SEPTA Reviews

by Echelon Ss

this app KeyPass is a multimillion dollar failure. It is a failed program and it costs the tax payers a fortune. Thank you this app for making us citizens look like cattle during rush hour in Suburban, Jefferson, and 30th Street Station. Why did you have to build those horrible metal fences? What is the point of building the electronic scanning turnstiles if the conductor has to check my Pass anyway? Why did you create a 2 step process when the 1 step process (conductor) was working perfectly fine? Show my TrailPass to the train conductor is perfectly fine, but the fact that I have to take time out of my life to stand in line so I can swipe my TrailPass just to get through the station is complete bull.

by Simonewashere

I don’t know what happened to SEPTA during the pandemic, but the tracking before it was much more accurate and tracked way more upcoming buses. Now you’re lucky if it manages to “track” the upcoming one. “Track” because the given departing time is usually wrong. “On time” buses end up being late or early, “early” buses come late or on time, and you can follow the same logic with “late buses”. My issue with this is SEPTA rarely updates to reflect the changed status. I can’t count how many times I’ve headed to a stop to catch a bus that was “on time” only to watch it drive past the stop I was headed to 3 minutes early while SEPTA tracking says it’ll arrive in 3 minutes. Catching the bus shouldn’t be this daily frustrating game of guess.

by Tscheetz

The initial day of launch for this update stated something along the lines of “we heard you and made improvements.” In my opinion, the developers were not listening and in fact made SEPTA more difficult to use. I don’t appreciate how I have to change each schedule to a different line and different station each time, when previously SEPTA already had that information saved. It’s also very irritating how even though I can save favorite lines in real time, but it only shows 3 upcoming times and I cannot go in to expand it. As a pr/marketing student, I’m quite appalled at the lack of consideration into this update.

by Jujenso

I am using an IPhone 7 and just recently updated the this app App and I am sorry I did. The this app App is so difficult to navigate. It's better to use a paper bus schedule because you can see the whole day at a glance. With this new app you constantly have to look up your bus schedule to see the times for a couple of hours. If you save this route in your Favorites, it only gives you 3 times the bus is suppose to arrive. But if you want to see the next available time you have to go back to look up the route, find your stop and your destination, then you can see more times. I wouldn't want to do this in the poring rain.

They should of left SEPTA alone.

by Really, SEPTA?!

The route 40 bus doesn’t even come close to maintaining a schedule. Often 2 or 3 buses in a row won’t show up. During times a bus is supposed to be running every 15 minutes, it can 45 minutes or more for a bus to show up. SEPTA will indicate it’s on or close to schedule, but then the listed bus (and the bus icon on the map) will simply disappear. This is not an occasional occurrence, it happens at least several times a week. It’s almost a standing joke that people routinely end up sharing a cab, Uber, or Lyft, and the drivers for them are certainly much more pleasant than most of the this app drivers.

by Mbp5643

Lots of good ideas here, and fantastic that real time is really real time pretty much everywhere, but so frustrating that the schedule times when you save things to Favorites are wrong!! BSL times are correct when you search the schedule, but wrong in Favorites (Ellsworth Federal to City Hall times are 3 or 4 minutes off). This makes me doubt the other schedules and doubt SEPTA . The schedule part of SEPTA is clunky and sometimes the searching doesn’t work, so I’m stuck with having saved my favorite routes. You can’t reorganize Favorites. So you have to think about the least important route and do that first and then work up to most important, and redo it if you add a route (because the Favorites tiles are so large that you have to scroll down to see them...I really liked the simple and easy single lines that appeared in the old app). Why doesn’t the map view show my location? It’s really hard to orient yourself when looking at a bus location on a zoomed in map.

by Señor OwO

So I live near the Lansdale/Doylestown rail. I decided to take the train down to 30th street to meet my brother, as the timing worked out perfectly (departed at 5:10 and was bound to arrive at 6:05). I ended up taking an Uber down that night. What happened was that I arrived at the station on time at around 5, and ended up waiting 20 minutes at the station. When I checked the board that’s already there at the station, it said the next train was at 5:19. I thought it was no big deal, but then the train never shows up 10 minutes later. I check SEPTA , and the screen read that INSTEAD of the 5:10 train showing up, it ended up saying that the next train was at 5:40. I have never been more frustrated at SEPTA for making me late for both dinner and for a show. Please at least have some push notification for when the train decides to just not show up.

by Cebsn

I really wish I could just view the entire schedule for RR not just point to point. Also after this most recent update my favorites are listed how I labeled them but the schedules aren’t there. When I try to add them back nothing saves and if I click on one lines favorites it doesn’t matter if I was looking up different lines schedule what ever I just looked up shows. The whole point of adding favorites was so I didn’t have to search every single time so I could quickly find out. Again it has been a frustration since this new iteration of SEPTA that you can’t see the entire schedule like the PDF version. Honestly I’m about to go back to carrying around paper schedules.

by Tina D 117

Ever since the update to IOS 13.3, I’ve had to uninstall & reinstall SEPTA on my iPhone XR a few times, something I haven’t had to do on my iPad mini. As I don’t drive, I have several routes I need to resave to my favorites. I wish there was a way to save this information to the cloud so it could be easily installed.

There are a few features from the previous app that I wish had been incorporated in this version. I liked you could save an entire schedule choosing between weekday/weekend & now/different times of the day without entering the stop information again. I also liked being able to select nearby stops & seeing which line would arrive first without having to select the routes & stops. As there are times I have the choice of three buses, it’s time consuming to enter the route & stops 3 times. On the old app, the information was available for all 3 lines with one touch & a few scrolls.

Overall, I do like SEPTA , when I can get mine to work properly. It is convenient.

This is a very convenient app

by Drpuma

I am a frequent this app user for my daily commute. The updates to SEPTA are definitely prettier. I like that favorites are easy to access and real-time. However, as someone who lives in the city I often want to compare arrival or departure times at the different stations. It’s frustrating that the new app ONLY shows point-to-point. There is no way to view a whole timetable. So, if I want to compare when a train arrives at Jefferson and Suburban, I have to look them both up individually. There is no way to see them side by side. This was possible in the old app, and is not an improvement.

by ChristinaGR95

I use SEPTA almost exclusively for the bus and L. It’s great that everything really is real time BUT SEPTA does not show if buses are running early! This is a huge issue for me because my commute bus is used by many high school students and the times vary A LOT depending on whether school is in. SEPTA shows “on time” even if the bus has gone by early. I know this for a fact because I have seen the bus go by early while walking to the bus stop. Please fix this. It makes it very difficult to schedule afterwork appointments. For the L, SEPTA works pretty well. Sometimes it will run late without showing it on SEPTA .

by Rachelllewi

This shows you schedules, and sometimes it’ll show you when your bus is coming but not super accurately. Also it stops working when you need it the most, like if you’re trying to figure out if the 12 is ever going to come or if you should just buy a Starbucks to use their bathroom because you’re not making it home. You can add to your this app Wallet, but I don’t like to have a saved card because once you save it SEPTA says it’s not valid. I think it reads the privacy asterisks as actual asterisks. Also, Skookul has a better real time map.

by Johngameropa

I was reintroduced to SEPTA called this app while hunting down the disappointing fact that I cannot add my SEPTAKey card to my Apple Wallet. No underfunded agency is normally able to pull off an app that gets 3 or more stars. But I really liked the functionality of adding of my favorite lines, along with visual and functional access to my SEPTAKey card. And BOTH displayed to me when I access SEPTA . That tells me the developer knows “This isn’t an app for this app. This is an app for customers of this app.” I was able to crash SEPTA once or twice on my iPhone6s doing a swipe down, cant remember where though in SEPTA (Rail I believe.) Why not 4 Stars? Persistent alert badge in SEPTA . I can view the alert but the badge does not go away therefore I no longer go to alerts. That is a huge no no.

by Someone In Philly

SEPTA for the most part is great but for the bus route 40, most of the tome the buses are no where near the time it says it should be like in the morning. There is 3 buses that are either or late and never on time. I think that SEPTA should tell you if the bus is early or not and the late time needs to be more accurate. Then also the next time arrival needs to be improved because when a bus is running late, it often doesn’t come back on the list after its scheduled time and you can’t track it no more. The last thing that needs to be improved is when you pick the stops. The stops take a long time time to load and typing in the stops name, most of the time doesn’t work which didn’t start happening until the last few updates.

by Jspohrer

Although there are still some bugs (e.g. Favorites not actually saving), the new app is a HUGE step forward in terms of user interface and usability design. The new NTA interface shows only the data you need, more intelligently; station/stop searching is much easier; and favoriting (once it works) will ensure the routes I need most, rather than the most recent are at my fingertips. SEPTA feels like it was designed actual user input and testing. Keep up the great work!

by Andybirdy1

Compared to the first app, this one is ONE THOUSAND times better. The real time feature is very accurate. The change I appreciate most is that you can still see Regional Rail trains after their scheduled time if they’re late. Before if it passed the time you couldn’t see the train anymore, therefore you couldn’t see how delayed it was. Given that this app is a public service, I’m very impressed with the changes they’ve made. 10/10 would recommend for any this app riders

by RachelH87

SEPTA is good and works well to check a schedule. I’ve never used the trip planner on there, so I’m not even sure it’s there.

My one big annoyance is that basically every time I load SEPTA it said it has schedule updates. They don’t take long, but I open SEPTA several times a month - how are there always schedule updates?

Not a big thing, and doesn’t really affect SEPTA experience, even if I tell it not to update, but it’s strange and annoying.

by Maltngga

i think an addition should b added to SEPTA . Meaning add it to the wallet setting. Reason for this is that im an Iphone user. If i place my phone by the keycard reader my wallet option appears. I think it would b more affective in a positive aspect. For those who might lose their card, outside of having to pay extra and go through relacing it last minute. SEPTA can be utilized more and have more of an impact for its riders. It could assist tourist with less confussion. Regional Rail fares could be added as well. Sinces phones are in every hand then ths will assist with the commute

by Avg Joe 2017

I’ve learned to read some subtleties about the application that tend to tell you things after you have gone through them enough. It would be nice if the developers applied these types of lessons to the software so the users didn’t have to guess if they need to make alternate arrangements to get home, or they can afford to work a little later sine there train will ultimately be cancelled.

by ADHD Alchemist

I’ve used the this app app since it was originally released. With the new fare system, someday the sap will (can) replace the MasterCard physical (fiscal) requirement. With that being stated; the most important feature of SEPTA is the schedule(s) correlated to departure station. Simply put, they cannot be depended upon for meaningful arrival/departure of the respective train. Most days, weekday schedules are predictably two to three minutes early. Weekends; good luck? Two trains on the MFL should have passed and not one or any delay reason presented. I am indeed writing this review waiting for the expected next train and not holding my breath for the fear of death. Not sure if SEPTA itself or it exposes a weakness in the system. I would not rely on it for a timely arrival; it may cost you ~ RCM

by May1209

I put regional rail Trenton line as a favorite. I tapped "my favorite," then the line has the service advisories mark⚠️ I tapped the mark⚠️ and next it says "No Service Advisories." A week has passed, it still shows the same mark and "No Service Advisories" for Trenton line. But there's a little change. When I tapped the mark several times, it finally showed "Service Advisories" and "DETOUR"😨 Detour for the regional rail Trenton line is from blah blah street & blah blah avenue, and the route for now is turning left on blah blah street and turning right on blah blah avenue, then going back to the normal route😨 Though the mark is shown for the line, advisories and detour are all about my other favorite bus routes. It is stressful because I need to check brand new status not to be late for meetings, appointment, etc.