 When you have trams in North America, you probably think of Toronto, or maybe San Francisco with the cable cars and muni. But one of the great trams, or in this case trolley systems in North America, is actually in Philadelphia. Whenever I look at Philly, I get special railway butterflies in my stomach. Because in so many ways it feels like London or Tokyo, with just tons of high quality rail infrastructure all over the place that is unfortunately stuck in the past. In Ecepta, the local transit agency actually has pretty broad plans to modernize and improve the entire transit system in Philly. And there is a plus here. Not unlike Philly. A few years ago, Toronto's streetcar network mostly consisted of really quite old high floor streetcar type vehicles. With that in mind, I think Philly could probably learn a few things from Toronto's transition from high floor tram style vehicles to modern low floor vehicles. I also think the city could leapfrog its neighbor to the north. Using an even better tram or trolley network to serve the city. Let's talk about how. If you're not already, consider supporting the channel on Patreon. It helps a ton and makes sure I can produce videos at a regular rate. Philly's trolleys are not exactly like Toronto's streetcars, but there is a lot in common. And there's also a huge potential to leapfrog right over them. Now I'd say service levels generally aren't quite as good, but the topology of the network is also totally different in Philadelphia. So perhaps these systems are best compared in the sense that they are the remnants of old streetcar systems that survived. And since they were both, of course, traditional North American streetcar systems, they operate in many cases in very similar ways. The existing trolley system in Philly can be a little confusing because it's broken into three divisions. Philly has a crazy number of different transit lines and modes and stuff. So it's not really that surprising that that's the case. Now not all of the tracks, but most of the tracks for Philly's trolley network are on the west side of the city, sort of like a reverse Berlin. First, you have the subway surface lines, which are numbered 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36. Now these services run into Central Philadelphia via a subway tunnel, which has express services with the Market Frankfurt Line and local stops with the trolleys. When the trolleys actually hit the city center where the Market Frankfurt Line and the Broad Street Line cross, they loop around Philadelphia City Hall underground and then make connections to those rapid transit lines. Now, once the subway surface lines are actually on the surface, and if you're wondering, yes, Philly also has issues with people driving into the tunnels as we constantly do in Toronto. Once the lines are on the surface, they operate mainly in mixed traffic. The subway surface lines use boxy Kawasaki trolleys that were manufactured in the late 20th century. They're fairly similar to Toronto's older CLRVs and like them, they still use trolley poles. The next division consists just of the 15 route, which runs east-west through the city, largely on Gerard Avenue, north of the city center, intersecting and connecting with Route 10 of the subway surface lines in West Philadelphia. Now, Route 15 isn't currently operating, but when it was operating pre-pandemic, it operated with PCC streetcars, manufactured back around the 1940s, also with trolley poles and mostly mixed traffic alignment yet again. The last division are the routes 101 and 102. These run out west and southwest of the western terminus of the market, Frankfurt Line alongside the Norristown High Speed Line. That said, unlike the Norristown High Speed Line, they use similar trolley vehicles to the subway surface lines, except these ones are bidirectional and feature pantographs. The 101 and 102 might be my favorite trolley routes in Philadelphia because of their Erntor Urban routes and just the fact that they go through a lot of cool environments, which is something you don't really see in Toronto, unfortunately. These routes also don't spend a ton of time in mixed traffic, which is nice. Now, it's worth mentioning that, as you probably expected, the trolley network used to be much, much, much larger historically. And there are still tons of diversion and connector tracks which are used during diversion periods or just other non-standard service patterns. Also quite notable is the use of a unique wide gauge, known as Pennsylvania Trolley Gauge, again, like Toronto. However, unlike Toronto, since it is Pennsylvania Trolley Gauge, it's actually used even more widely, including on the Tea Light Rail in Pittsburgh. Now, as you've probably guessed, Philly's system, like most North American systems, has declined a little bit since its peak. But you have to give kudos to Philly for at least keeping the system around, which of course was all too uncommon. Well, in Toronto, I'd argue the streetcar rethink really came in the early 2010s roughly. It seems like Philly wants to do something similar in the mid-2020s, and I think there's a lot of opportunity to find success where Toronto didn't exactly find success. The first big change that's obviously needed for the network is standardization of vehicles and operating practices, as well as modernization of the vehicle fleet, which is incredibly dated, especially those PCC streetcars. To be fair, I'm totally cool with having some PCC streetcars around for heritage trips. Toronto does it as well, but not for primary service. Now, if it hasn't been yet, the overhead will also need to be upgraded to use pantographs system-wide, which is valuable anyways for being able to move more current. Now, having a larger and standardized fleet is super valuable because of what means larger orders of vehicles can be placed in the future to work across the entire city, which will make more modernization in the future possible, as well as just more service in general. Of course, at the same time, a modern vehicle design should be transitioned to. I find the dichotomy between Canada and the US on light rail slash tram designs really interesting. In Canada, most of the light rail systems are using Bombardier LRVs, and in the US, most light rail systems use Siemens LRVs. And likewise, in Toronto, when we bought modern streetcars, they were Bombardier LRVs. And in Philly, at least the renders seem to suggest that Siemens LRVs might be the leading contender, the S70 model in particular. Now, I do think the S70 would be a big improvement over the current trolleys used in Philly, but I really do think that for an urban trolley or tram style service, 70% low floor doesn't make as much sense as 100% low floor. I think 70% low floor is better for rapid transit and higher speed applications. That said, clearly having more doors and all-door boarding, as well as just higher capacity per vehicle, will be super valuable nonetheless. Now, at the same time, the shape of the network is really ripe for a number of really strategic extensions. For example, to Overbrook and Eastwick Regional Rail stations on the subway surface lines, and to Sharon Hill and Darby on the 101 and 102 lines. I think having more connections to regional rail and rapid transit could really help feed the trolley network. And it's interesting to note that in Toronto, there are only three streetcar termini of the many termini around the city that aren't actually already at regional rail station or a subway station. So Philly could also get to a place that's quite similar, pretty easily because so many lines end close to, but not quite at a rail station. The beautiful thing about having those connections is that if you're coming in on a rail line, whether it be a subway line or a regional rail line, you could transfer to a trolley or streetcar in the case of Toronto and ride the rest of the way into the city or only part of the way into the city on that local transit mode, which is really convenient and helps again feed ridership. Now, the nice thing about new vehicles is that since they could probably and should probably be bi-directional, is that you could have simpler termini with crossovers instead of having to have whole turning loops. Of course, having bi-directional vehicles would also just mean you could have crossovers more broadly, which would be incredibly valuable if you have a disruption. Instead of having to travel to the nearest loop or not being able to travel at all in some cases, you could simply use the nearest crossover to turn around and avoid the disruption. Many systems in Europe, as well as places like Melbourne, also use temporary diversion tracks that literally lay on top of the street when there is construction work or even sometimes diversions going on. And that would be even more possible with bi-directional vehicles. Of course, having a unified fleet would also be nice because you could redesign some routes and do some longer operations, which would be super cool. Now, if all of these sound like great ideas and I think they actually are, well, there's actually great news. CEPTA has proposed doing almost all of these things. Unlike most North American or Australian, I guess, transit improvement plans I've seen, these plans are pretty buffet-proof. If you look at them, there isn't a ton of low-hanging fruit left. It's really impressive work. Now, probably the most awesome part of the plans that we didn't get in Toronto when we sort of modernized our streetcar network is a lot of stops will be removed. This will allow the trolleys to move much faster and provide more of a higher-order transit service that they naturally should as rail vehicles. This will treat the trolley system less like a bus on rails and more like its own proper light rail network with dedicated stops and platforms as well. That said, there may be some risk in tying these improvements to stops and the like to procurement of new vehicles, which is something, again, that Toronto didn't really do. The issue here is that, hey, if your vehicles are delayed or if your stop construction is delayed, you could have issues, will they be compatible otherwise? Now, that said, while Philly does have some great plans, I do think there are a few places where the punts could be spruced up a little bit to help make Philly's network even better than in Toronto or comparable to a lot of great international tram networks. The first thing I think is that if there really is a commitment to system-wide, higher-boarding platforms that would be located in street right-of-ways as well as on the off-street portions of the network, and if this is happening in conjunction with the new vehicle procurement, well, then why even suggest using ramps in the first place? It seems like jumping straight to proper-level boarding, like you see on some modern light rail systems would be fantastic. Anecdotally, that would be a huge benefit too because it would allow the vehicles to be simpler. One of the biggest issues Toronto's new streetcars had was the complicated ramp that needed to be able to deploy to a higher platform, but also to street-level, which created a ton of issues. Now, at the same time, while there is a great commitment to having dedicated stops with better wayfinding, I would like to see more dedicated right-of-way, and in particular, GreenTrack, because as I mentioned in a recent video up here, I think GreenTrack is a great way we can enhance our tram systems, but also enhance our cities. Of course, this would also go a long way in addressing one of the issues I was surprised to find is quite prevalent in Philadelphia, apparently, which is cars blocking the tracks. For whatever reason, I guess Philly drivers are just particularly shamelessly aggressive with the parking, but that's brutal, and maybe we need to install some sort of car removal thing at the front of the trolleys to help get those out of the way, if you know what I'm saying. Now, I will say on the wayfinding note that while I do like the future wayfinding plans for the city, which kind of unify everything and bring them together, it does feel a little weird that the various trolley routes are all branded completely differently. It makes sense to maybe give them a different icon or something like that, but they should probably all be the same color or share some similarities in that sense because they provide a similar level of service with trolley-type vehicles. Now, the last thing I would add to the network's revamp plans are really high-quality connections at regional rail stations. Obviously, Philly already does a fantastic job of this in the central subway section of these subway surface lines, but having super-high quality, perhaps even cross-platform transfers to their regional rail lines at new connecting stations would be a fantastic way of just improving that interface. That said, even if all of these things don't come to fruition, Philly still has the bones of a really awesome tram system, which is kind of the story with Philly Transit in general, like New York, but perhaps to an even greater degree, Philly was once a grade A transit city, and most of the infrastructure is still there, so with a little good planning and a little more money, the city could come back to easily be one of the greatest rail cities in the Americas, if not the world in the future. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.