SEPTA’s Impending Super Bowl Parade Nightmare

Eagles fans after the Super Bowl giving us a taste of what to expect at the Super Bowl parade on Friday in Philadelphia (photo via Getty Images) | A SEPTA Regional Rail train (photo via Dough4872/Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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SEPTA’s Impending Super Bowl Parade Nightmare

If you’re taking SEPTA to and from the Super Bowl parade, godspeed.

I mentioned yesterday that a bunch of SEPTA stations will be closed on Friday. So if, for instance, you live between Bryn Mawr and 30th Street Station along the Paoli-Thorndale Line, you won’t be able to catch the train at any of those stops (Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, etc).

Same goes for people who live between Snyder Avenue and Walnut-Locust along the Broad Street Line. All of those stations will be closed. I could go on. Best I can tell, this impacts all SEPTA lines. (PATCO is similarly screwed up, leading a colleague in Collingswood to skip the parade altogether.)

Your rides on the Market-Frankford Line and Broad Street Line are free, thanks to Kevin Hart’s tequila. But you actually have to make it onto the train.

Even if you’re at one of the stations that are open, SEPTA has made it clear that there’s no guarantee that the train will actually stop for you. It might be full.

So if you’re boarding the Market-Frankford El at 69th Street Terminal (the end of the line), you’ll be able to get on a train. Or at least you will once the masses of people in front of you get a train. But if you’re trying to board it three stops later at 40th Street — the last open stop before 30th — you could be looking at a much different scenario.

As for Regional Rail, same thing applies in terms of trying to get on a train closer to the city when throngs of people have already packed themselves into the cars.

But there’s also the twist that you’ll only be able to get onto the Regional Rail trains if you have a SEPTA Key card with money on it (note that you can’t buy a SEPTA Key card at every station), or if you buy a special one-day SEPTA parade pass that SEPTA was selling at stations on Wednesday and continued to sell on Thursday. You won’t be able to buy them on Friday. Lines to buy the passes at Regional Rail stations on Wednesday were excruciatingly long. And, no, you can’t pay your fare once you’re on the train.

Add to all of this the fact that there are likely a whole lot of people from the suburbs coming into the city for the parade who never use SEPTA and, well, yes, I think my headline is perfectly fair and accurate. That’s without even considering their level of intoxication.

Some (including SEPTA) have said that SEPTA managed just fine for the papal visit and the last Super Bowl parade back in 2018. We can quibble on another day about what the standard is for “just fine.” But post-COVID, SEPTA is a completely different agency. It’s underfunded, understaffed, and plagued with a bevy of operational problems and even basic cleanliness and hygiene issues. A Super Bowl parade isn’t going to help.

Where to Pee During the Super Bowl Parade

Based on my observations of what goes on at the Mummers Parade and what happened after we won the Super Bowl in 2018, this is the Super Bowl parade guide that someone should write. There are lots of Porta Potties around. But certainly not enough. City of Philadelphia buildings aren’t open. Most museums aren’t open. One can only imagine that most restaurants and bars will be enforcing a “restrooms for customers only” policy. That leaves the few Wawas we have left, the major rail stations in the city, maybe supermarkets? Good luck out there.

Somebody Buy This Guy a Beer

A Drexel University prof made a deal with students at the beginning of the current term that if the Eagles won the Super Bowl, they could skip their final exam, assuming they were generally doing well in the class. And now he’s making good on that promise.

About That Bird Flu…

Eggs prices are crazy. People are scared to eat eggs that aren’t fully cooked. And now? Officials in New Jersey say they just found 25 dead geese. The culprit might be bird flu. Hopefully this isn’t the opening scene to the next pandemic horror movie. The Birds meets 28 Years Later. [Shudder]

By the Numbers

15: Number of stitches this poor Delco woman needed after a dog bit her on Broad Street during Sunday’s big Super Bowl celebration. She also needed rabies shots. Amusingly, she was mostly concerned about any damage the marauding mutt might have caused to her brand new Saquon Barkley jersey. So Delco!

1: Days this week forecasted to feature full sun, all day. And, yes, it’s the day of our big Super Bowl parade. The gods continue to look favorably upon us.

$35: What it will cost you to cuddle with goats this weekend, one of the many excellent alternative Valentine’s weekend ideas we’ve compiled here. (Please don’t mention the goat-cuddling thing to my wife. She’s obsessed with goats. Everybody wants chickens. She wants goats.)

Local Talent

Newtown born-and-bred podcaster extraordinaire Alexandra Cooper (the second highest-paid podcaster in the world, behind only Bro Rogan) just had Delco’s finest Kylie Kelce on Call Her Daddy, and the end result is a hoot. Kelce tells Cooper all about Taylor Swift, blacking out at the Super Bowl in 2018, and having Jason Kelce for a husband. Check it out here or wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts.