SEPTA proposes renaming its city rail lines to help everyone get around
South Kensington Community Partners
Thomas Fitzgerald, Philadelphia inquirer
Only longtime users can decipher the century-old labels to navigate the system. SEPTA thinks colors and simpler signs could help. SEPTA’s rail transit network makes for a sprawling map, and it’s a mouthful to say (take a deep breath): the Market-Frankford Line, the Broad Street Line, the Norristown High Speed Line, and the 10, 11, 13, 15, 34, 36, 101 and 102 Trolleys.
Why not just call the whole Hydra-headed lot of it the Metro? The SEPTA Metro.
That’s a big opening proposal in the transit agency’s wayfinding master plan, released Tuesday, to make rail transit easier to use in the Philadelphia region. The idea: Unify under one brand a system often thought of line by line, route by route because it’s been labeled that way for a century.
The agency plans a redo of the system’s maps and signs with the aim of making wayfinding images easier to see and understand quickly. Lines will be denoted by capital letters and color badges instead of pictographs of rail vehicles over colored backgrounds. Planners propose keeping the hues historically associated with them, such as orange for the Broad Street Line, blue for the Market-Frankford Line (the El), and green for trolley routes.
“Metro” is used around the world, Powers said, and it translates well into Spanish and Chinese, the second and third most spoken languages in the Philadelphia area.
Read more here.
SEPTA is testing out a new name for its rail network: the Metro
Michaela Winberg, BillyPenn
The Metro: Each line repped by just a letter and a color. Now, the routes will be identified by just one letter and plain background color:
The Broad Street Line: B with an orange background
The Market-Frankford Line: L with a blue background (since people usually call it the El or the L)
The Center City trolleys: T with a green background
The Route 15 trolley: G with a yellow background (because the route runs along Girard Avenue)
The Norristown High Speed Line: M with a purple background (M for Montgomery lines)
The Media-Sharon Hill Line: D with a pink background (D for Delaware lines)
To kick off the two-month feedback period, SEPTA is installing examples of the new signage at seven stations. You can peep the potential rebrand at 15th Street/City Hall Station, 69th Street Station, Allegheny Station, Olney Station, the 40th Street Trolley Portal, and the Norristown High Speed Line’s Gulph Mills stop.
All the new signs will feature QR codes, directing riders to a website where they can share their thoughts. SEPTA also promises to deploy crews to stations periodically to ask for feedback in person.
More here.