The operator behind SEPTA’s ‘Love Trolley’ just wants to make people smile

Gary Mason decorated his first trolley for Christmas in 1993. Though he now dresses up the trolleys three times a year, Valentine’s Day is always his favorite.

The exterior of this year’s “Love Trolley” is wrapped in red contact paper. Inside, pink and white hearts line the ceiling, red crepe roses are pinned to the walls, and shimmering red garlands glint from every window. The trolley’s loudspeaker plays a rotating list of soaring Sinatra tunes and schmaltzy Barry Manilow songs, occasionally interrupted by a neutral voice announcing the next stop.

“It’s like a party in here, right?” Michael Whitaker, 8, asked his mom as they headed to school on Valentine’s morning, where Michael was planning to make her “a bunch of stuff” in honor of the holiday.

It is a challenging moment for public transit. In recent years, transit workers in Philadelphia and across the country have been subject to verbal abuse and assaults by riders in numbers that have spiked since the onset of the pandemic. A SEPTA budget crisis also looms, with the agency predicting a $240 million deficit this year, prompting talk of significant service cuts and fare increases.

Against that backdrop, the decorated trolleys are small joys. This month, there are three: a Route 10 and a Route 36 car decked out for Valentine’s Day, and a Route 13 car adorned for Black History Month. The operators pay for the decorations and bedeck the cars themselves.

“I like making people happy,” Mason, 60, said. “They could be in a bad mood. The whole atmosphere, their whole disposition changes when they get on the car.”

A 37-year SEPTA veteran, Mason describes himself as a “trolley enthusiast” who grew up wanting to operate the vehicles. Since 2005, he’s worked the overnight shift on Route 10, driving from 12:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. He decorates for Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas, when SEPTA holds an all-district competition for the best-decorated vehicle.

The Love Trolley decorations took about eight hours; they’ll stay up through most of February.

Mason is something of an icon among his riders, as well as his colleagues. Devante Parker, 29, grew up seeing Mason’s decorated trolleys in Callowhill; when Parker became a trolley operator himself, he was inspired to design his own. Along with fellow operators Soup Davis and Rashalieque Sonnier, Parker decorated his Route 36 Valentine’s Day trolley with a red exterior and red lights within. He named it “The Certified Lover Boy.”

“Around this time of year it’s also tough because I know a lot of people go through heartbreak and depression,” Parker said. “I just want to give them the spirit, to make them smile.”

Mason was driving his Valentine’s Day route with his fiancé, Diana Taylor, who has accompanied him on the graveyard shift on Valentine’s Day for the past few years. When there was no one else on the trolley, the two chatted, otherwise, she looked out the window and enjoyed the city passing by.

A retired nurse, Taylor packs Mason his coffee and lunch the night before; he usually eats around 4:30 a.m. In the Love Trolley this year, there’s a blown-up photo of the two lovebirds dressed up.

“Well folks, it took us a while to get here, but welcome to the tunnel of love,” Mason said over the loudspeaker at the entrance to the 36th Street Trolley Portal. The inside of the car glowed red.

Kelly Cales, 35, was delighted.

“I feel special today,” she said, grinning. As the trolley trundled toward Center City, Cales sang along to Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” under her breath.