Portraits by West Philly photographer JJ Tiziou are featured in a campaign against anti-Muslim ads appearing on buses around the city.

West Philly photographer JJ Tiziou is helping push back against the anti-Muslim ads posted around the city by providing portraits that showcase Philadelphia’s diversity.

Tiziou, who became known citywide with his amazing How Philly Moves murals, has been photographing Muslims in Philadelphia as part of the Dare to Understand initiative, a collective community response to anti-Muslim ads posted on buses around the paid for by a New Hampshire based organization.

The response includes a digital billboard on the Schuylkill Expressway featuring portraits by Tiziou that will run through April 12. The Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia, which fought the posting of the anti-Muslim ads through the courts, has launched a fundraising campaign to bolster the response.

“Our message has been clear: Not here. Not now. Not in our city,” a statement by the group reads.

Tiziou’s billboard photographs are part of his Everyone is Photogenic project, which he has revived as part of the Dare to Understand campaign. Learn more here.

The campaign is in response to ads on some 84 SEPTA buses sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. They feature the slogan “Islamic Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran.” A federal court earlier this month ordered SEPTA to post the ads on free speech grounds. The ads will run for a month.

– Mike Lyons

Recently, some #34 Trolley riders spotted and commented on a new sign pasted on the driver’s cabin that read “Dude It’s Rude… Two Seats – Really?” Yesterday, SEPTA announced the launch of a new “Dude It’s Rude” passenger etiquette program and released some more details about it.

“The new initiative uses strong visuals and minimal words to get passengers thinking about their own personal travel habits,” according to SEPTA. This is a more direct approach to tackling the issue of passenger etiquette. Prior to this campaign, SEPTA used a lighter approach with cartoon-like characters and implemented a more successful cellphone use campaign, which combined humor with direct messaging.

SEPTA hopes that the new campaign, with an edgier tone, will improve customer travel habits that have continuously been reported as big problems, including cursing, taking your trash with you, blocking the front aisle, and seat hogging. SEPTA intentionally did not include its name or logo on decals and posters to get its riders thinking more about the messages instead of who is delivering it.

Initial response to the new campaign has been positive, according to SEPTA’s General Manager Joseph Casey. “Customers appreciate our efforts to tackle the issues that bug them…,” Casey said in a statement. But more feedback and comments are welcome.

Here are more signs (courtesy of SEPTA):

You know the feeling: Standing at a stop some time in off-peak hours, maybe a Sunday morning, looking up Spruce Street or Baltimore Avenue or the El tracks – wondering when the bus, trolley or train will be arriving. You forgot to check the schedule and you’re late and getting later.

Well, SEPTA has unveiled a couple of new services that might ease your angst a little.

A new SMS service will allow you to punch a code for your stop into your phone, send a text to SEPTA and get the next four scheduled stops for your bus, trolley or train. Each of SEPTA’s 18,000 stops regionwide has a code. For now each code (called a “StopID”) is only available on SEPTA’s website here. This summer signs will be installed at all the stops with the unique code number.

The code is key. For example, the eastbound 34 trolley stop at 43rd and Baltimore has a number (it’s 20875). Send that number to 41411 and you will get a quick reply (it took eight seconds the first time we tried it) with the next four times a trolley is supposed to get to your stop. OK, supposed, is a key word here. There is no guarantee it will be on time. But, hey, they’re getting there.

If you like a little more precision, then look into another new service, TransitView, which is available for 116 bus routes and all of the trolleys (no trains) that service West Philly. For this one, you go to the interface and select your route. A Google map will pop up that will show you the location of all of the vehicles on that route by location. For example, on the map of the 34 (see image) the little red icon is a westbound trolley and the blue icon is eastbound. Using GPS updates, the locations are refreshed every three minutes.

There is a catch. The SMS services won’t work for T-Mobile or Sprint customers, which is a fairly big chunk of the Philadelphia market (about a quarter).

For those who can use them, the services will at least help you kill time while you wait.

The folks over at Cedar Park Neighbors are interested in how you get around. The neighborhood group’s transit committee is asking Cedar Park residents to fill out a survey (5 minutes for the short version, 10 minutes for more in-depth questions) so they can better understand transportation choices and help provide better “mobility options.”

The group defines Cedar Park as the neighborhood bounded by Larchwood Avenue on the north, 52nd Street on the west, Kingsessing Avenue and the SEPTA rail line on the south, and 46th Street on the east.

That time of year is coming up when SEPTA trolley riders will have to switch from trolley to subway when traveling to Center City. SEPTA’s annual Center City trolley tunnel maintenance project, “Trolley Tunnel Blitz,” is scheduled for 10 days this year – from July 13 to July 23.

Due to power, track and station improvement projects in the tunnel that runs between the 40th and 13th Street stations, SEPTA Trolley Routes 10, 11, 13, 34 and 36 will not operate in the tunnel from 10 p.m. on Friday, July 13, through 4 a.m. on Monday, July 23. Trolley service will begin and end at 40th and Market Streets, and trolleys will use their alternate diversion service routing to connect to SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line at 40th and Market Streets. Trolley passengers can board the Market-Frankford Line at 40th Street Station for travel to-and-from Center City, as the work efforts will not affect that service.

This is the fifth consecutive summer SEPTA has held the Trolley Tunnel Blitz. During this year’s tunnel closure, members of SEPTA’s in-house Engineering, Maintenance & Construction Division crews will work around-the-clock on key maintenance and construction tasks throughout the five-mile, single loop Center City tunnel.

Rendering of the 30th Street Station Plaza redesign concept.

At a public Open House held earlier this month at 30th Street Station, Amtrak presented its design concept for Station Plaza, one of the more visible projects of the widely publicized 30th Street Station District Plan.

Information boards were available at the Open House to help the public better understand the vision of the District Plan and Station Plaza design concepts. The public had an opportunity to fill out a station plaza survey. Those who didn’t attend the Open House but want to provide their feedback on the project can do so through an online survey.

But here’s what you need to do first: Learn about the station plaza concept. Click HERE to view the eight information boards that were on display at the July 12, 2017 Open House.  Continue Reading