Public Transportation in Philadelphia

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The public transportation system in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known as SEPTA (South Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Association) (or something like that), with a focus on the Broad Street subway line.

The Broad Street line runs almost the entire length of Broad Street, hence the name. Don't be fooled, however, no one from Philadelphia actually calls it that, they all refer to it as the Orange Line. This is because it is orange. Everything, the trains, the seats on the trains, and dirty cracked paneling in the stations, the peeling paint on the support pillars, everything.

The subway is a good idea, really, being underground, it runs in any kind of weather, it does something (not much, but something) to help the traffic problems, it's fast, and it is relatively inexpensive.

On the other hand, it is dirty, it smells bad, it is loud, it has rats, and to many people, especially those not native to Philadelphia, it is an absoutely horrifying experience. One can take note of the man across from you, who is constantly staring at you for the entire ride, and just as you are convinced that he is going to kill you or demand all of your money, he passes out in the middle of the subway car, twitching in a pool of his own vomit. There are also the homeless that frequent the underground trains, begging for money, food, or whatever you can spare. As they pass from car to car, passengers do their best to keep their eyes glued to the broken packet of mustard smeared on the floor.

In order to take the Orange Line, you must first be aware of where you are, which way is North, which way is South, and which way where you want to go is in relation to where you are now. After you have sloved all of these, you can conclude which direction you must travel to get to where you want to go, and you must be on the appropriate side of Broad Street to do so, because the northbound train takes one side of the street, and the southbound train on the other. Reading the signs is helpful in this case, as there are many of them, and they will prevent you from experiancing any type of panic or stress attributed to paying your fare and realizing you are headed the wrong direction. Once you pass through the turnstiles, you cannot get your money back, and to get to the other side of the station, you must exit, take the steps back to the street, cross the street, go back down the steps on the other side, and pay your $1.60 fare again.

The train will stop at all stops, unless you have boarded one with green or amber lights on the front, these being the express trains, then you have a good chance of missing your stop and having to go all the way to the end of the line and turn around.

The stops are at what are considered to be convienent points throughout the city for stopping and getting to places of interest, home, work, or other transportation systems heading in different directions. The orange line begins in North Philadelphia at the Fren Rock Transportation Center, and ends in South Philadelphia, at the Broad and Pattison stop, which is home to the sports stadiums and FDR Park. In between you will find the stops as follows:

(most stops are identified by the name of the street they are located on, i.e., the Olney stop is located at Broad and Olney Sts. All of these stops smell terribly and are subject to the usual homeless, lunatics, junkies, and giant rats.)

-Olney
-Logan
-Wyoming
-Hunting Park
-Erie
-Allegheny
-North Philadelphia
-Susquehanna-Dauphin
-Cecil B. Moore
-Girard
-Farimount
-Spring Garden
-Race-Vine
-City Hall
-Walnut-Locust
-Lombard-South
-Ellsworth-Federal
-Tasker-Morris
-Snyder
-Oregon
-Pattison

The most common, and therefor the busiest, stop for people to get on and off at is the City Hall stop. This is located underneath City Hall in Center City, and offers a free interchange to other transportation systems, such as the Market-Frankford subway (the Blue Line), and the subway/surface trolly lines (the Green Line).

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