(The following article by Jere Downs was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website on June 20. Brother Tom Dorricott is the Legislative Representative of BLE Division 71 in Philadelphia.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA might not be able to avoid fare increases and severe reductions in rail and bus service, but yesterday the transit agency’s board appeared ready to do the next best thing: Delay the pain.
After more than two months of public outcry and an independent hearing examiner’s report that was highly critical of the proposed cuts, SEPTA managers presented a board committee with a pared-down spending plan for fiscal 2004. Members also were given the option of waiting until the end of September to close a $41 million deficit, in the hope that Gov. Rendell and Pennsylvania lawmakers will produce the necessary funds by the conclusion of the legislative session this summer.
Late September is the new “absolute drop-dead time frame,” Faye Moore, SEPTA’s general manager, said yesterday.
By law, SEPTA’s deadline for balancing its budget is June 30. But carrying a shortfall past that date – with the stipulation that the board deal with it by the fall – is reasonable, said Nick Staffieri, SEPTA’s chief legal counsel.
So the strategy is “wait and see,” said James Schwartzman, board vice chairman. “Unless you are in a crisis situation, the legislature doesn’t listen to you. Now we are in a crisis.”
The SEPTA board is expected to vote Thursday on the revised budget of $875 million, $13 million less than the one originally proposed in April, with a deficit $14 million smaller.
The plan would put on hold virtually all of the $25 million in service cuts, including elimination of the R2 Warminster, R1 Airport, R6 Cynwyd, and R8 Chestnut Hill West lines; the Broad-Ridge Subway Spur; and the C bus.
Gov. Rendell has not promised to restore to SEPTA the $11 million in transit funding trimmed from his budget. Republican legislators have not been encouraging.
“The SEPTA cuts will be considered as part of the [state budget] negotiations,” Rendell spokeswoman Kate Philips said yesterday. The likelihood of giving SEPTA more than the $11 million is “very low.”
While the board awaits Harrisburg’s decision, riders can expect to hear talk this summer of considerably higher fares. As part of its original budget-cutting proposal, SEPTA had outlined a 10-cent increase in the cost of tokens, from $1.30 to $1.40, and 4 percent to 7 percent increases in transit passes. That would raise $15 million – in itself, not enough to preclude drastic service cuts.
As insurance against the possibility that the state will offer no help, SEPTA may hold public hearings this summer to raise its $2 fares – conceivably to as high as $2.25 – to cover the entire deficit. “Can we go all the way up?” Board Chairman Pasquale “Pat” Deon asked at the meeting yesterday. “I don’t know how realistic that is.”
Doubling rail parking fees, yanking crowded express trains from service on the R5 Thorndale and R6 Norristown lines, reducing rail service at midday and on weekends, converting five electric trolley routes to bus lines – all were among the economies presented yesterday in the reworked spending plan.
The plan to eliminate crowded rail runs was criticized as short-sighted by the two dozen people in the audience yesterday at SEPTA headquarters at 12th and Market Streets. “This is lazy to cut these trains,” said Tom Dorricott, spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. “Don’t take your best trains away.”
New service cuts – including the proposal to run trains every 90 minutes instead of hourly on the R8 Chestnut Hill West line – violate public trust and require a new round of public hearings, said Janet Potter, an activist representing the Northwest Campaign for Public Transportation, a coalition of Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, Germantown and East Falls residents.
“It is not fair to do cuts not addressed in public hearings,” Potter said. “This is terrible public process. We will not tolerate it.”
Without overhaul of statewide transit funding, SEPTA’s current crisis will be revisited, board members predicted.
“[Even] if the legislature sees the light and appropriates all the money we are asking for, we will be back here next year,” Schwartzman said.