SEPTA will raise fares nearly 30% by January and prepare to shut down dozens of routes after the state legislature declined to approve a funding boost for the beleaguered agency.
The measures are expected to cause a 23% drop in ridership and revenues, and lead to a “death spiral” of further fare increases and service cuts that will make public transit “no longer relevant” in Philadelphia and the region, chief operating officer Scott Sauer said Tuesday.
“We’ve been pushed to a position where we are managing the decline of SEPTA, the public transportation system that serves one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country and powers the economy of our region and the Commonwealth,” Sauer said at a press conference.
“While other states are investing in new services and infrastructure, we will be mothballing our vehicles and shuttering our stations. Rail lines will become so infrequent that they will be useless to most of our customers,” he said.
The five-county transit agency has been warning for months that the end of federal pandemic relief aid had left it with a $240 million annual budget gap that would lead to higher fares and less service unless the state stepped in with a permanent funding increase.
Back in February, as part of annual budget negotiations, Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed spending more sales tax revenue on transit agencies across the state, including $161 million more per year for SEPTA.
The Republican-led state Senate declined to take up the measure, or an alternate idea of funding transit and transportation through a new tax on video gambling machines. The legislature’s last scheduled session day for the year is Wednesday, making it unlikely it will come up with a last-minute rescue plan.
“This is the result of inaction. This is the result of not having a long-term funding solution,” Sauer said. “All of our stakeholders and all of our legislative allies have tried tremendously to get a solution across the finish line. It didn’t happen.”
The move comes as SEPTA also faces a possible strike by its transit workers union, whose contract expired last week. The agency wants to reach an agreement on a “fair contract,” Sauer said, but can’t do so without the promise of more state funding.
Some Regional Rail lines will be axed
SEPTA was already planning a relatively modest fare hike, its first in seven years, which will raise the prices of rides by an average of 7.5% as of Dec. 1. The increase announced Tuesday will raise fares an additional 21.5% on Jan. 1.
The combined effect will be to increase the fare for rides within Philadelphia to $2.90, up from $2.50 for the current base fare and from $2 when paying with SEPTA Key or an app. A weekly TransPass will go from $25.50 to $31, and a monthly from $96 to $116.
On the Regional Rail, single-ride weekday fares will climb from $4 to $5 for a Zone 1 trip, $5.50 to $6.50 for Zone 2, $6.50 to $7.75 for Zone 3, and $7.50 to $8.75 for Zone 4. Trailpass increases include a new $69.75 price for the weekly Anywhere pass, and $255 for monthly Anywhere passes, up from $204 now.
SEPTA posted a full list of proposed increases ahead of planned public hearings on the changes. Those will take place Dec. 13 at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Taking into account the expected drop in ridership, the higher fares will result in a $23 million revenue increase for SEPTA in the 2025 fiscal year and $45 million the next year, officials said. They will get the agency through this year but will not close the structural budget gap.
Sauer, who will become SEPTA’s interim general manager later this month, when the agency’s current leader Leslie Richards steps down, said a 20% cut in services is still being finalized and will be announced early in 2025.
“Dozens of routes will be eliminated, and those that remain would operate with significantly less frequency,” he said. “I’m not just talking about bus routes or even just rail routes. It’s everywhere. It’s the whole system, every mode, every county we serve, will see cuts.”
“We will continue some version of every mode, but … depending on the severity of the cut, some customers just won’t be able to use it. And the service that’s left behind could be so crowded that there wouldn’t be room for everyone. So there’s that effect as well, that whatever we put out there would be in such high demand that we would leave people behind,” he said.
Democratic state Rep. Ben Waxman, who represents parts of Philadelphia, has said he expects that at least two Regional Rail lines will be completely shut down and several others will be shortened and run fewer trains. Community activists in Northwest Philly have said they fear the Chestnut Hill West line could be the first to go because it has historically had low ridership.
Asked whether the agency will also lay off any staff at its headquarters on Market Street in Center City, Sauer said “nothing is off the table at this point,” including layoffs and salary reductions.
No funding “flex” to the rescue
Democratic legislators and transit advocates have been expressing increasing alarm for the last few months over the diminishing prospects of a state budget fix for SEPTA.
On Tuesday, Councilmember Jamie Gauthier blamed “Republicans in Harrisburg” for the crisis and called on them to “prevent this irreversible death spiral.”
“My constituents in West and Southwest Philadelphia rely on SEPTA to get to work, school, healthcare, and other essentials. Reliable public transportation is absolutely essential to the economic success of both my constituents and the Commonwealth. I shudder to think about the catastrophic damage that will be done if SEPTA’s proposed fare increases and service cuts go into effect,” she said.
She called for the Senate to pass House Bill 2625, which has passed in the Democratic-led House. It would increase the percentage of Sales and Use Tax collections transferred to the state’s Public Transportation Trust Fund from 4.4% to 6.15%, along the lines of Shapiro’s proposal.
The House has passed the funding plan three times this year, Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said.
“The governor believes it’s past time for the Senate to send this funding to his desk to support mass transit all across our Commonwealth, drive economic growth, and ensure Pennsylvanians can get to their destinations safely and efficiently,” he said.
As a stopgap measure, the Transit Forward Philadelphia advocacy coalition says Shapiro should use his executive authority to shift some federal highway funding to transit, as Gov. Ed Rendell did in 2005 during a previous budget impasse, and threatened to do in 2010.
The group says the money could go into SEPTA’s capital projects budget and free up some dollars for operations, allowing the agency to put off fare hikes and service cuts.
Bonder declined to comment on whether Shapiro is considering “flexing” federal funding, and Sauer said he had not heard about any such plans.
“I’m aware that something like that happened years ago, but I’m not aware of anything with any specificity coming from Harrisburg at this point,” he said.
He said the budget crisis will not immediately affect capital projects that are already funded, such as a $724 million contract to replace cars on the Market-Frankford El.
“Heartbreaking” decline for storied transit service
SEPTA had previously said fare hikes and service cuts would not be announced until 2025, if Shapiro and the legislature didn’t agree on a budget boost. The announcement ended up coming on the same day that the Senate held its first meeting since the election, but Sauer said it was not timed to pressure the legislature to act.
“I’m not here to deliver a message. I’m here to convey to our customers and our advocates, anyone who has a need to know, that this is the result. This is the fiscal cliff that we’ve been talking about for several years now. This is the end. Without a permanent funding solution, this is what’s going to happen at the start of next year,” he said.
Sauer noted that he started at SEPTA as a train operator 34 years ago, and his father worked for the agency as well.
“This is the family business. This is what my family does. This is what many of SEPTA’s families do,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here in front of you today without SEPTA, and there are so many people just like me, so it’s completely heartbreaking to see us in a state of decline. That doesn’t have to happen.”
He argued that SEPTA’s staff have “done our part” to meet various challenges in recent years, including maintaining service during the pandemic, increasing cleaning and safety efforts to combat a surge of crime and disorder on the system, and coping with inflation that increased costs for fuel, power and supplies.
Serious crime is down, customer service scores and ridership are up compared to during the pandemic, and the agency has been advancing long-term initiatives like the Bus Revolution network redesign — although that will now have to be scaled back, he said. It has cut costs, and added revenues through reinstating parking fees at Regional Rail station lots.
“We want more reliable service for our customers. We want to grow. We want to do the opposite of what we’re proposing here today,” Sauer said.
“Allowing SEPTA to go over the fiscal cliff and forcing massive fare increases and service cuts will result in a net loss to our society,” he said. “Less transit, a less economically productive, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable region does not help anyone.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
