6 years later, SEPTA reopens underground concourse that’s been closed since COVID

The South Broad Concourse, the underground pedestrian tunnel connecting SEPTA’s 15th Street/City Hall and Walnut-Locust stations in Center City, reopened last week after being closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six years. The concourse has been gated off since 2020. They removed the gates Tuesday morning like nothing happened. Welcome back, everyone. Sorry about the six-year closure. Here’s your tunnel.

SEPTA reopens South Broad St concourse

New: Closed for 6 years, @SEPTA today reopens the south Broad St concourse between City Hall and Walnut-Locust. Hear the story on @KYWNewsradio pic.twitter.com/7YG3I5wQiL

— Mike DeNardo (@_MikeDeNardo) June 2, 2026

Six years this thing has been shut. COVID started, SEPTA gated off the concourse, and then apparently forgot it existed until the World Cup showed up on the calendar and someone realized that a million tourists are about to descend on Center City and might need a way to get between stations without crossing Broad Street in 95-degree heat.

The timing is not a coincidence. SEPTA says the tunnel will “reduce street-level traffic” ahead of the city’s expected influx of tourists this summer.

Translation: We closed this thing during COVID, had no urgency to reopen it for the people who actually live and work in Philadelphia, and are only bringing it back now because the World Cup, the All-Star Game, and America250 are about to put this city under a global microscope and we can’t have gated-off tunnels making the transit system look worse than it already does.

Six Years Is Absurd… lol

COVID shut the concourse down in March 2020. That was understandable at the time. The pandemic was raging, transit ridership cratered, and underground pedestrian tunnels with limited ventilation were not where anyone wanted to be. Fine. Close it. Makes sense.

But 2020 turned into 2021. Then 2022. Then 2023. Then 2024. Then 2025. The rest of the world reopened. Offices reopened. Stadiums reopened. Restaurants, schools, gyms, everything came back. The concourse stayed closed. Gated off. Sitting there empty under Broad Street while commuters walked above in the rain, the snow, the heat, and the cold because SEPTA couldn’t be bothered to unlock a tunnel.

What was the holdup? Was there construction? Was there a structural issue? Was there a safety concern that took six years to resolve? Or did SEPTA just close it, move on to other problems, and never get around to reopening it because nobody was pressuring them to do it? I genuinely want to know what prevented this tunnel from reopening in 2021 or 2022 when everything else in the city came back to life.

The answer, apparently, is that it took the World Cup coming to Philadelphia for SEPTA to decide the concourse should be open again. A global sporting event with billions of viewers was the motivation. Not the daily commuters who have been navigating Center City on foot for six years. Not the residents who use SEPTA every day. The FIFA World Cup. That’s what it took.

Six Years Closed and They Couldn’t Even Slap Some Fresh Paint on It?

Here’s the funniest part. The concourse was closed for six years. Six. You had six years to do literally anything to improve the tunnel while nobody was using it. Fresh paint. New lighting. Fix the ceiling tiles that have been missing since the Obama administration. Pressure wash the floors. Do something. Anything. Make it look like a first-world transit system in a city that’s about to host the World Cup and the All-Star Game in front of the entire planet.

They opened the gates Tuesday morning and it looks exactly the same as it did in March 2020. Six years of closure and apparently nobody walked down there with a bucket of paint and a ladder. The ceiling tiles are still missing. The lighting is still depressing. The whole thing still has the vibe of a horror movie hallway that you walk through quickly while pretending you don’t see what’s happening in the corners.

It’s sad how little funding SEPTA has. I know that. The system is underfunded and has been for decades. Every station in the network needs to be renovated from top to bottom. The infrastructure is crumbling. The platforms are falling apart. The escalators work about 40 percent of the time.

I understand the financial reality but you closed a tunnel for six years. You had 2,190 days where nobody was walking through it. You couldn’t find the budget for some ceiling tiles and a coat of paint?

Brazilian tourists are about to walk through that concourse on their way to the World Cup and they’re going to think they accidentally entered the catacombs. International visitors are going to emerge from the South Broad Concourse into daylight looking like they just survived a haunted house.

Can we at least put some ceiling tiles in that thing? Is that too much to ask? Six years, SEPTA. Six years. You had the time.

At Least It’s Permanent

SEPTA says the concourse will remain open for good. Not just for the summer events. Permanently. The tunnel will be open to pedestrians 15 minutes after the first train leaves Fern Rock and will close 30 minutes after the last train. That’s the one piece of good news in this story. The concourse isn’t just being temporarily unlocked for the tourists and then gated off again in August. It’s staying open.

That’s the bare minimum. You built an underground pedestrian tunnel connecting two major transit stations in the busiest part of the city. Keeping it open is not a favor to the public. It’s the basic function of the infrastructure you constructed. The fact that SEPTA is framing the permanent reopening like it’s a gift to the city tells you everything about how this organization views its relationship with the people who depend on it.

The Summer Schedule Is Coming

The World Cup starts June 14th. Twelve days. Côte d’Ivoire vs. Ecuador at the Linc. SEPTA is adding overnight service on the Broad Street and Market-Frankford lines for match days. The FIFA Fan Festival at Lemon Hill runs for 39 days. The All-Star Game is at Citizens Bank Park in July. America250 events are running throughout the summer. Philadelphia is expecting over a million visitors.

The concourse reopening is one piece of a larger transit plan that SEPTA has been building for months. Free rides home from the sports complex after World Cup matches. Increased bus frequency on routes 32 and 48 for the Fan Festival. Overnight service at select stations. Fares staying at $2.90 while other host cities are gouging fans.

The transit plan is solid. The execution will determine whether SEPTA delivers or embarrasses the city on the world stage. The concourse being open is a good start. It only took a global sporting event and six years of doing nothing to make it happen.

Better late than never I guess. Put some ceiling tiles in.

Join The Chase