(The following article by Dan Geringer was posted on the Philadelphia Daily News website on February 16.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA plans to raise fares by 31 percent this summer and slash service by 20 percent unless Gov. Rendell and the Legislature plug a $100 million budget hole, the chronically cash-strapped transit agency announced yesterday.
SEPTA’s “Budget Plan B,” which is strikingly similar to its 2004 “Doomsday” scenario, calls for hiking the $2 base fare to $2.50 and implementing massive weekday-service cuts, which are expected to result in a loss of 40 million passengers per year.
The more rider-friendly “Budget Plan A,” which depends on the state funding a $100 million gap in SEPTA’s $1.022 billion budget, calls for an 11 percent fare hike but no increase in the base fare and no service cuts.
The transit agency has not raised fares since 2001, while the Consumer Price Index has jumped 16 percent, so the “Plan A” fare boost is a moderate response to inflation, said SEPTA General Manager Faye Moore.
Moore and SEPTA’s senior budget director, Richard Burnfield, said that Plan A and Plan B will be publicly released on March 9 in full detail and that public hearings on both plans will be held from April 10-16 in the five counties that SEPTA serves.
SEPTA’s Board of Directors will approve one of the plans on May 24 for implementation in July, when the transit agency’s 2007-2008 fiscal year begins.
SEPTA is legally required to operate on a balanced budget. It cannot approve a budget with a $100 million hole.
Rendell, who bailed out the state’s mass-transit systems, including SEPTA, in 2005 by “flexing” (borrowing) $412 million in federal highway funds, wants to save mass transit this time by levying a 6.17 percent gross-profits tax on oil companies.
The problem is: If approved by the Legislature, that tax would start in March 2008 – but SEPTA needs the $100 million guaranteed by this July to avoid implementing its doomsday “Budget Plan B.”
Moore said she wasn’t sure if Rendell could work his 2005 “magic” and find $100 million for SEPTA by July.
“We have no plans for flexing any money,” Rendell’s press secretary, Kate Philips, said last night, “and we don’t know if we even have the ability to do that.”
“The governor is pushing very hard for the oil company gross- profits tax, which will finally give mass transit the dedicated funding it needs.”
Lance Haver, Mayor Street’s consumer advocate, questioned whether Rendell will push for dedicated mass-transit funding with the same energy he is now devoting to health-care reform.
“The governor’s organizing a statewide campaign to make sure his health-care-for-all plan gets passed, which is a great thing for him to do,” Haver said last night. “But so far, I do not see him putting the same energy into making sure transit funding gets passed.
“If all he’s going to do is give a speech here and there, that would indicate his priorities.”
“There will be a similar effort to fund mass transit as there is to fund health care,” Philips said. “The governor made it clear in his inaugural address that this is a top priority of his second term.”