Charted: How Philadelphia's bus stop distance stacks up
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Philadelphia bus stops are closer together than any other big U.S. city, per a new analysis by the Works in Progress transit blog.
Why it matters: Frequent stopping helps maximize coverage, giving more people access to service, according to the blog.
By the numbers: The median distance between SEPTA bus stops is 564 feet.
- That beats out Pittsburgh (623 feet) and Chicago (673 feet) for the top spot among cities analyzed.
- For cities like Philly and Chicago, that could mean as many as eight stops per mile.
How it works: The analysis compared bus stop spacing for 43 U.S. cities, with the average being 1,026 feet between stops.
The intrigue: Closer stops aren't always a good thing.
- That's because it can make service not only slower and less reliable, but also more expensive to operate, per the blog.
- The result: Ridership is reduced and buses are less competitive with other forms of transit.
Flashback: SEPTA and the city have put in place new infrastructure in recent years to make bus service faster, including red-painted bus-only lanes and artificial intelligence-powered cameras to ticket illegally stopped vehicles in bus lanes.
What's next: SEPTA's long-anticipated (and delayed) redesign of its bus network is expected to roll out in late 2026, per the transit agency's website.
Go deeper: Read the full analysis