(The following story by Paul Nussbaum appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on April 13.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA got lots of advice yesterday about fare hikes and service cuts, but nobody showed up with $129 million.
That’s the amount of additional funding SEPTA says it needs before July 1 to avoid deep service cuts and steep fare increases. The transit agency hopes that state government will provide the money, and witness after witness at yesterday’s public budget hearing expressed the same hope.
But no one had a good answer for the vaguely plaintive question of SEPTA’s chief of revenue, John McGee Jr.: What if it doesn’t?
“What action do you propose?” McGee asked, after a lengthy grilling by lawyer (and City Council candidate) Irv Ackelsberg.
Ackelsberg, representing the labor, environmental and advocacy groups that make up the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition, was briefly stumped. He said, “I’m not a member of the [SEPTA] board. I don’t have a vote.” Then he echoed what many others also said: Let’s all join together and convince the legislature.
“This community can stand together and get the funding,” he said. “When we’re united, we can get anything done.”
That was essentially the message from representatives of the city, the Chamber of Commerce, passengers’ groups, and others: Get dedicated funding from the state.
Paul R. Levy, president of the Center City District, said, “I feel like I’m stuck in the movie Groundhog Day. . . . I come back again and again to this same hearing. Over and over, we all say the same thing: ‘Don’t cut service, increase it! Don’t raise fares beyond inflationary costs . . . ‘
“But the lesson is clear: We are going to have to keep coming back again and again, perfecting our message until we get it right, or – better – until our elected representatives in Harrisburg finally hear it and they get it right. . . . Let’s stick together and carry this message together to Harrisburg.”
SEPTA’s new $1 billion budget proposal creates four possible scenarios. Plan A and Plan B would both change fares, but not the way they are administered. The other two proposals – dubbed “simplification” variations – would change fares and also merge rail zones, eliminate paper transfers, and otherwise alter the fare structure.
Plan A (the small-fare-hike option) anticipates a $100 million increase in state financial aid, while Plan B (the big-fare-hike option) anticipates no increase.
Plan A calls for an overall fare increase of 11 percent, but the base cash fare would remain at $2, with the cost of a token rising to $1.45 from the current $1.30. There would be few service cuts.
Plan B calls for fares to increase by an average of 31 percent, routes to be cut by 20 percent, and 300 to 400 employees to be laid off. SEPTA estimates that it would lose 20 percent of its riders, about 40 million passengers a year.
The base cash fare for buses and subways would increase to $2.50 from the current $2 under Plan B, and tokens to $1.80 from the current $1.30. Regional rail prices would also rise, with the peak one-way fare for a Zone 3 trip increasing to $5.50 from the current $4.50.
The city is “unalterably opposed to the Plan B approach,” said Mayor Street’s surrogate, Planning Commission Executive Director Janice Woodcock. She also said Plan A sought too big an increase; a fare hike of 8 percent would be enough to raise the desired $29 million, she said.
The city urged that SEPTA come up with an adjustable scale of fare increases, varying from 0 to 39 percent, to meet different state funding possibilities.
In addition, instead of increasing fares beyond 16.8 percent (the inflation increase since fares were last raised in 2001), “SEPTA could simply choose to operate the system until the money runs out,” Woodcock said.
Lance Haver, director of consumer affairs for the city, challenged the hearing officers to urge SEPTA to squash Plan B to avoid giving the legislature a way out.
“Will you have the courage to stand for what is right, what is just and what is needed, or will you be the excuse spineless legislators use to avoid voting to support public transit?”
Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce representative Denise Early praised SEPTA for cutting costs and trying to do more with less. She said the chamber would continue to urge the legislature to come up with a dedicated funding source, and that without that, SEPTA had no choice but to raise fares and cut service. “I would suggest, however, that the service cuts should affect all aspects of the system and all riders equally,” Early said.
SEPTA’s “simplified” plans came in for a beating at yesterday’s hearing, especially the proposals to do away with paper transfers and to merge rail zones.
The Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers criticized SEPTA for provoking “a confrontation with its passengers by advancing a radical fare restructuring plan at a time when the focus ought to be on working together to secure adequate funding for transit systems throughout Pennsylvania,” said DVARP representative Matthew Mitchell.
“The proposal is wrong, the timing is wrong, and the process by which SEPTA is trying to ram these changes through is wrong.”
Yesterday’s hearing, which continued into last evening, was the third of five scheduled to take public testimony in the five-county region. The two hearing officers conducting the meetings will give their nonbinding recommendations to the SEPTA board, which is scheduled to vote on the operating budget on May 24.
Further hearings are scheduled for today in West Chester and on Monday in Doylestown.