And SEPTA’s Regional Rail has long served a relatively affluent, largely white population-not at all representative of the city’s overall demographics or many of the neighborhoods served by the system. Ridership on SEPTA’s expansive Regional Rail system fell the most during the pandemic, and is currently serving only 45 percent of 2019 ridership. But ridership had been in decline for years leading up to the pandemic, however, dropping 13% between 20. Bus ridership, the majority of SEPTA ridership, proved most resilient and has since returned to 68% of 2019 ridership levels. Like most transit systems in the U.S., SEPTA is in need of a reinvention.Īs Philadelphia residents stayed home to work or decamped to new locations during the pandemic, they rearranged decades-old patterns of transit ridership. The agency is currently undertaking two simultaneous, system-wide planning initiatives- Bus Revolution, a full-scale bus network redesign, and Reimagining Regional Rail (in addition to a project to modernize its trolley network, the largest in the country.)īus Revolution and Reimagining Regional Rail are components of SEPTA Forward, the agency’s 2021-2026 strategic plan-an ambitious commitment to transit planning and investment that aims to attract new and returning riders to the system and provide greater access to jobs and economic opportunity.

“Philadelphia is completely averse to change: People hate things the way they are people hate things that change,” says Will Tung, a volunteer at 5th Square, a local political action committee focused on transit.Īnd yet Philadelphia’s transit agency, SEPTA, is in the midst of planning seismic changes to its bus and regional rail networks.

This post was written by guest contributor James Brasuell.Ĭhange is always hard, but that’s especially true in Philadelphia.

Old septa bus