Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:
Subway-Surface Lines

Description

The Subway-Surface lines (also known as the Green Line) of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority are the most important remnant of Philadelphia's once-extensive streetcar system. They survived because they use a subway under Market Street in downtown Philadelphia, and under the Schuylkill River, to reach West Philadelphia, where they emerge to the surface and operate on city streets. There are five Subway-Surface routes:

• 10 - Overbrook via Lancaster Avenue
• 11 - Darby via Woodland Avenue
• 13 - Yeadon via Chester Avenue (some trips continue to Darby)
• 34 - Angora via Baltimore Avenue
• 36 - Eastwick or Elmwood via Elmwood Avenue

Route 10 emerges from the subway at 36th Street; the other routes emerge at 40th Street.

Since 1981, these routes have used modern light-rail vehicles built by Kawasaki, replacing PCC-type streetcars built in the 1940s. Unlike most such vehicles in the USA, they use trolley poles instead of pantographs to collect power from the overhead wire.

Other Philadelphia Streetcar Routes

In 1992, three surface-only streetcar routes that served north and central Philadelphia were "temporarily" converted to buses because the PCC cars that they still used had become impractical to maintain:

• 15 = Girard Avenue
• 23 - Germantown Avenue / 11th-12th Streets
• 56 - Erie / Torresdale Avenues

In 2005, route 15 returned to rail operation using "PCC-II" streetcars remanufactured by Brookville Mine Equipment Corporation using some components and body parts from old Philadelphia PCC cars.