Broadway (PATCO) - The SubwayNut

Broadway Station serves the Walter Rand Transportation Center and serves as a major connecting point between PATCO trains, the RiverLINE DUM light rail up to Trenton and local South Jersey buses at the Walter Rand Transportation Center. The stop was the original terminus of the Bridge Subway when it opened between Camden and Downtown Philadelphia via the Ben Franklin Bridge on June 7, 1936. Passengers connecting from here to the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines which terminated here between 1953 when the Camden Terminal on the waterfront closed (a former connecting point to ferries) and the end of all service in September 1965. On January 4, 1969 when the PACTCO High Speed Line took over service (following one of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines rail corridors) of the Bridge Line, service was extended out to Lindenwold and Broadway became a through station.

Today the busy station has two different entrances both accessed via street level headhouses. Each of these has a staircase, an elevator, and up escalator down to the single island platform. These headhouses are on each side of Broadway.

The west headhouse is open 24/7 and is a single-story building with red columns and a skylight that allows some sunlight to reach the subway platform below, it leads out to the RiverLINE platforms. When I visited in 2024 this entrance was temporarily closed (surrounded by construction fencing on the surface, and the stairs, elevator, and escalator closed off on the platorm) with only the entrance into the Walter Rand Transportation Center open to passengers, requiring all transferring River LINE passengers to cross the street.

The east headhouse is inside the originally named Camden Transportation Center that opened on May 17, 1989 and was renamed for in 1994 for Walter Rand, a former New Jersey state senator who specialized in transportation issues. It is open from 5:00am to 10:00pm on weekdays and closed on weekends. This transportation center includes bus boarding areas for local buses on both sides of Broadway. Longer distance New Jersey Transit buses, plus Greyhound, leave from 6 indoor gates that require buses to back out of their births. The platforms have displays of various historical photographs.
Photos 1: March 31, 2005; 2: November 11, 2005; 3-15: May 28, 2014;

River LINE:
Water Rand Transportation Center

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PATCO system map at Broadway-Camden

Looking down the Island platform at Broadway-Camden

Historical images of New Jersey on the track walls across from the island platform, under the skylight of the west headhouse

A blow-up of the Declaration of Independence is a decorative item on the track walls

Various red signs, including for multiple elevators on the Westbound Philadelphia side of the platform

Sign for the escalator to lobby

A sign designed to illuminate when the next train is approaching, also designed to help indicate if a train is wrong-railing due to single tracking for track work.

Escalator up to the headhouse for the River LINE

A bench under the West lobby with sunlight from the skylights visible

PATCO-I #241 at the back of a Westbound train to Philadelphia (the rear roll sign says Lindenwold Local, ready for the next trip in that direction)

Stepping off a 2 car Sunday PATCO train at Broadway, sign for a closed elevator to the lobby

The blur of a departing PATCO train (still running original, just fully rebuilt cars)

The back of a Lindenwold-bound PATCO train fading into the distance and signs for the exits to the Walter Rand Transportation Center via escalator

Looking down the platform to a countdown clock, next train in 29 minutes

A skylight and the back of the staircase up into the Walter Rand Transportation Center

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River LINE:
Water Rand Transportation Center