Monday art house: SEPTA follies

Groovy old photo from Wikipedia. Philadelphia, like many cities, used to be crawling with trolleys. Then General Motors racketeered buses into cities for the low, low cost of $5000, and the federal government started tying transportation funding solely to the building of highways. Bye-bye, trolleys!

SEPTA has refurbished a few old-timey trolleys like this one and is running them on Girard Avenue. They're neat to look at from the outside; but inside it's harder to see the cross streets than when you're in a modern trolley or a bus, with larger windows.

My day got started a little late this morning after I dropped off my daughter at day camp, off Girard Avenue. On my way to work, I accidentally got on a Broad-Ridge Spur train, because (1) I hadn't remembered that the Spur served that stop at all; (2) the train was on the express track, so I thought I would be saving a couple of minutes on my way back to Center City; (3) there was no announcement, neither from the bizarre new automated recording nor from the train operator; and (4) I didn't notice the light configuration on the front and sides of the train. I didn't realize what I'd done until the train stopped at Fairmount, a local-only stop, and the doors opened on the "wrong" side. Next stop: Chinatown!

I've taken the Spur on purpose once or twice. The abandoned Spring Garden station is a hoot of graffiti and spooky corners. Today it made me even later for work than I already was, since my daughter is at a different camp this week.

I didn't know that Spur goes all the way north; I thought it terminated at Temple University. I knew that there is no free interchange with the El at the Spur's 8th Street terminus -- it should be done, but it looks like a heck of an infrastructure problem to solve. What I didn't know is that you can't use a 75-cent transfer from the El to the Spur. There was a sign in the SEPTA fare window that said something like "No Market-Frankford transfer accepted here." You have to use a pass, another $1.45 token, or another full $2.00 fare.

That's criminal, or at least nonsensical. I mean, it was a handwritten sign, so maybe it was just the window agent. But the sign didn't look new, and ragged, sub-literate, handwritten signs are kinda par for the course in SEPTA windows. But still, who takes the Spur? Poor people from North Philadelphia, that's who. Temple students and workers; people who mistake it for an express train because it uses the same tracks where the non-Spur BSL lines run; and low-wage workers at the Gallery. Of course, if you get a weekly or monthly pass, then you don't have to buy transfers or subsequent fares at all. But still.

SEPTA is its own racketeering conspiracy that merely fills the void of the National City Lines holding company. It'll never change. But it's too bad and really weird that you can't use a transfer between the El and the Spur.