Why did SEPTA rename the Norristown High Speed as the ‘M’?

A “B” on an orange background for the Broad Street Line makes intuitive sense.

So does an “L” on a blue background, designating the Market-Frankford El. And “T” on green for Philadelphia’s street-level trolleys, aka the green line(s).

But a number of people who are looking at SEPTA’s new Metro branding for city rail transit are confused about some other planned designations: A purple-backed “M?” A “D” superimposed on a pink square?

In SEPTA’s developing design language, the symbols respectively apply to the Norristown High Speed Line and the Media-Sharon Hill trolley lines that originate at 69th Street.

“Those are certainly some of the most frequent questions we get,” said Lex Powers, director of service information design and leader of an effort to simplify how SEPTA communicates. “We do understand that when people see the recommendations, it’s not going to be immediately clear why those choices were made.”

In these two cases, the “M” stands for Montgomery County, and the color purple is used on system maps to mark the route of the Norristown High Speed Line. “D” is for Delaware County, and pink is a bright, arresting color.

The Media-Sharon Hill trolleys are also green on system maps, like their city siblings, but SEPTA wanted to accentuate that “D” is a distinct service that operates entirely in Delaware County, Powers said.

“Our research showed that the Norristown High Speed Line and Media-Sharon Hill line have very low brand awareness, even by the people who use them on a day-to-day basis,” he said, so abbreviating either name was out. SEPTA also didn’t want to choose a letter representing a line’s terminal station to avoid “a potential point of confusion about the direction you are traveling.”

There were other problems simplifying the references. For instance, to many non-English speakers “high speed” refers to intercity trains that travel at 155 mph or more, common in Europe and Asia but not in the U.S.

“A group of us from different countries got together, and we didn’t understand why it was called that way because for us, it wasn’t a high speed line like we are used to in the rest of the world,” said Elvira Mendez Crespos, a SEPTA public-information manager and immigrant from northern Spain who oversees the agency’s Spanish communications. “They looked like trolleys to us, more than anything else.”

Eventually, SEPTA translated the name of the service on maps and other materials literally, as “Linea Rápida de Norristown,” she said.

Another goal was to “future proof” any new nomenclature, Powers said, since services could eventually expand, making specific references like Norristown seem dated. In the same vein, the Route 15 trolley line along Girard Avenue will be G, on a yellow background, because it is distinct from other city trolleys. It crosses the 10 trolley at one point, and people can transfer to it, but it’s not a one-seat ride.

“If we pick something that correlates to a place or a name that people know already, it’s a lot easier to learn it rather than just creating something out of thin air,” Powers said.