No, public transportation in Philadelphia is not worse than Pittsburgh or Seattle.

Whenever someone decides to rank Philadelphia, we know one of two things is going to happen. Either we're going to be the 90 year old Oscar winner who's "finally" granted an award we always deserved, or we're going to land at the bottom. The last two years aside, Philadelphia has bottomed out in so many lists - "official" or not - it's hard not to wonder if someone has it in for us. 

When a Travel + Leisure survey called us the nation's ugliest in 2007, I had to take stock and look around. All I saw were hot, muscle-bound Italians with thick wavy hair. As far back as a high school trip to the Liberty Bell, I remember thinking that Philadelphia had some of the sexiest bros I've ever seen. Digging deeper into the survey, I noticed that other major cities in the northeast bottomed out: New York, Boston. The one thing the cities at the bottom all had in common was ethnic diversity, which says a lot more about those being surveyed than it does about the empirical attractiveness of the average Philadelphian.

But that's what these lists are all about: subjectivity. 

Delving into listed topics that should be more definable, we see more of the same. It's easy to make a case for one city, biased or not, without accounting for the innumerable variables that make every city in the U.S. inherently unique, and media outlets have made a fortune in click bait doing just that in lieu of real news.

Just last month a survey by SmartAsset ranked the public transportation in ten major American cities and Philadelphia came in 9th. In all fairness, that isn't too bad. With only ten cities on the list, not a single one in the South made the cut, unless you count D.C. And Portland, OR, often hailed as a 21st Century transportation trailblazer, didn't make it in the top 10. 

With D.C.'s Metro ranked #1, Philadelphia fell behind Oakland and Pittsburgh. I'll repeat that, Philadelphia ranked behind Pittsburgh. 

A Washingtonian wouldn't know what to call this.

But here's the problem: the factors measured included average commute times, percentage and numbers of those who use public transportation, and for some reason, the median income of those who take public transportation. The raw number of users is an irrelevant comparison when you're comparing cities the size of Pittsburgh to Philadelphia or Chicago, and how are wealthy public transportation users an indicator of a successful system, especially when comparing extremely wealthy cities like San Francisco and D.C. to economically diverse cities like Philadelphia? You can't compare BART's median income users to SEPTA's? What's average in the Bay Area is astonishingly wealthy in Philadelphia.

What was also ignored was the overall need for public transportation. D.C. Metro is clean and smooth, and expansive. But it's not a usable subway system for urban residents, many who own cars. In the suburbs, Metro trains drop commuters off in massive surface lots or garages, nowhere near neighborhoods equally as isolated. SEPTA's an old system, and because of that it employs a traditional subway that services walkable neighborhoods and regional rails that engage Victorian era streetcar suburbs. Like New York, most Philadelphians don't need cars, and many don't have them.

Ignoring the polarizing differences between car-centric metropolitan regions like D.C. and walkable cities like Philadelphia or New York is essentially claiming that public transportation is a necessary solution for cities that aren't looking for an answer. The fact that New York placed below D.C., San Francisco, and Boston proves there's something a little fishy about this survey. Even Seattle, a city that sternly rejected public transportation for so long they made a movie about it, somehow beat Philadelphia. 

But this isn't about public transportation. This is just another viral survey to plug a financial planning company, a company with no business releasing unsubstantiated junk data. Unfortunately that's what people read, and we all fell for it. I'll leave my impression up to experience. I've lived in both D.C. and Philadelphia. I can walk here. I don't need a car here. When I need to take public transportation, I can easily grab a train, subway, or trolley almost anywhere. It's fast, simple, and I can get where I'm going on foot from there. 

The northeast corridor is in a class of its own when it comes to public transportation. Not only can I get to Ardmore and walk to a restaurant, I can get to the Jersey Shore, New York, Harrisburg, or Pittsburgh with ease. The Link's one line in Seattle has only thirteen stations and it certainly won't take me to the beach. That's not to say public transportation is bad outside the Northeast Corridor, it's just new and faces an uphill battle amongst cultures that have freeways in their DNA. 

Cities like Philadelphia and New York shouldn't be on these lists, they should be the litmus that defines them.

Street Cars Coming Back to Center City?

When it comes to American public transportation, Portland, OR has gotten a lot of press. They introduced a significant light rail line in the 1990s, expanded it in the 2000s with an extension to the airport, and put modern trolleys downtown. When people think of light rails and trolleys, they think "Portland," a departure from America's heyday of rapid rail transit when street cars were synonymous with older cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco.

An unrecognizable 12th and Market.

But despite the Rose City's comprehensive system and its "fareless square," the hype surrounds the fact that Portland's TriMet managed to successfully retrofit a fantastic system within a newer, West Coast city. Seattle, a little bit bigger but equally friendly to pedestrians, struggled for decades with the notion of light rails. For those who've never been, the Seattle Monorail is not an effective transportation solution unless you're simply traveling to the Space Needle. It's fun, and little more. But it's not the weirdest thing in Seattle. Until relatively recently, busses travels through a downtown tunnel designed specifically for trains. 

While Portland's trolleys may be sleek and clean, it hardly owns the market. In fact, a recent PhillyMag.com article pointed out that Philadelphia actually has the largest street car system in America, despite having shut down a significant portion of the original map.

The same article also highlights SEPTA's initiative to reopen a bit of that lost footprint, potentially bringing trolleys back to the streets of Center City. Additionally, SEPTA might be giving rail-fans a reason to take another look at Philadelphia. A program has offered SEPTA the funds to purchase more than 100 new trolleys, 80 foot cars that will be better accessible by being much lower to the ground.

Along many of the old lines throughout Center City, Chestnut Hill, and South Philadelphia, the electric cables have remained in place in the hopes that the trolleys would someday return. Although portions of the track have been paved over, having such an extensive foundation in place provides enormous potential, and we may again see cable cars running down 12th Street and up 11th. 

Move over Portland. We got this. 

"People love their cars"

In 1974, Seattle had a dream: to build a modern, underground rapid transit network. The city sits on top of an eerily hollow underground, the end result of reconstruction following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Although its catacombs were not incorporated into its transit tunnel, the city's unique infrastructure provided room underground that many cities lack. 

Construction on Seattle's downtown transit tunnel began in 1987, but it wouldn't see trains for twenty years. Prior to that, the city relied on busses that had utilized the tunnel since its opening in 1989.

Why? 

Politics 101.

In the aptly located 1992 movie, Singles, Tom Skerritt's Mayor Weber character sums up the political attitude towards rail transit perfectly, "I've been burned by this train business before...people love their cars." Likely a nod to a real Seattle running busses through its subway tunnel, it captures the political attitude towards trains. 

So what exactly is the political problem with rail transit, particularly subways? Why have cities chosen to embrace busses, or at best, light rails and trolleys, rather than putting their trains underground and out of sight? How had the fictional Mayor Weber been burned by the "train business"?

Because politics is rarely about creating the best city, it's about bettering a city in a way that makes our decision makers look good. 

Closer to home, we have at least six things that will make you scratch your head. From Passyunk Avenue to Roosevelt Boulevard, Philadelphia built several subway lines that never saw a train. Additionally, the abandonment of the Reading Terminal Viaduct and the City Branch line removed transportation opportunities from Spring Garden, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brewerytown, and Strawberry Mansion.

Let's use it.

The defunct City Branch line is perhaps the most baffling, namely because the tunnel and right-of-way remain in tact from Center City to northwest neighborhoods of the city. Reopening the line would be a game changer for struggling neighborhoods north of Brewerytown along Ridge Avenue, neighborhoods just about to pop on their own. 

But it's not that City Hall and SEPTA underestimate the value rail transit, it's that politicians understand how little it means to their career. I couldn't tell you how much reopening the City Branch line would cost, but I have to imagine its on par with some of the other proposals the city is seriously considering, like capping I-95 for a park. Still, the word "train" terrifies politicians and decision makers. 

I certainly can't downplay the benefits of parks. They raise property value and benefit neighborhoods and the city. But so does transportation, and if managed properly, subways can pay for themselves. For the City Branch line, ready-built and begging for trains, such logic is a no-brainer. But to decision makers employed by votes, parks are the infrastructural equivalent of a photo-op with someone's baby. Parks are pretty, they're visible, and they're relatively quick and easy to pull off. 

A subway is seen as a pricy gamble and the lines can take a while to build. They're long term investments. Politicians don't like to get behind projects that might not come to fruition until they're long gone from office, passing on the ribbon cutting to a mayor ten years from now. But in Philadelphia, politicians are just bending to a thought process that doesn't apply here. We have a subway line that could be easily reopened without interrupting traffic and without excavation. 

Next Stop: King of Prussia

SEPTA is taking another look at our region's black hole of public transportation: King of Prussia. The vast land of office parks and strip mall is one of Philadelphia's only experiment in rambling suburban sprawl and, like all of Atlanta, has proven to be a planning disaster.

 

Since the Schuylkill Expressway carved its way through our neighboring hills, commuters have traveled to and from Philadelphia and King of Prussia bound by a granite cliff and the river, with no way to expand. Perhaps that's for the best, forcing the region to do what it once did best, finally expanding its railroad infrastructure.

Of course with a name like Connection 2035, SEPTA's lofty plan for a Norristown Extension may come to fruition just around the time that I don't care anymore. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate thinking long term. But there's a fine line between planning ahead and tentatively scheduling a project that takes longer to build than a Pharaoh's pyramid.

Politics play a huge role in rail planning. Just ask Miami. That doesn't make planning a new rail line futile, but it does make it complicated and factors into our realistic expectations.

America's cultural attitude towards public transportation and our dependence on cars is changing. In the Northeast we've always had decent relationship with rail transportation and it's getting better. That's hopeful. Politics aside, if King of Prussia continues to grow, things will need to change, and a SEPTA rail stop in King of Prussia is emerging as the only reasonable solution.