SEPTA Has Started Painting the Underground Concourse

The grand plans for the Center City underground concourse have begun.

Last month, we told you about SEPTA’s grand plans for Center City’s underground concourse. We now have some tangible evidence of the upgrade: The columns on the South Broad concourse are being painted!

SEPTA has been working on the South Broad section of the concourse, which runs from the weird, exit-only portion of the City Hall stop on the Broad Street Line to Locust Street, for a little over a month now. They’ve fixed several stretches of concrete, and eventually plan to try to make the concourse not creepy. That’ll be tough — um, see the above photo — but it’s worth a shot.

Unfortunately, not all the painting has worked so well.

But, hey, it’s the underground concourse. The paint job and the concrete repair have made it nicer already. Any little bit helps.

UPDATE: A SEPTA spokesman reached out to explain what happened: The temperature change, plus the rain, led to condensation getting behind the paint and caused it to run. SEPTA workers are continuing to repaint the concourse columns this afternoon, and they’re fixing the ones that ran. Hooray!