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“Wayfinding” is anything that helps you find your way, including signage, maps, websites, schedules, and apps, just to name a few. The Wayfinding Master Plan will address how each of these elements guide you from Point A to Point B on your journey. A new consistent signage system will be the largest wayfinding improvement to the SEPTA system, making our network easier to use and understand than ever before.

As we build a new signage system from the ground up, we are starting with the basics – standardized terms, colors, symbols, and communications standards. The most important aspect of an effective wayfinding system is consistency. Once we have these details finalized, we can begin broadening our scope, including digital tools and real-time information.

Over the years we’ve received a lot of feedback about our signage and communication needing improvement. In fact, we began this project by reviewing years of tweets, letters, thoughtful fan proposals, and suggestions, and we used that input to directly inform the scope of the Wayfinding Master Plan. SEPTA’s Strategic Plan, SEPTA Forward, places communication and ease of use front and center. Goal #2 of the plan is to provide an intuitive user experience across a system that is easy to use for all, regardless of familiarity, language, or ability, and that welcomes riders from across the world.

Signage is an essential part of any transit system, but there are a few reasons why now is the perfect time to make a once-in-a-generation update. Commuting and travel behavior are changing rapidly, altering the way our riders use transit. We’re preparing for a future where daily travel patterns are more flexible and dynamic, and where someone’s daily routine may not include the same repetitive commute. Transit will have to be convenient and easy enough to enable spontaneous navigation. In short, riders just need to be able to show up and go. Providing the right information at the right time is how we meet these new expectations.

The Wayfinding Master Plan launched in Summer 2020. Over the next few years, we’ll finalize the plan’s recommendations, build a full manual of standards, confirm the road map for how we implement an entirely new wayfinding system, and begin the roll-out of the new system.

While we don’t have the final plan ready quite yet, you can view concept signage on our website, along with the results of our research and public outreach activities. We anticipate that a final wayfinding manual will be released to the public in 2022.

Is the term Rail Transit Network new to you? You’re not alone! The Rail Transit Network consists of the Market-Frankford Line, Broad Street Line, Norristown High-Speed Line, and the 10, 11, 13, 15, 34, 36, 101, and 102 Trolleys. Together, these routes carry hundreds of thousands of people per day, and they form the core of our city and regional transportation network. But despite the network’s importance, if you went outside and asked someone where the nearest “Rail Transit” station was, they likely wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. The lack of a well-defined network makes creating useful wayfinding much harder — that is why we began with grouping these lines under a single name – “Metro.”

These rail lines may look different on the surface – they use different vehicles, their stations look different – but they really all provide the same product: frequent, convenient, all-day, affordable service that can be used for all sorts of trips, not just 9-to-5 commuting. Lines like that are best used in conjunction with each other – like when you transfer from one subway train to another. Until now, we’ve never communicated that they are meant to be used together, and that limits how far our riders can go.

The barrier to understanding SEPTA as a network is evident even for long-time riders. Among SEPTA riders, you will find die-hard Trolley fans who have never explored the Broad Street Line, or Market-Frankford Line riders who have never even heard of the Norristown High Speed Line. In fact, 43% of people surveyed reported not being familiar with SEPTA’s “Purple Line” and over half weren’t familiar with the Media-Sharon Hill Lines. That’s a problem!

While they make amusing anecdotes, these sorts of perceptions shape — and limit — the way we use, plan, fund, and appreciate SEPTA. And while any of these lines on their own is an incredible resource, together these transit lines — our Metro — link people to opportunity and make our region special.

We are here to solve SEPTA’s wayfinding problem once and for all. The more we study this problem, the clearer the root causes of our communication difficulties become. In short, SEPTA lacks a standardized vocabulary of symbols, colors, shapes, and abbreviations that can be employed consistently. The result is signage that is often wordy, inconsistent, and just generally difficult to understand. For example, it’s difficult to create simple signs when you must write out “Norristown High-Speed Line” or “Frankford Transportation Center” each time. It’s difficult to confirm where you’re going if one sign says you’re going eastbound to Frankford, but the other says you’re going to Penn’s Landing, or 5th Street, or Allegheny. Imagine being new to Philadelphia and trying to make sense of that. Better yet, imagine being a non-English speaker! Finally, the terminology we use can be very technical and difficult to understand, for example, “spur”, “car stop”, or the difference between “express” and “limited”.

The solution is building up that transit vocabulary. To create a simple, easy-to-understand signage, we need a standardized palette of colors, letters, numbers, shapes, symbols, and pictograms that we can use consistently across every line and every station. You can read more about our draft recommendations here. Let us know what you think!

We began this project with few assumptions and a desire to understand the root of SEPTA’s wayfinding challenges from multiple perspectives. These recommendations are a direct result of a full year of outreach, research, workshops, audits, and conversations. We tried to develop solutions that directly respond to the problems we heard, and each decision is supported by that input. Now we want to hear if you think we got it right. Learn more about our research and engagement.

We’re glad you asked! Public input has been a central piece of this project. After all, it’s thanks to the persistent advocacy of riders and stakeholders that this project became a reality. Here are some of the methods we used to gather input so far:

• A public survey, available in English, Spanish and Chinese, that received over 1,500 responses;
• Workshops with internal and external stakeholders and SEPTA employees;
• One-on-one and group conversations with advocacy groups, interest groups, and neighborhood groups, to name a few;
• A high-tech study that allowed us to “step into our riders’ shoes;”
• A “Transit Map Tuesday” social media campaign
• Regular consultation with the SEPTA Citizen’s Advisory Committee (CAC) and Youth Advisory Council (YAC);
• And many years of tweets, letters, frustrations, thoughtful fan proposals, and suggestions.

Balancing the need for progress while remaining true to our history and local culture was cited as a primary concern by riders and stakeholders. We were also told that making our network easier to use for new customers, new residents, immigrants, refugees, and people with disabilities must be a priority. In our analysis of existing conditions, we found that SEPTA’s heavy reliance on long-form, technical terms was a barrier to accessibility. The use of inconsistent nomenclature – for example numbers for the trolleys but words for the Norristown High Speed Line – was also cited as a point of confusion and a large contributor to general inconsistency.

Imagine asking a fellow rider for directions, and the names for each train you’re directed to take are nowhere to be found on SEPTA signs. Our public survey found that residents, riders, and even SEPTA’s employees and official signage use a variety of names for each line, some of which are more common than the official line names. Deciding which names to standardize and which to change is not always straightforward. This confusion and complexity have resulted in a network that is difficult to navigate, especially for new Philadelphians, customers who speak languages other than English, or even long-time SEPTA customers traveling to new places.

In analyzing solutions, we found that line abbreviations (letter designations, such as B for Broad Street Line) based on historic names provide authenticity and have natural momentum. For this reason, and because it felt like too arbitrary of a change, we opted not to use letter lines sequentially (A, B, C, etc.). Read more about this recommendation here.

Connections to bus and Regional Rail are a central consideration of the Rail Transit Wayfinding Master Plan. SEPTA’s bus network is currently undergoing a Revolution which will lead to completely new routes and services – many of which have yet to be confirmed. At the same time, SEPTA is kicking off a Regional Rail Master Plan which will re-imagine our Regional Rail network for the transportation needs of a growing, dynamic region. Once these projects are further along, we anticipate that the same flexible wayfinding hierarchy and design language will be applied to bus and Regional Rail, creating a single unified network.

At SEPTA we are committed to supporting the diverse needs of those that rely on our transit system. We made sure to include individuals with disabilities in every stage of our engagement process to ensure we heard their critical insights. A key focus of the Wayfinding Master Plan is highlighting those stations and pathways that are accessible. We also will ensure those with visual differences have enhanced access to information through the design of the signage with larger type, bold colors, and simplified naming.

As the project continues, we’ll also be looking at improving audio announcements, and investigating the use of new technologies to make our system more accessible. Outreach and collaboration will continue to be critical in these efforts.

Today, our signs rely heavily on full, formal English words and terminology. Without a complete word-for-word translation, this form of communication is difficult to understand for people with limited English proficiency.

We are working on building a vocabulary of symbols, colors, shapes, and abbreviations that can be employed consistently. This method is used in Metro systems around the world, and it’s the reason you can fly to Paris or Shanghai and use their systems without speaking the local language.

Once we have standardized the “building blocks” of wayfinding there are many directions we can go. Some of the future products we anticipate are:

• Intuitive real-time arrival signage
• Neighborhood maps
• Digital signage
• Signage for local attractions
• And much more!

We are grateful for your engagement with the plan! Please consider:

• Sharing the recommendations with friends or family;
• Sharing our website on social media;
• Inviting us to your neighborhood or community organization to share our recommendations and learn from your neighbors; or,
• Signing up to receive updates by email.

Your feedback is vital to us as we evolve our recommendations. Please tell us what you think! Did we get it right?

• View our interactive map and visit our Get Involved page to leave feedback.
• View a Wayfinding Information Center in-person: Read about our recommendations in English and Spanish.
• If you would like to ask questions or share feedback, send us an email at planning@septa.org
• Tweet us: We’ll collect feedback and answer questions submitted to @ISEPTAPHILLY and @SEPTA_Social