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SEPTA Plans Service Upgrades
By: Dan Hirschhorn, The Bulletin
03/27/2008
Philadelphia - SEPTA riders can expect significant service upgrades in the fall, with the transit agency planning to spend more than $10 million increasing the frequency and capacity of buses and trains.
The planned improvements come as SEPTA is enjoying its first dedicated funding stream in a decade and ridership is increasing across the transit system, the country's sixth-largest.
SEPTA officials announced the plans for increasing service at a press conference yesterday, where they unveiled the agency's proposed operational budget for fiscal year 2009. The budget still needs to go through public hearings over the next couple weeks.
"All of these service initiatives are part of SEPTA's commitment to improve service and convenience for our customers around the five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania," SEPTA's chief service planner Charles Webb said.
The proposed budget of $1.08 billion represents a spending increase of about 5.6 percent over the previous year. But SEPTA remains cautious about increasing spending, and is spending significantly less than it could. Even though a landmark transportation funding law enacted last summer is proving the transit agency significantly more in state subsidy than it has budgeted for, SEPTA is not using that money to improve service.
The fare hikes, which SEPTA says it needs because a court case stopped it from eliminating 60-cent paper transfers, saddle riders with higher fares less than three months after other fare hikes.
As part of its fare hike resolution approved this afternoon, the SEPTA board agreed to review today's fare hikes if it wins a court appeal and is allowed to scrap the paper transfers.
The new fares, effective Monday, increase the price of a token to $1.45 from the current $1.30 and the price of a transfer to 75 cents from the current 60 cents. The cash fare would remain $2 - one of the nation's highest.
Riders, still smarting from SEPTA's July fare hikes, are outraged.
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."
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.
The Price of Inaction: An Analysis of Economic Impacts Associated with SEPTA's FY 2008 Operating Budget "Plan B" Alternative
Executive Summary
As of May 2007, SEPTA has a budget shortfall of $129.6 million. Without a source of funding that can balance the transit organization's budget this summer, SEPTA would be forced to implement "Plan B," which would cut service by 20 percent and increase fares by 31 percent.
The Economy League worked with Econsult Corporation to analyze the economic impacts of Plan B on individuals, businesses, governments and the region's overall competitiveness. The analysis builds upon generally accepted data sets and research models including SEPTA's ridership figures, Delaware Valley Planning Commission congestion modeling, Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission work, and U.S. Census data.
Posted on Fri, May. 11, 2007
Friends of SEPTA hop aboard a statewide effort to aid transit
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
Mayor Street and other political, business and labor leaders rallied yesterday for more state funding for public transportation, but they acknowledged they don't have a specific plan to support.
By Mark Bowden
Once more, SEPTA is on the ropes. It faces a $130 million budget deficit in the coming fiscal year, and unless the state finds a way to plug the hole, services will be cut and fares increased.
In other words, business as usual. Mass transit gets short shrift most places in this country, but nowhere is the political deck stacked against it more deliberately than in Philadelphia. This despite the fact that the city is blessed with a transit infrastructure that would be prohibitively expensive to build today, is being used by about a third of the city's commuters (a percentage that is inching up), and is . . . you guessed it, gradually rotting away.
A benchmarking study of transportation funding and policy in Pennsylvania and similar states.
Executive Summary (PDF Format)
Full Report (PDF Format)
date: 2006 (October)
partner(s): Allegheny Conference on Community Development and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council
funder(s): 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, Associated Pennsylvania Constructors, CEO Council for Growth, and the William Penn Foundation
"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."