The subways are the arteries of the city. They’re clearly bleeding and clogged.
Every single time I’ve used one of the trains there’s somebody doing drugs or dying. Not to mention how disgusting the aesthetics are within the subway stations themselves. They’re dark and decrepit caves- zero considerations for hygiene and not beautiful at all. It feels like you’re descending into hell when you go down to use a train. There’s no proper lighting and clearly nobody cares.
It’s no coincidence that they’re giving Septa passes to city employees for for their jobs so that people will start using them more. The problem is who would actually desire to? Thank God the city is so small that I can just walk everywhere.
I even noticed the marketing they’re using now when you go through the station. The ads are all talking about “no smoking on the trains” but that’s all you see. Clearly it doesn’t work. The ads are almost encouraging people to smoke and trying too hard to be trendy and cool. It’s like they know it will happen anyway so they try to make it funny… Why not just legalize weed and use all the tax money from the product to fund and revamp our transportation?
The reason this frustrates me is because I genuinely would like to use the subways more, but they’re terrible. If Philly wants to open up a 76ers arena in Center City, perhaps the transportation should be a pleasant experience.
Here is a minimalist subway train concept I designed with ChatGPT for fun. Imagine having a beautiful and aesthetic public transportation system… What a dream!
I shouldn’t have to risk my life to ride a train.