Philadelphia’s Market Frankford El might be compared to a circus freak show on the move. The 45-minute ride from the Frankford Terminal to the 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby takes about 45 minutes. The innumerable station stops along the way include the drug-infested neighborhoods of Kensington, where slumped over Fentanyl and Synthetic Cannabinoid (K2/Spice) addicts enter the train in great numbers, often nodding out in their seats, spilling coffee or soft drinks and sometimes vomiting or urinating when fellow passengers aren’t looking. During the worst of the pandemic in 2020 when ridership was low, large numbers of homeless took to sleeping on the trains. Now that ridership is up to par, the sleepers are less obvious but the homeless keep coming, attracting all sorts of hucksters who roam from car to car selling candy, incense or beef jerky, no doubt shoplifted from stores. Despite recorded warnings from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Septa) that passengers should not move between cars while the train is in motion, few obey the rule.
