delaware News Journal
From Philly Enquirer -
Philadelphia’s new temporary boarding area for intercity buses on Spring Garden Street presents an [“astonishing” array of barriers for people with disabilities, according to a review by a disability-rights organization and several public transportation watchdog groups.
The activists are calling on the city, which is in charge of the site, to work with bus carriers to make it more accessible.
“We’re always an afterthought, never a before-thought,” said report coauthor Latoya Maddox, a leader of the [activist group Disabled in Action who uses a wheelchair.
Problems identified included a lack of accessible restrooms (or any, so far); signs and maps that are hard to decipher for people with low vision and don’t have braille for blind travelers; and a designated drop-off area for Uber, Lyft and taxis that is paved in bumpy cobblestones, making it hard for those with mobility issues to navigate.
Greyhound, Flixbus, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and Coach USA, which operates Megabus, have been using the [easternmost blocks of Spring Garden Street since Nov. 16 as an open-air terminal], boarding and unloading buses at curbside as people queue up on the sidewalks. There are no seats or shelters there.
“The setup was not strategically walked through or talked through. The city didn’t consult the disability community,” said Maddox, senior independent living specialist with Liberty Resources Inc., a nonprofit that provides service.
An earlier temporary home for the buses on the 600 block of Market Street snarled traffic, [caused SEPTA to skip stops on three transit bus lines, angered nearby businesses, filled the no-stopping zone in front of the federal courthouse with vehicles dropping off passengers — and became an embarrassment for the city.
Officials in the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability share the goal of a more accessible intercity bus site and are reviewing the survey findings, the agency said in a statement. “We welcome all feedback as we continue to navigate this process,” it said.
Plans call for the bus carriers to use the new base of operations through March 31 as they and the city work to find a more appropriate and permanent place for an intercity bus station.
Greyhound abruptly [closed its shared Filbert Street station in late June, a cost-cutting move that has become common in the industry — and one that forced the city to find accommodations for long-haul buses and thousands of passengers on short notice.
“It’s honestly ridiculous,” said Micah Fiedler, coauthor of the accessibility review and a public transportation advocate with the urbanist group 5th Square. He said the underlying issue is a [long failure to plan for and establish a convenient bus statio located at a transit hub.
“There should be a modern city bus terminal, funded by taxpayer money,” Fiedler said, noting stations in Boston, New York, and Washington that also receive usage fees from bus companies. “The city of Philadelphia seems content existing in limbo.”
He and others believe the logical place is 30th Street Station. Indeed, [Amtrak’s plan for renovations calls for a permanent intercity bus depot] connected to the station, but that prospect is some years away.
In some respects the Spring Garden site is an improvement on its temporary predecessor. It has clearly marked boarding areas for the different bus companies. There are 16 bench seats in a small waiting room for Greyhound and Peter Pan customers around the corner on North Columbus Boulevard.
But touches that would meet the accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are missing, the report found. There is no automatic door opener for the entrance of the waiting room, the ticket counter is placed too high for wheelchair users to comfortably communicate with employees, and a ticket kiosk does not have options for audio or large print.
Representatives from Disabled in Action and 5th Square examined the site on Nov. 20 and 26. Separate observations by members of the Transit Riders Union also were incorporated in the report, the authors said.
Other concerns noted in the report: Noble and Front Streets, where portable restrooms area planned and there is a drop-off zone are paved with cobblestones, which are slippery when wet and difficult for people with mobility issues to negotiate.
Maddox said she hoped the city and bus companies would make improvements and “think about the disabilities community” when picking the next site.
Most cities have colors for each line and numbers or letters for each line. It’s a good system. Philly has never really had that, so I think this make sense. Of course locals will keep calling it whatever they’re used to no matter what. But at least the letters they picked kind of make sense. People call the MFL “the el”, so “L” works. T for trolley, B for Broad St, and G for Girard make sense. I’m less sure about the other letters. And the colors mostly stay the same.
I like this a lot better than when they renamed the regional rail lines. In fact, this is almost the opposite change. If they want to be consistent, they should go back to the numbered rail lines. If we’re going to have B1 and B2, we should also have R1 and R2, etc.
Colors are good for people that can’t read English.
Use ‘em if you got ‘em
Did you know SEPTA still accepts tokens? The NYC subway phased them out twenty years ago. Even after SEPTA stops accepting them, the Toronto subway will continue to accept tokens for the foreseeable future.
The PATCO station at Franklin Square closed in 1979 due to low ridership, but it is now being rebuilt for service. This is an underground stop near the entrance to the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Construction photos from October 2023 from PATCO website:
Yep. For the other letters, M stands for Montgomery County, which replaces the old Rt.100/NHSL branding. For D, that stands for Delaware County, replacing the old Rt.101,102/Sharon Hill Line/Media-Orange St. branding for the suburban trolleys.
All of this is part of SEPTA’s Wayfinder project that aims to improve way finding on public transit.
Full formatting:
L - Market-Frankford Line (the eL)
L1 - MFL Local
B - Broad Street Line
B1 - BSL Local
B2 - BSL Express and Special Service
B3 - Broad-Ridge Spur
B4 - future Roosevelt Subway
M - Norristown High Speed Line (Montgomery County)
M1 - NHSL Local
M2 - NHSL Express
T - Subway-Surface Trolleys
T1 - Route 10
T2 - Route 34
T3 - Route 13
T4 - Route 11
T5 - Route 36
D - Suburban Trolleys (Delaware County)
D1 - Media-Orange St. Line/Route 101
D2 - Sharon Hill Line/Route 102
G - Rt. 15 (Girard St Trolley)
G1 - Route 15
As for the Regional Rail not having the R# branding anymore, as part of Reimagining Regional Rail, the whole RR system is getting rebranded as the “Silver Line”, so maybe they will go back to a similar brand with S#? I don’t know for sure on that though