After teasing this for a while now, SEPTA has finally dropped their recommendations for a completely revamped (and long overdue!) rapid rail network map and wayfinding system. And I have to say, I’m cautiously optimistic about things so far.
Note: The image above is a screenshot of an online interactive map that omits the map’s title and legend. The printed map has this information included.
The first and most obvious difference when compared to previous versions (the map has remained largely unchanged since my review way back in 2011 – Cam) is the complete de-emphasis of the regional rail network. It’s been reduced to very thin lines right at the bottom of the information hierarchy, with only select interchange and terminal stations shown. This makes things very clear that this is a map devoted to the new “Metro” branding – rapid rail transit. Hopefully, service can live up this name in reality!
The near-elimination of the regional rail finally allows the subway-surface trolley lines (now designated as “T” for “trolley”) to be depicted with a much higher degree of accuracy, which I find very welcome. Cased lines show which segments are street running or underground, which works well for the “T” lines, though I find it less useful for the other subway lines. It just seems overly fussy, perhaps?
Breaking all the lines down into their service patterns and showing them individually works really, really well and is very intuitive: B1 = Broad Street Local; B2= Broad Street Express; B3 = Broad-Ridge Express… it’s all very clear.
The new colours for some lines will take a bit of getting used to, I’m sure, but it’s a nice vivid palette that works well together. Fuschia for the “D” lines is a welcome change from a green that was only ever-so-slightly different to the trolley lines.
As this map is just a proposal, there’s a few things that do seem less than finished: the shape of the rivers seems a bit rough, for example, and there’s a couple of non-standard angles on roads that really look out of place. I personally don’t think there’s a huge benefit in showing roads that key bus routes don’t run along: they just introduce another layer of information that isn’t that important and compete visually with the bus lines and regional rail. I do think the route numbers for the bus lines are too small and light to be read easily.
Including points of interest is welcome, but there’s only two (plus parks) on the map at the moment – the stadiums and the Museum of Art. Is this enough to warrant the inclusion of this type of information, or should a few more select locations be included?
Similarly, neighborhood designations are always a good thing to include on a diagram of this regional scale, but they all seem a bit small and and indistinct to be quickly readable to me. “North Philly” and “South Philly” also seem a bit informal for a transit map, though I’ll bow to local usage here if that’s what everyone calls them.
The spacing of stations on the D1 could be made a bit more even, and the way that some station names on the D2 have to flip sides to accommodate the Media/Elwyn regional rail line (much lower in the information hierarchy, remember?) is unfortunate.
I would expect that many of these minor problems will be sorted as the design progresses, but really, this is a very promising start. Even better is the implementation of the individual line diagrams, which takes a bunch of disjointed, inconsistent and just plain unattractive maps and turns them into a clear, cohesive suite of modern diagrams that work as part of a larger whole. Just lovely.
Of course, these diagrams don’t stand alone, but are part of a comprehensive wayfinding package that merits a detailed look. Read about the master plan here, and view an interactive version of the system map that explains a lot of the decision-making process here. You can even leave feedback on what you think of the proposed wayfinding.
Our final word: Borne out of a lot of research, this is a brave new start for SEPTA and is to be applauded. It’s not perfect by any means, but I like the direction its headed in.
Oy. Broad St? Rapid Transit. Market-Frankford? RT, def. PATCO, too. Norristown is all grade-separated as far as I can remember … same with the 101/102. Even the Subway/Surface lines are Rapid Transit partly (not unlike the MBTA’s similarly-colored, branched, and operated Green Line).
But the Route 15 Girard Ave car line????? In which universe? It’s on steel wheels, as Alexander Easton and all the other the transit gods intended all transit vehicles to be, but it’s not rapid transit even under Prof Vuchic’s least strict classification.
Message escaped before thought finished – I saw a comment elsewhere that said none of it needed to be branded “Metro” (“what are we? DC?”) and kinda agree, but I do like the letter/number grouping and coloring.
Also … Orange St? It’s the Media Trolley … hasn’t it always been that?
I like some of this and don’t like some of this. The 15 car line I already griped about. If the map is right for future lines, the “M5” will never go to 69th St … and is it “M” because part of this is the long-rumored Schuylkill Valley *M*etro?
As for the Regional Rail .. SEPTA seems to have hated it since Conrail dumped it on them c.1983 even as they did run it for years as an actual regional rail system via the Center City Commuter Tunnel. Alas, the Reading Co guys and the Penn Central guys never did like each other and now trains from the north and south side lines reverse in the tunnel somewhere rather than running through … Could they stop jerking it around, maybe, and sell it to PATCO or something?
They explain a lot of your questions on the map.septa.org website
It’s the M for the Montgomery County Lines. D for the Delaware County Lines. And the terminus of the Media 101 Trolley has always been Orange St Station; even if the line itself has been “the Media 101 trolley”
As for Girard Ave; it’s not *currently* rapid transit; but they’re working on the trolley modernization project set to be completed in 2034. This would turn the Girard Ave trolley into a modern light rail line/toronto-style street car.
I love this map so much. As someone who has ended up on the wrong BSL line so many times and struggles to remember which trolley goes where (besides that the 34 runs on Baltimore) this is so much more clear. It’s very aspirational and dependent on other projects going smoothly but I love it.
The neighborhood labeling is weird. This is indeed mostly what we call these neighborhoods at a zoomed out level but the names they used for all of them are just cardinal directions. I don’t really need to be told “this is south philly” or “this is northeast philly” it’s clearly that because it’s on the southern part of the map or the northeastern part of the map etc. the only Philadelphia neighborhood that’s been labeled is “Olney/East Oak Lane” which is strangely specific when the macro-level term everywhere else on the map uses would’ve been “Upper North Philly”
Including Spruce St, Spring Garden St, South St, and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway make a lot of sense given that those are major navigational landmarks in the city that people use for orienting themselves and for drawing lines around different neighborhoods. They’re also major places that Tourists like to visit, like the magic gardens on South St, the Parkway Central Library, or the trendy restaurants on Spring Garden St etc. But the fact that they don’t have any high-frequency bus routes on them is then just highlighted by the map as somewhat weird. There are major buses that run on those streets (the 42, the 40, the 49, the 43) they’re just not high-frequency enough service to qualify as “metro buses” even though they’re still some of the busiest buses in the system.
Including “the art museum” and “the stadiums” as landmarks also makes sense since those are landmarks people actually use every day citywide in describing where things are. The major protests last summer were all described by where they were relative to the art museum in the news and social media. And in south philly people will mention the stadiums in reference to just how south philly we’re talking here.
The other major landmarks, such as UPenn/PennMedicine, the Neshaminy Mall, Independence Hall (the liberty bell), City Hall, and Temple University, already have transit stops named after them which shows where they are on the map. So they don’t need their own labels; although the location of Penn Medicine Station is a bit distorted geographically. In reality it’s pretty much walking distance from 30th St Station; this map makes it look much further away. It would look very cramped otherwise though. Baltimore Avenue is also a diagonal street in reality, so the T2 transfer to the 52 bus is much further away from Spruce St than the 40th st trolley portal. We’re talking a 25 minute walk versus a 5 minute walk. But, again, that level of accuracy would make the map look less elegant and probably isn’t necessary.
I don’t know about this new map. Sure, the old one was ugly, no arguments there. But at least the text was legible without a microscope. SEPTA has literally decimated the font size on this map. And then there are the myriad spindly lines in the background with the comically disproportionate label blobs that despite being huge commented to the lines they label are still too small to read.
The neighborhood labels are way too light. The lack of contrast with the background would immediately fail any accessibility audit. The western branches of the M lines are the same. Some of the spindly lines (which I gather are the regional rail routes?) are also very low contrast. Speaking of the regional rail, why is it inexplicably shown as a thicker steel blue line downtown but spindly light grey farther out?
Then the aesthetic issues. The four Amtrak logos and three PATCO logos appear to have been added with no regard for alignment. That one regional rail line in the bottom left (Media line?) crosses the D2 at a jaunty angle that doesn’t match the octolinear nature of the rest of the map. And most infuriatingly, the two arrows sticking out the top of the regional rail line, to Warminster and (blurry squiggly line) are asymmetrical.
I agree about the contrast issues and font size could be an issue.
As for the thicker steel blue line downtown; there’s a particular trunk of the regional rail in Philly that has strong underground infrastructure and runs with greater frequency than the other regional rail lines; and many of the regional rail lines run through this trunk. They had originally done this when preparing to turn that trunk into “rapid regional rail” akin to a German S-Bahn; but the project fell through because they tried to bust the union! (fools!) so now there’s just this one central trunk of the regional rail that runs underground with greater speed and frequency. If you travel between stops on that thicker trunk of the regional rail, during peak times it’s closer to the MFL or BSL in terms of speed and frequency.