
This editorial article is a part of Technical.ly's Accessibility month of our editorial calendar.
Not every transit stop in Philadelphia is wheelchair accessible, but SEPTA riders who use wheelchairs rely on those that are to get around. And when elevators are down? Access to the city at large is interrupted.
Along with software engineer and civic hacker James Tyack, Ather Sharif — former Philly resident, Comcast engineer, Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, founder of accessible tech initiative EvoXLabs — started tracking which stations with elevators saw more outages than others via an open source transportation tool called Unlock Philly.
From March 1, 2017, through March 31, 2019, here’s some of the data they found about the wheelchair-accessible stations that operate on Regional Rail, the Broad Street Line and the Market Frankford Line (MFL):
- 56th Street Station on the MFL saw the most elevator outages.
- 8th Street Station on the MFL saw the most consecutive days affected by elevator outages.
- The MFL’s elevators tend to break down more on Fridays.
There’s a heck of a lot more explanation from Sharif on how Unlock Philly started and how the team analyzed its data, plus some lovely data visualizations, at Sharif’s Medium essay below.
See the dataKnowledge is power!
Subscribe for free today and stay up to date with news and tips you need to grow your career and connect with our vibrant tech community.

'We are just trying to survive, which is different from living': Afghan refugee Ghulam Danish on his journey toward thriving

BarCamp Philly: Share your inner geek at this year's unconference

As Guru turns 10, CEO Rick Nucci reflects on evolutions in AI and workplace culture
