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Local Lens: Life on the El in 2016


  I agreed to meet a friend at Jefferson Hospital for a same-day surgical procedure, so I’m standing on the El platform at Front and Girard waiting for the train. It’s barely 6AM, but the platform is already over-crowded. I jockey for a less crowded area and head to the far end of the platform where few people seem to venture. A train is approaching.

  “Thank God it’s early and there will be plenty of seats,” I tell myself, but as the train pulls into the station I notice people crammed together like stacks of King Oscar sardines. Rush hour is still more than an hour away, but you’d never know it by the sheer number of passengers on the train. Many of them stand by the doors while others are lined up and down the train’s central aisle. The train itself is not very long, so all the people standing at the far end of the platform have to run to the last car to enter the train. I enter the train and notice that almost every seat is taken. The few available seats are instantly scooped up, forcing most of the Girard passengers to clog the center aisle of the car.

Septa__-16

/Thomas Weir

  Dodging bulky knapsacks is a major problem on these rides. Some of the backpacks are so huge they form a kind of barrier reef, an obstacle course almost, especially when the bookbag wearers turn around suddenly and the apparatus on their backs slams into a passenger’s torso or face.

  I’ve long ago stopped trying to figure out what most people carry in these huge knapsacks. If I didn’t know any better I would say that they are about to undertake a 7 day hike on the Appalachian Trail. There’s barely enough room to maneuver in the train as is, but it gets worse when the train stops at Spring Garden and another mass of people enter. Stepping aside for them is nearly impossible. Passengers close their eyes in frustration or look at the floor while the passengers crammed and trapped in window seats don’t look happy at all.   

  The situation gets worse when the train pulls into 2nd Street. More people with knapsacks and baby strollers enter the train. People with strollers have become a big problem lately. Sometimes these strollers are big enough to hold two and three children. They are really small vehicles and they sometimes block the train doors. There’s also a person in a wheelchair and behind him two men try to enter with bicycles, but thank God the cyclists are forced to scramble for another car. An old woman, squeezed into a seat by a crowd of shouting middle school students, yells that she needs to access to the door.

  Four hours later, around lunchtime, when I am escorting my friend home from the hospital, I’m thinking the situation on the El will be better when I board at 13th and Market Street. This isn’t the case at all. The platform is crowded and once again as the train pulls into the station, people at the far end have to run up to the last car because the train is so short. It’s a miracle that that my post-op friend and I find a seat, but we do. At least there are no homeless men walking from car to car belting out their hard luck stories.

  My friend and I wait for the Route 15 bus to arrive at Front and Girard. This is always a dicey proposition because you never know if the 15 has been rerouted at the last minute. The 15 gets rerouted about 10 or 20 times a month. Potholes and sinkholes in Port Richmond or a beer and bratwurst festival in Fishtown will reroute it to Aramingo Avenue. Complicating matters is the fact that the rerouting signs are vandalized so passengers have no idea if there’s been a change. Taking the 15 bus is a bit like playing Russian roulette. Waiting for bud at Front and Girard means that you have to be in constant surveillance mode because the it can appear from any direction. This is especially true on weekend nights when the rerouting process seems to be at its height. Scrambling passengers can be seen running frantically to the rerouted 15 from all directions, narrowly missing getting hit by oncoming traffic.Elevated Lines by Tom Weir

  Market-Frankford Line ridership in Philadelphia has increased by 15,000 people since the year 2000. The increase in passengers is due largely, I think, to the increase in residential developments. In my specific neighborhood that some call Port Fishtington, new housing developments are booming.

  There’s a new condo-apartment complex at Albert and Belgrade Streets. Another huge apartment/condo complex is being built at E. Thompson and Huntingdon Streets, which will bring in even more people, more cars and more SEPTA riders. This phenomenon is happening all across the Riverwards. In ten years, the population might be so dense that there will barely be any places to park and El ridership will continue to rise. If something isn’t done on SEPTA’s end to handle the crowds, taking the El will be more problematic in the future.

  Recently, I talked with a young twenty-something man who moved to the Somerset Street/Hinge Café area ten years ago with his wife. They picked the Somerset area because it appeared to be a quiet place and because it was close to SugarHouse.

  “We’re finally seeing our property value increase,” he told me, “and that’s good, but at the same time the area is becoming way too crowded. Now we’re seriously considering moving into Bucks County. There are just too many people moving here.”

  The new congestion crowding the Market-Frankford Line is even evident on early Sunday mornings when you can board the train at Girard and Front and notice peak crowds on the station platform. Around 8AM, the train is often standing room only, an astounding fact when you realize that traditionally, Sunday is the week’s most leisurely day.

  So why is the El so crowded on a Sunday morning? Certainly these people are not going to church. Some seem to ride the El at night on weekends because they are homeless and have no place to sleep, so the El has become a mobile home of sorts.

  In 1950, the Market-Frankford Line operated trains every 90 seconds at peak hours. Today, MFL trains at peak hours run every four minutes. While there were fewer cars on the road in 1950, necessitating a lot more trains, the pendulum seems to be swinging back as city residents give up their cars and depend more on public transportation.

  There’s no shortage of SEPTA armchair-analysts who have all kinds of opinions when it comes to urban transportation. Some of the better sources call attention to the fact that Philly’s station platforms are not long enough for bigger trains, while others agree that SEPTA needs to adopt the 1950 model by fixing “staffing and availability problems,” so that they can put more trains in operation.

  Other suggestions point to building a new subway line down Chestnut or Walnut Street or extending the line on Locust Street from 16th Street to 40th Street.

   Last year, SEPTA instituted a pilot project to remove a couple of seats on several trains to accommodate people who stand or cluster by the doors because they are only traveling a few stations. Removing seats can never be a good thing because most people, when given the option do not want to stand. What this pilot program has done is just make room for bigger baby strollers, making passage in and out of the doors a more difficult undertaking.Septa__-13

  Or how about rethinking the idea of using yellow school buses to bus the hundreds of school kids who crowd the city’s public buses and trains?

  New York is also experiencing a subway issue of sorts. Earlier this year, for instance, The New York Times reported that “Subway ridership in New York is in the midst of a resurgence almost unimaginable in the 1970s and 80s, when the system was defined by graffiti and crime. Ridership has steadily risen to nearly six million daily riders today from about four million in the 1990s.”

  The Times also reported that the crowded trains in New York can make for tense commutes that contribute to assaults among disgruntled passengers.

  Something like this happened to me months ago when I found myself trapped by the door of a packed MFL train. On this particular day I stood beside a guy who seemed unusually stressed, not only because of the crowds, but because he was also in the middle of an argument with his girlfriend on the phone. As I stood beside him reading a book, I felt him push against me so that our bodies gently collided.  He then turned to me and accused me of crowding him out. The illogic was strangely twisted and indicative of life on the El in 2016.

  While it’s a good thing that people are using public transportation and not adding to the density of highways by purchasing cars, the overall psychological effect of being crammed up against strangers inside a small space is less than ideal.

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