The Urban Legend

What a sight I must have been to my neighbors, walking to the bus stop at my caffeine-fueled hyperspeed, staring straight into space, mentally scrutinizing the long-memorized public transit map of Philadelphia as I puzzled my way to a new babysitting job. I composed out loud a long and twisted patchwork of bus routes to somehow get myself across the city in 30 minutes with $4. The 48 bus could take me up to 27th and Allegheny to switch to the 32 to take me to East Falls to catch the K to pass Go to collect $200 to arrive by 6 o’clock. My beloved Broad Street subway line could not help me out of this bind, nor could my personal favorite bus, the 48 (convenient, never crowded, always comes). 

My mornings and afternoons are interlaced with public transportation, from the trolley that whisks me from the end of my block of narrow, cozy row houses to the subway that yanks me north to the transportation center and finally spits me out onto the hard concrete sidewalk a block from school. I tend to doze off and hit my head on the vintage (read: outdated) airplane-style windows on the trolley, stumble down the stairs to the subway, and slip and fall regularly on the walk to school when it’s icy out. My commute may be convoluted and mildly treacherous, but it’s mine. Armed with my bus pass and earbuds and my own two feet, I can get myself anywhere within a two-mile radius of City Hall in under 30 minutes flat. 

By thirteen, I was determined to never ask my parents for a ride again, never to be a burden. At fourteen I spent weeks traversing all of Center City Philadelphia on foot or via the 42 bus (three stars; convenient but crowded and infrequent) hunting for an employer that wouldn’t care too much about pesky labor laws. When I found one, I threw myself headfirst into a new world of weekly bus passes and commiserating about work and receiving constant astonished exclamations when I revealed my age. With my “subway friends,” I laughed raucously and shouted to be heard over the subway’s loud groaning, sprawled across the bright orange plastic seats after lacrosse practice, and relished my time waiting for the 3:24 train after school. We pondered topics ranging from Nietzsche to prom dresses, all while my head painfully bounced against the quaking subway window. I spoke my language to my friends, discussing the pros and cons of taking the Girard trolley or the Market trolley home (one is prettier, one is faster). 

And, like any great love, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and I have had some rough patches. Regular bus service during the brutal East Coast winter is a pipe dream, and the express subway doesn’t run on weekends. The trolley runs approximately once every two hours on Sundays, and shuts down completely for a week every summer. So I walk, or I reroute to avoid the buses where I know the roads haven’t yet been salted. I take the elevated subway instead of the trolley. For every problem SEPTA presents, there is a solution, even if it involves, God forbid, taking the $6 Regional Rail that arrives only once an hour.

Despite Philadelphians’ affinity for complaining about SEPTA, I love it because it’s helped me grow up. It’s taught me what self-reliance, especially in a city, can mean. You might miss the bus, but there will be another one, and perhaps on that bus, someone will board and earnestly wish everyone a blessed day. Maybe some children will throw a fit, but then perhaps a grandmotherly woman will offer them lollipops from across the aisle. Public transportation is a lesson in give and take, and learning to roll with the punches is a skill I reverently credit to my beloved SEPTA.