But help is here.
The Center City District, the privately funded organization created to improve cleanliness, safety and the quality of life downtown, has begun tackling the quality of life below ground along 31/2 miles of corridors connecting the subways, Market East Station and the Gallery, Suburban Station, and much of South Broad Street's Avenue of the Arts.
For the first time, at least in anyone's memory, crews are cleaning the concourses 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
"It's a huge task," said Paul R. Levy, the Center City District's president, and one as important to the city's reputation as the state of the streetscape above.
On June 1 the district began cleaning city-owned parts of the concourse under a three-year $700,000 contract.
Then, on Aug. 1, the district started providing the same services on SEPTA's parts of the concourse under a three-year $1.6 million contract.
It's one of those all-too-rare examples of differing public agencies joining to improve the public arena.
"I think the whole idea was that the Center City District has a proven track record of doing a good job at this," said Joan Schlotterbeck, commissioner of the city Department of Public Property.
And by pooling money the city and SEPTA spent separately on concourse-cleaning contracts, Schlotterbeck said, both parties get 24-hour cleaning, something neither could afford before.
Round-the-clock cleaning is important, Levy said, not just to keep ahead of the trash but also because it sends a message that the city cares about its public spaces: "It's just not enough to clean, we also have to be seen cleaning."
Schlotterbeck said she had already noticed a difference in the concourse's condition.
On Thursday morning, Sherwood Forest was not much prettier - concrete is concrete, after all - but it was trash-less and not nearly as malodorous as expected.
