A new city, a whole new transit system! From my home base at the University of Pennsylvania, I’ll be reviewing every bus route and train station on the sprawling SEPTA.
*Full Disclosure: I volunteer on the SEPTA Youth Advisory Council, but all opinions on this blog are my own.
Recent Posts from Miles on SEPTA
Chinatown (BRS)
Once upon a time, Philadelphia was planning on building a loop line around Center City. The Broad-Ridge Spur was built off of the Broad Street Line to the busy department stores at 8th and Market, then onwards to 16th and Locust. Now, there's no money to complete the...
Fox Chase
I've chased the fox all the way to the end of the Fox Chase Line, and now it's time to review its last stop! Okay, well, that was a terrible intro. Ahem...Fox Chase Station. On the platform. Fox Chase has three platforms split between two tracks. Since this is a...
Farewell to the AEM-7s
SEPTA is retiring its oldest kind of Regional Rail locomotive, but they gave it one last ride two weekends ago. A free express trip from Paoli to Suburban and back was run for the general public two weekends ago, and it was a lot of fun (save for some rabid railfans,...
VIDEO: What’s the Cheapest Way to Upstate New York?
I filmed this back in September and finally got around to finishing the editing. As it turns out, getting to upstate New York is not easy to do on a budget... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLxDBrZhy08
19th and 22nd Streets (Trolleys)
Trolley stations tend to be samey, so I'm combining these two into one post. This is the part of SEPTA where the El runs express in the center two tracks and the trolleys make these two local stops on the outer tracks, leading anyone passing through to think either,...
Snyder (BSL)
Of the South Philly Broad Street Line stops, Snyder is the one I've used the most so far. I've ridden both the 37 and the 79 a number of times (the latter's review is in the pipeline, but I'm waiting for it to get the electric buses it's supposedly going to get), plus...
37 (Chester Transportation Center to Broad-Snyder)
I had just committed to Penn. My family flew down to Philly to spend a few days getting more acclimated to the city. We landed at the airport, where every sign told us to take the $6.75 Regional Rail line into town. But my family is cheap; why spend a ton of money on...
Chester Transportation Center
SEPTA Regional Rail stations tend to be in suburban or rural areas, but for our first Regional Rail review, we might as well have never left Philadelphia! And when I say Philadelphia, I mean the parts of it where you probably want to keep your wits about you when you...
123 (King of Prussia to 69th Street Transportation Center)
Getting to the largest mall in the United States from Philly is no small feat, at least until its rail link opens up (in 500 years). Do you brave the Schuylkill Expressway on the 124/125, or do you let the Norristown High Speed Line take you part of the way up? Or, if...
NJT: 507 (Atlantic City – Ocean City)
I don't know if NJT buses will be part of my jurisdiction yet, but this system fascinates me in how dysfunctional it is - I could talk about how awful NJT is for hours. That's why whenever I happen to ride one of their routes from beginning to end, I'll give it a...
Atlantic City Bus Terminal
We've looked at the Rail Terminal, now it's time for the bus terminal! How do they compare? Let's find out. The Atlantic City bus terminal is mostly reserved for NJT's longer-distance routes, but all the local routes still stop outside the terminal. It's a very simple...
Atlantic City
Considering that it only gets twelve trains per day (or, at the moment, zero trains per day), five-track Atlantic City Station is surprisingly legit. According to ol' Wikipedia, it was built in 1989, which makes the size of the station all the more surprising. Service...
Requiem for the Atlantic City Line
"Beginning Wednesday, September 5 and continuing until early 2019, NJ TRANSIT will continue the installation of Positive Train Control (PTC) equipment on our rail fleet throughout the state. To accommodate this critical safety upgrade, all service on the Atlantic City...
40th Street Portal (Trolleys)
Today was the grand opening of the Trolley Portal Gardens, so it's a perfect time to do our review of the 40th Street Portal trolley station! I attended the opening ceremony on behalf of the SEPTA Youth Advisory Council, and it was a great time. Among the speakers...
27 (Broad-Carpenter – Plymouth Meeting Mall)
Ready to ride this express route from Plymouth Meeting Mall to Philadelphia? Ready to experience this super fast express ride into the city? Ready to travel down miles of local roads before running "express" on the infamously trafficked I-76? Yeah, that last one...