SEPTA is testing countdown clocks on the El, so you might finally know when your train is coming

Real-time digital countdown clocks are, after several delays, finally being tested in SEPTA stations along the Market-Frankford Line.

Around midday Thursday, Samriddhi Khare, a 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, was waiting at the 15th Street Station on the Market-Frankford Line when she saw a train listed as being eight minutes away.

“My first thought when I saw it was, I’m really happy that they’re finally doing this,” she said.

She snapped a picture and texted it to friends.

“We’re finally in the 21st century!” one replied.

Then, to Khare’s surprise and delight, the train arrived right around the time it said it would.

The addition of countdown clocks to SEPTA lines has been delayed for years because of a malware attack in 2020 that affected SEPTA’s IT system. Originally SEPTA said it would have the clocks in the Broad Street Line Stations by the end of 2020.

So far, all eastbound and westbound stations from Frankford Transportation Center to 40th Street on the Market-Frankford Line have been tested, said John Golden, a public information manager for SEPTA, via email.

“We still have a few stations to test and are working on a few technical issues before everything goes live,” Golden said.

He did not provide an anticipated launch date.

Noah Beratan, 22, a Penn student who received Khare’s texted photo, says the clocks will allow him to make better decisions about what route to take when there are many ways he can get to his destination.

“I could make an educated decision instead of going off of a whim,” he said.

In January, The Inquirer reported that the clock system was expected to launch at the 13th Street Station on the Market-Frankford Line by March and then roll out to the remaining El stations, the Broad Street Line, the trolley stations in the Center City tunnel, and the Norristown High Speed Line.

In May, SEPTA tweeted that it expected the rollout to happen this fall, but didn’t have a date to share.

“Unfortunately, it has been taking longer than expected to fine-tune the backend software. It is being worked on,” read the tweet.

New York City has had countdown clocks in all of its stations since the end of 2017, according to the New York Daily News. It took New York’s transit authority 11 years to roll out countdown clocks across its 471 stations.