A poor first impression

Tourism is one of the largest industries in Philadelphia. The city's economy took in more than $6 billion last year alone from visitors, and the city's tourism board spent millions to get them here.

So why does Philadelphia make it so difficult for these visitors to get around once they are here? Better yet, why does the city's transit authority make it a challenge for all of us who live here to get around as well?

Last weekend, along with 20,000 others, I got to experience Philly hospitality at its best.

The Wachovia Center -- or more accurately, the Pattison Avenue subway station -- was the site. A Temple-Duke basketball game was the event, although the struggle to get home quickly overshadowed the hardwood excitement.

After the game, thousands of fans, many of who had come from North Carolina to watch their beloved Blue Devils, streamed across the vast parking lots toward the Broad Street Subway. What they found on the other side of the asphalt expanse was one open entrance to the subway. The other three were closed.

This wouldn't be a problem on a normal day with a light amount of traffic. But this was not a normal day, and the mass of people was certainly not unexpected; the game had been sold out for months.

To make matters worse, the one open entrance offered just one cashier to accept the requisite pair of dollar bills required for a ride and a single machine from which to purchase tokens. Standing before the machine was a line an hour long.

The machine, if you were lucky enough to make it to the front, accepted only folding currency: $1s, $5s, $10s and $20s -- no coins. Odd, since the only way you can avoid using change is by buying 10 tokens at a time. A more conventional purchase, say four tokens, costs $5.20. For my crisp $10 bill, I received seven tokens and 18 nickels.

Behind me in line, a man and his wife with thick southern accents were trying unsuccessfully to figure out how far they would need to ride the subway -- if they ever got on -- in order to return to their hotel. There was no map available, so my crude directions were probably confusing at best.

Farther back, a couple of students in Temple T-shirts were trying to pick a fight with some fellows with blue and white facepaint. "J.J. Reddick sucks," one of them shouted, referencing Duke's star guard.

Chalk up the latter to a few upset fans who had been drinking since long before tipoff. The former string of events, however, is all SEPTA's fault. And it's just one of many examples of how the transit agency is giving the city of Philadelphia a black eye it can ill afford.

When tourists who spent good money to travel here leave saying, "That's ridiculous; I'm never coming back to Philadelphia again," as one couple I overheard did, it's easy to see the problem. Remember that $6 billion the Convention and Visitors Bureau says tourists bring in? It won't be there in a few years if all of these people tell their friends that the City of Brotherly Love was anything but.

SEPTA, meanwhile, should be doing everything it can to attract riders, not turn them away. A SEPTA customer service representative I spoke with about my gripes from Saturday told me there was little anyone could do about the system.

Wrong answer -- especially for an agency that reported a 1.4 percent decline in ridership last year. Worse, SEPTA's latest budget shows its operating deficit widening by more than $53 million.

Cleaning stations and posting more maps are obvious suggestions for improvement, but what SEPTA really needs are ways to boost ridership.

Making it easier to get on in the first place is a start.

Here's a statistic for you. SEPTA has 53 stops on its two primary subway lines. Of those, only 19 sell tokens. The other 34? Come prepared with two singles, because the attendants working the booths are forbidden from making change.

In a perfect world, SEPTA would abandon the antiquated system of tokens for declining balance fare cards like most larger transit agencies did years ago. Even in the real world, though, there is no excuse for not having sales machines in all 53 stations.

SEPTA says it took them out of some stations because of vandalism. If this is the case, attendants should be required to sell tokens -- and make change in the process.

The agency boasts more than 600 token sales locations, but the majority of them are located in grocery stores and check-cashing shops rather than the subway entrances where they should be.

What it boils down to is making the system easy to use for everyone. If it is a pain for someone who has lived here for nearly four years, imagine how confusing it may be for a family here on vacation. Is that really the "Welcome to Philadelphia" message the city wants to send?

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