(The Philadelphia Daily News published the following story by Ramona Smith on May 20.)
PHILADELPHIA — With a storm of protest raging against SEPTA’s service cutbacks, City Council members are vowing to make life rough for the transit agency if it doesn’t back off on plans to cut key city routes.
“There will be repercussions for years to come,” Councilman Michael Nutter warned yesterday at a Center City SEPTA hearing on the plan. “We will not forget. We will be unforgiving.”
Nutter said SEPTA would feel the wrath, not only of riders – who turned out by the hundreds yesterday to oppose route cutbacks affecting the elderly, the disabled and riders generally – but also of politicians in power.
“I don’t make threats,” Nutter added. “I make promises.”
Said Councilman Angel Ortiz: “You had better go back and rethink this plan. We will not allow it to go in place, and we are the funding source of SEPTA.”
Council members recently moved to shift the city’s $56 million SEPTA subsidy into next year’s Commerce Department budget, creating some potential leverage against SEPTA’s plans.
About 850 riders packed the hearing room at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, with many urging SEPTA to save the Route C bus on Broad Street, the R1 Airport rail line, the R6 Cynwyd or the R8 Chestnut Hill.
“The C Bus is like the lifeline of the city,” said Denice Brown of the National Federation of the Blind. The North Philadelphia woman lives near the bus route, which she called “the key to my independence.”
“It is inconceivable…to now have to use the subway,” she added. “The subway is not the safest place to be.” SEPTA has said riders could switch from the C bus to the Broad Street subway.
Said Jeanne Boone of the Action Alliance of Senior Citizens: “Most of us, myself included – I’m a 78-year-old widow with arthritis – cannot get down into the subway, or get up out of the subway.”
Besides, said Mary Louse Smith, another elderly C bus rider, there are rats and “perpetrators” down there.
From all over the city, riders opposed the cuts SEPTA is planning to bridge a $55 million budget gap, caused partly by a loss of $15 million in state subsidies and related county funds. The SEPTA board will meet June 26 on the $888 million budget, which would make up $25 million through service cuts, $15 million with fare increases and $15 million with cost-cutting in the fiscal year beginning July 1.
Some also spoke against fare hikes, which would boost the cost of tokens by a dime to $1.40 while leaving the base cash fare at $2.
Even the Daily News’s own Phantom Rider came back from retirement to plead for the threatened routes.
Frank Dougherty, who rides the Airport line and the R8 Chestnut Hill line out of Germantown, also spoke up for the C bus.
“SEPTA has this captive ridership,” he said, “where people cannot use another means of transportation.”
“I don’t look at them as service reduction. I look at them as service destruction,” Phantom said.
Meanwhile, Republican mayoral candidate Sam Katz used a defense of transit as an opportunity to take a swipe at his November opponent, Mayor Street.
“I would argue that this is also a failure of leadership in our city,” said Katz. “The leadership for public transit needs to come from the office of the mayor. As mayor, I will provide that leadership.”
Street’s campaign spokesman, Mark Nevins, responded: “Mayor Street has a 20-year history of fighting for public transportation. Sam Katz’s history is about three hours old. As chairman of Greater Philadelphia First, he offered nothing in the way of ideas for SEPTA until now.”
Ortiz, who marched to the microphone with Nutter and Councilwoman Marian Tasco, said the SEPTA plan had achieved one thing: “You have managed to anger a whole city.”
Like some other speakers, Ortiz suggested that “we should fire the whole [SEPTA] board.” He blasted the board for not showing up for the hearing, and instead sending “messenger boys” to serve as a hearing panel.
Nutter assailed the proposal as a “Washington Monument strategy” targeting budget items sure to arouse public indignation, as federal budget-cutters have sometimes done with the Washington Monument.