As part of my Twitter #clusterfuckonrails campaign, I’d like to share this photo of my Market-Frankford El train commute this morning. I waited about 15 minutes at 15th street as three trains passed in the opposite direction. Once the Westbound El finally got there, the conductor announced that the train was going straight to 60th street (probably to make up for lost time).

The photo above is of the second train, way too packed for anyone else to get on. The third one wasn’t much better. It sucks to see SEPTA accepting bids for a multimillion dollar fare-card system when they don’t even have the infrastructure to support a system used by millions (or at least hundreds of thousands) of commuters each day. They should put those dollars into improving signals and getting a system like the DC Metro where you can see when trains are coming (and they come every three minutes or less during rush hour) before they invest in a farecard system. I’d rather deal with tokens and get to work on time instead of being crammed into a subway car with a bunch of sweaty Philadelphians (although I do love me some sweaty Philadelphians, we family, we so excited).