11th Street: the closed station on the Market–Frankford Line
No train stops here, and it is the reason three sources disagree about how many stations the L has
Start with the number that did not add up
Building this site meant settling how many stations each line has, and the rule is two independent sources that agree before the list is frozen. For the B and the M three sources agreed at once — 24 stations and 22 — and for the L they did not. The schedule data gave 27; the operator’s own station mapping layer and the Wikipedia article both gave 28.
A one-station discrepancy is normally a mistake somewhere, and the obvious move is to pick the source you trust. This one was not a mistake. The difference has a name, a location and two platforms, and the reason it only shows up in one of the three sources is that the other two are counting stations and the schedule is counting service.
The three counts, side by side
Same line, three sources, two different numbers — and nobody is wrong.
| Source | Stations it gives for the L |
|---|---|
| The published schedule data stations with service in the timetable | 27 |
| The operator’s own station mapping layer an inventory of stations, not of service | 28 |
| The English Wikipedia article on the line used only as a cross-check | 28 |
Read that way it stops being a contradiction. An inventory of stations includes a station that exists and is shut. A timetable does not, because nothing calls there. Both numbers are correct answers to different questions — and the question this site answers is “where can I get on a train”, so it publishes 27 and never 28.
What the data actually says about it
Four files of the schedule data, read one at a time — and together they leave no room for doubt.
| In the data | What it says |
|---|---|
| The route’s list of stops | Still names this stop, in both directions. As far as the route description is concerned it is part of the line. |
| The stop list | Has no row for it. The station does not exist as a stop any more, so nothing can reference it as a place to board. |
| The trips | Zero of them call here. Not reduced service, not weekends only — none at all, on any of the four kinds of day. |
| The platforms | 2 stop identifiers, one per direction, left behind in the route data. |
| The name | Not in the schedule data at all. The stop rows that carried the name are gone with the rest of it. “11th Street” comes from the other two sources — the operator’s mapping layer and the Wikipedia article — and that is worth saying out loud on a page named after it. |
Where it is, and what to do instead
Between two working stations about 679 m apart. Use either one.
It sits between 13th Street and 8th-Market on the L, in the middle of the city, and trains run straight through: the schedule gives 1 min 27 s for that hop, and the two stations are about 679 m apart on the surface — a walk of a few minutes if you come up at the wrong one. It is also the long way round for a city-centre hop: the next one along, from 15th St/City Hall to 13th Street, takes only 42 s. A gap with a station in the middle of it looks exactly like that in a timetable.
So there is nothing to plan around. Whatever you were heading for, use 13th Street or 8th-Market; between them they cover the same few blocks, and both are ordinary working stations with their own pages, times and access information.
What this page does not claim
A short list, because the source is a timetable and a timetable does not know about history.
Not when it closed, and not why. Neither is in the data this site reads: a schedule feed records what runs, not history. There are published accounts of both elsewhere, and repeating them here without a source we check would be exactly the sort of plausible filler the rest of this site avoids.
Not whether it will reopen, and not what the platforms are used for now. The data has no field for planned work, closures or opening dates — that is one of the known gaps listed on the schedule page.
What this page does claim is narrow and checkable: no train stops here, the route data still names it, the stop list does not, and that combination is why the L has 27 stations on this site and 28 in an inventory.
Frequently asked questions
No. It is closed, and no train in the published schedule stops there — none, on any kind of day. If you are looking for a station on the L in that part of the city, use 13th Street or 8th-Market.
Because this site counts stations with service. The inventory sources count stations that exist, and one of them is shut. Both numbers are right; they answer different questions.
No. Zero trips call there across all four kinds of day — weekday, Saturday, Sunday and the holiday timetable. Trains pass through the gap in 1 min 27 s.
Because the file that lists a route’s stops has not been cleaned up, while the file that defines the stops themselves has. The two platform identifiers are still named in both directions; nothing can board there because the stop no longer exists as a place.
From the two inventory sources: the operator’s own station mapping layer and the English Wikipedia article on the line. The schedule data knows the identifiers, not the name — which is a detail worth being honest about on a page titled after it.
Nothing in the data says, and this site does not speculate. The source has no field for planned work or opening dates at all.