(The following appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on March 26, 2011.)
PHILADELPHIA — Buying new vehicles, maintaining old ones, and paying for ones now being built will take up much of the $311.5 million that SEPTA plans to spend in the next fiscal year on capital projects.
SEPTA presented its capital budget Friday for the spending year that begins July 1. The blueprint for spending on such things as buses, railcars, stations, and signal systems is about $8 million, or 2.6 percent, higher than the current capital budget of $303.7 million.
The funding is about 25 percent lower than two years ago because state transit funding was cut last year when federal transportation officials rejected the state’s bid to put tolls on Interstate 80. That has pushed many of SEPTA’s big-ticket plans to the back burner, with 20 projects deferred.
The full story is on the Philadelphia Inquirer website.