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The city has told the transit agency that it might reclaim part of the subway system unless it is granted "certain rights."
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
Philadelphia is trying to get more clout with SEPTA by threatening to take its subways and go home.
The city owns the Broad Street subway and half of the Market-Frankford Subway-Elevated line, both of which it leased to SEPTA in 1968 when the transportation agency was created.
The lease was written to expire on Dec. 31, 2005, or when SEPTA made the last of its required rent payments, whichever came later. In 2005, unable to agree on whether the lease was about to expire, the city and SEPTA extended the lease until the end of 2007.
Transit crisis awaits a mayor
SEPTA, parking fees and a regional outlook are crucial issues facing the primary contenders.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
One gauge of a city's health is its mobility.
A city that thrives is one where congestion doesn't become gridlock, where commuters, shoppers and beer trucks can coexist. Bustle is good, immobility is bad.
For Philadelphia's next mayor, the big transportation challenges will be to improve mass transit and deal with chronic traffic and parking problems. And the mayor will have to persuade skeptical suburbanites to help because the city's transportation network is the hub of a vast regional web.
"Where does transportation land on your priority list? It has to rate very highly," said Steven Wray, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, citing transportation's importance to the region's economy.
Center City "can't continue to boom without a transportation policy," said Vukan Vuchic, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania.
The agency vowed to appeal the ruling in a suit brought by Philadelphia
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
The transfers live.
A Common Pleas Court judge ruled yesterday that SEPTA must not eliminate the paper transfers that permit bus and subway riders to change vehicles for 60 cents.
The transit agency said it would appeal Judge Gary F. DiVito Jr.'s decision.
SEPTA had wanted passengers to pay full fares ($2 with cash or $1.30 with tokens) whenever changing from one bus to another. The city sued, saying that poor and minority passengers would be especially hard-hit by the elimination of the transfers.
In ordering the board to reinstate the transfers, DiVito called the SEPTA decision "capricious and . . . a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion."
"What the evidence demonstrates," DiVito wrote, "is that SEPTA's board (1) voted to eliminate paper transfers (2) to mollify the legislature in hopes of ensuring funding (3) without any study of the impact on those who would be most adversely affected (4) without any semblance of a 'modernization plan' ready (5) with no agreement with the school board in place when (6) they could have designed a plan with an equitable impact on all of its riders."
City concourse gets a breath of fresh air
Warren of tunnels is now scrubbed daily.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
As a sensory experience, few things can match Philadelphia's Sherwood Forest in August.
For the uninitiated, Sherwood Forest is what police and public works crews call part of the concourse below 15th Street linking Suburban Station with tunnels to City Hall, the Municipal Services Building, and the Broad Street Subway.
It's a copse of concrete columns inhabited not by Robin Hood's Merry Men but by a band of homeless people seeking shelter from the elements. And in August, when Philly's temperature and humidity soar, the pungent odor of urine-soaked concrete is unforgettable.
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.
Center City Underground
Politicians who helped it get a dedicated financial base and its riders want to see improved services.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
Memo to SEPTA: Be careful what you ask for.
The state last week gave the Philadelphia region's long-suffering transit authority what it had always needed: money. Now, riders and politicians expect something in return: better service.
After years of blaming budget crises for its dingy subway stations, antiquated fare system, crowded trains, balky buses, and indifferent customer service, SEPTA has funding for this year and a dedicated, inflation-sensitive source of money for years to come.
Gov. Rendell on Wednesday signed a landmark transportation law, establishing new funding streams for mass-transit agencies. It provides about $156 million more in operating funds and $58 million more in capital funds for SEPTA this fiscal year, and eliminates the need for threatened service cuts or additional fare increases this year.
When he signed the bill, Rendell said he hoped SEPTA, and the state's other transit agencies, would use the money not to just stave off cuts but to "enhance some services."
He has lots of company.
Bus, subway and trolley fares won't rise, but passes will cost more. Transfers will be eliminated.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
SEPTA bus, subway and rail fares will increase by an average of 11 percent on July 9, following a 13-2 vote yesterday on the agency's new operating budget.
The SEPTA board also approved a "doomsday" plan to take effect Sept. 2, with 24 percent fare hikes and 20 percent service cuts, if the state legislature does not increase annual state funding by nearly $100 million.
For subway, bus and trolley riders, cash fares will remain at $2 and tokens at $1.30 under the new fare plan. But transfers will be eliminated on Aug. 1, meaning transit riders wanting to transfer will have to buy an additional token or use a daily, weekly or monthly pass.
Weekly passes for transit riders will increase from $18.75 to $20.75, and monthly passes from $70 to $78. Regional Rail riders will see costs rise as well; the price of a Zone 3 monthly pass will increase from $126.50 to $142.50.
By DAN GERINGER
Cash-strapped SEPTA's board of directors is expected to approve two drastically different survival plans tomorrow: one a modest 11 percent fare increase for existing service, the other a "doomsday" plan - raising fares 24 percent while cutting service 20 percent, which could devastate low-income workers, fixed-income seniors, the physically disabled and students.
If the state Legislature comes up with $100 million this summer to fill the chronically underfunded transit agency's budget hole, then the "doomsday" plan will be ditched, and only the 11 percent fare hike will go through.
But if the Legislature fails, riders will be forced to foot the bill by enduring longer waits for fewer buses and trains, and by paying much more for service:
SEPTA's base cash fare would rise from $2 to $2.50, tokens from $1.30 to $1.80, a TransPass from $18.75 to $25 weekly and from $70 to $95 monthly, and one-way Regional Rail fares would rise by as much as $1 during peak times and $2.50 off-peak.
The state leaves it little leeway for a local, dedicated source of revenue.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
When Pennsylvania legislators complain that SEPTA already gets more state funding and less local funding than most transit agencies in the United States, they're right.
But whose fault is that?
In Pennsylvania, the state prevents regional transit agencies and local governments from raising money in many of the ways used by their counterparts elsewhere.
Colorado and Georgia provide none of the money to operate Denver's and Atlanta's mass transit. Instead, they authorize local sales taxes, approved by local voters. New York, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio are among the states where local property taxes are earmarked for mass transit. Los Angeles County uses a 1 percent sales tax, approved by county voters.
Thirty-three states have authorized local or regional sales taxes specifically for transportation.
Not Pennsylvania.
Study suggests shift of gears for Phila. commuters
Indications of a surprising gain for mass transit.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
For the first time in nearly half a century, Center City vehicle traffic dropped while mass-transit ridership was up, according to new data from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
After decades of increasing dependence on the automobile, the question is whether this a blip or the beginning of a transforming trend.
The numbers were gathered in 2005, when gas prices rose sharply after Hurricane Katrina. Experts say that may have been a big factor.
The number of vehicles crossing Center City's boundaries was about 1.015 million on a typical weekday in 2005, down slightly from 1.020 million in 2000, according to the commission's preliminary, unpublished data. In 1995, the number of vehicles was 990,000. Meanwhile, the number of mass transit riders entering or leaving Center City was 486,326 a weekday in 2005, up from 442,023 in 2000 and 484,151 in 1995.
The slight shift interrupted a 45-year trend. In 1960, when the commission began keeping track, 53 percent of all Center City trips were by mass transit; by 2000 the percentage was down to 26.5 percent. In 2005, the percentage rose to about 28.5 percent.
"It's sink-or-swim time," the transportation secretary told legislators. The agency faces a $130 million deficit.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
HARRISBURG - As SEPTA heads toward another financial crisis, the Rendell administration said yesterday that it would not provide the stopgap financial aid used in recent years.
The administration won't divert federal highway funding to SEPTA or other transit agencies, Transportation Secretary Allen D. Biehler told the House Appropriations Committee.
"It's sink-or-swim time," Biehler said. He said the use of federal highway funding "was putting a patch" on the problem. "Now it's time to do something about it."
Posted on Fri, Feb. 16, 2007
SEPTA says fares will rise, service could drop
Gloomy transit forecasts are a rite of spring, but the agency's chief said this one's for real. Said a board member: Don't panic.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
SEPTA must increase fares by at least 11 percent and perhaps as much as 31 percent, the agency's general manager said yesterday, and she warned of service cuts and employee layoffs unless more money comes from the state.
If the state increases its subsidy of SEPTA by $100 million, the proposed fare increase, effective July 1, will be 11 percent, general manager Faye Moore said.
Without an increase in state aid from the current $300 million, she said, 1,000 of SEPTA's 9,200 jobs would be eliminated; bus, subway, and rail service would be cut by 20 percent on weekdays; and fares would be hiked by 31 percent.