(The following story by Paul Nussbaum appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on June 7.)
PHILADELPHIA — It looks like a high-stakes card game. Without the cards.
Intent men and women sit around a table in a windowless room, riffling through dollars, making small talk, but never taking their eyes off the money.
They unfold, turn and stack one-dollar bills, 1,200 times an hour, 8,000 times a day. Many of them handle more money in a day than they will make in six months.
For SEPTA, the buck stops here.
After journeying from your pocket through the bus’ fare box or the subway cashier’s tray, after being picked up by a nighttime “money train,” after a ride in an armored car, this is where all those pesky, cumbersome, precious dollar bills end up. On average, 130,000 make this trip each day from the city’s buses, subways and trolleys.
Of course, there are coins and tokens, too – 600,000 of them. And the occasional screw and bit of bling. Coins and tokens are mechanically sorted, counted and bagged, with humans on hand to feed the machines and move the bags.
This nondescript fortress in a secret location in Philadelphia is SEPTA’s countinghouse. Here, it processes nearly $2.5 million a week in a largely unseen, closely guarded operation. (Collection of Regional Rail money is contracted out to two firms, Blue Ribbon and Edens.)
To work here, “you’ve got to like money, but not too much,” says Joseph Casey, chief financial officer for SEPTA.
To guard against theft, 80 cameras watch the workers’ every move, computers tabulate the take, and supervisors cross-check all the counts. Money remains in locked metal boxes from the time it leaves the customers’ hands until it is poured into the counting machines and onto the counting tables. Fare boxes from buses are collected at the 12 bus depots, and the subway fare boxes are gathered by crews on a special “money train” each night.
The protections apparently work: Of the $80 million counted this fiscal year, tabulations have been off by less than $1,000, says Stephen Boon, manager of revenue services.
On the city’s buses, subways and trolleys, about 10 percent of riders use cash (including an average of 30,000 pennies a day). About 38 percent use tokens and school tokens, and 42 percent use passes. The remaining 10 percent are senior citizens, and the state pays their fares.
Much as SEPTA likes money, it hates cash. Especially dollar bills.
Dollar bills are a headache to collect, count and protect, says Alfred Outlaw, director of revenue operations for SEPTA. As long ago as 1997, Outlaw testified before Congress to urge that dollar bills be abolished in favor of dollar coins.
It costs SEPTA $12.69 to process $1,000 in bills, but only $2 to process $1,000 in coins, Boon says.
SEPTA pays its bill sorters $7.90 an hour. The 24 sorters are part-timers, typically working 25 to 32 hours a week, with no benefits. Some are young and trying to get full-time employment at SEPTA. Others are senior citizens, supplementing their income. One is a 93-year-old woman.
They unfold and stack the bills and place them in plastic boxes to be run through counting machines. They have to maintain a 1,200-bill-per-hour pace. If they step it up to 1,400, they get an extra 25 cents an hour.
Isn’t it boring, in the end, to just sort bills?
“Absolutely,” Boon says. “You’ve got to do the same thing over and over, 8,000 to 9,000 times a day.”
Turnover is relatively high; SEPTA loses five or six bill counters a year.
The 26 hourly employees who handle tokens and coins are full-time union workers, starting at $13 an hour and working up to $23 an hour.
Tucked between the coin sorters and the bill counters is a table with cubbyholes to collect the detritus of a city’s pockets. This is the graveyard of mangled quarters, foreign coins and arcade tokens. This is where you’ll find coins from Chuck E. Cheese and China, Jamaica and Japan, Mexico and Haiti. In one cubby is a AAA battery, a money clip, a miniature screwdriver. Every once in a while, a small bag of drugs ends up here, the apparent casualty of an over-hasty pocket dump.
And there is still the occasional token from the Philadelphia Transportation Co., which SEPTA acquired in 1968. (Such tokens remain legal fares.)
At the end of the day, the dollar bills are wrapped and stacked in a metal chest that looks like a big footlocker. It holds about $180,000. The coins are bagged in clear plastic, the tokens in cloth bags that are sewn shut, and loaded on carts.
Then an armored car drives in through a steel roll-up gate, and yesterday’s receipts are on their way to the bank before closing. Just in time to start the cycle all over again.