PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Transit leaders and elected officials gathered at SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line and trolley stop at 30th Street on Monday to celebrate the station’s $50 million facelift — and its new name.
Standing beside the gleaming new glass headhouse, dignitaries cut the ribbon on the newly renamed Drexel Station at 30th Street. The university paid $3.1 million over five years for the naming rights.
“Having Drexel’s name on this station is a point of civic honor for our university,” Drexel President John Fry said.
“A refurbished, more accessible and more navigable Drexel Station at 30th Street is a huge quality-of-life win for everyone.”
After a four-year, $50 million renovation, the station has new elevators, an expanded mezzanine and upgraded lighting. It also has new signage, with a blue “L” and green “T” representing SEPTA’s first use of its new wayfinding designations for the Market-Frankford and trolley lines.
SEPTA will be rolling out more of the new signs in the coming months as it rebrands subways and trolleys as the Metro, said the transit agency’s director of service information design, Lex Powers.
“After this, we’re going to start focusing on the most complicated part of the system — what we learned was the most complicated part of our system through the research that we did — and that was the 15th Street/City Hall complex,” Powers said. “We’ll start seeing some permanent signage a few months from now. But I think that riders should get used to seeing these new terms in more places.”
The new designations, which include a yellow “G” for the Route 15 trolley and a purple “M” for the Norristown High-Speed Line, should roll out over the next two years, Powers said.