(The following article by Jere Downs appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on April 2.)
PHILADEPHIA — Facing a projected $55 million deficit created in part by state budget-cutting, SEPTA announced a plan yesterday to raise fares and severely reduce service, including discontinuing four Regional Rail lines and shutting down or merging dozens of bus routes.
An estimated 50,000 passengers – 12 percent of the transit agency’s 430,000 daily riders – would be affected by the service cutbacks, set for October.
“This is big; this is bad,” SEPTA general manager Faye Moore said before a news conference. “It’s real until he [Gov. Rendell] makes it unreal.”
In Rendell’s budget for fiscal 2004, SEPTA took a 6 percent hit, as did most state-supported agencies. But the $15 million loss – on top of an extra $40 million that SEPTA needs, mainly to fund worker payroll and health-care costs next year – must be made up by June 30, when the authority is required by law to balance its $888 million budget.
“We have 75 days to figure it out,” Moore said. “This is not a ploy to say, ‘Shame on you, Harrisburg.’ Sooner or later you have to put your feet in the sand and assume a position.”
The Rendell administration appeared yesterday to take the same unwavering stance.
“The cupboards are bare,” said Kate Philips, a spokeswoman for the governor. “These are necessary cuts that need to be endured in economic crisis.”
SEPTA’s plan would eliminate 17 percent of the Regional Rail system, including the R2 Warminster line, the R6 Cynwyd, the R8 Chestnut Hill West, and the R1 Airport – amounting to an average of 18,532 daily trips. In addition, nine little-used train stations would be closed. Total savings: $7.7 million.
Cutting at the heart of the tony Chestnut Hill line will rattle Rendell supporters, while slashing the airport line will shake up the business community, predicted Larry Ceisler, a Democratic political consultant.
“This is how bureaucracies survive,” he said of SEPTA. “You paint the worst-case scenario that can affect people who Ed Rendell sees at a restaurant or a baseball game.”
Reaction was indeed swift.
“That would be devastating,” Suzanne Biemiller, director of the Chestnut Hill Business Association, said of the proposed R8 closure. “Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy and Germantown are thriving commuter neighborhoods, and we rely on those transit lines.”
As for the R1 Airport line, a shutdown would be a blow to both passengers and employees, said Mark Pesce, public relations manager for Philadelphia International Airport. The line, he said, “has been a part of the overall growth of the airport.”
SEPTA will scrounge an additional $17.3 million by reducing service on city and suburban bus routes. For example, the Route 123 bus, which carries many low-wage workers from the city to jobs in King of Prussia, would vanish. The heavily used C bus, which travels the length of Broad Street and boasts 20,000 trips daily, would virtually disappear, forcing riders to use the subway underneath.
The plan also calls for the closing of the Broad-Ridge Subway Spur.
At the same time, riders would be paying more at the fare box and at commuter parking lots.
In public hearings to begin May 5, SEPTA will propose a 10-cent increase in the price of tokens and transfers, with tokens going from $1.30 to $1.40 and transfers from 60 to 70 cents. The current $2 cash fare – among the highest in the nation – will remain the same, but monthly and weekly passes for bus and rail travel will go up 4 to 8 percent.
The fare hikes will raise $15 million. An additional $15 million will come from an internal spending freeze, along with the elimination of about 300 positions.
Rendell’s budget cuts, coming after years of flat funding from Harrisburg, have sparked a statewide transit crisis. In Pittsburgh, Port Authority officials have proposed canceling weekend and evening service and raising fares by 25 cents.
One Republican leader is informally floating the idea of an increase in the gas tax to fund road repairs and a transit tax bill to rescue SEPTA and other transit agencies.
But those levies “can’t get anywhere without Rendell being out front,” said Rick Geist, Republican chairman of the House Transportation Committee. “We’re all looking for Ed Rendell to be the point of the spear.”
The governor is focused on education and property taxes, not a transit subsidy, said Rich Kirkpatrick, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
SEPTA has lobbied for such help, without result, for years. In the meantime, the agency’s workforce has declined from 12,000 to 9,000. After years of belt-tightening, further savings are hard to come by, said Richard Burnfield, SEPTA’s capital budget director.
“We’ve picked all the low-hanging fruit,” he said. “Now we have to cut deeper.”
Some transit advocates contend that SEPTA should have gotten more creative years ago, and that this crisis could serve to push the agency in a positive direction.
“You have that wonderful people mover, the Broad Street subway,” said Don Nigro, president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, the region’s largest organization for riders. “For years, we have recommended the C bus be eliminated.”
Others said they did not believe that most of the severe cuts would even materialize.
“I don’t think they will really happen,” said Dick Voith, director of the Greater Philadelphia Transportation Initiative, a nonprofit advocacy group, and a SEPTA board member from 1992 through 2000. “But [SEPTA] will get away with the fare increase.”
Also in the doubters’ camp was City Councilman Michael Nutter. However, he echoed the sentiments of other political observers who cautioned that throwing commuters and the business community into a panic was less productive than earnest lobbying in Harrisburg.
“The numbers are important, but the politics are equally important,” Nutter said. “SEPTA needs to start spending some time up in Harrisburg and in a more quiet fashion talking about what the potential implications are.”