(The following story by Paul Nussbaum appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on September 20.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA will seek to raise the price of bus and subway tokens and paper transfers on Oct. 1, less than three months after adopting other fare hikes and getting a hard-won $150 million increase in its annual subsidy from the state.
SEPTA officials said yesterday the latest increases were necessary because last month a court rejected the transit agency’s plan to scrap its 60-cent transfers.
The latest proposal would increase the price of a token to $1.45 from the current $1.30 and the price of a transfer to 75 cents from the current 60 cents. The cash fare would remain $2 – one of the nation’s highest.
Riders, still smarting from SEPTA’s July fare hikes, were outraged. “That’s crazy,” said Tyrone Polk, waiting for a bus on Market Street. “Folks with five and six kids can’t afford that. I use tokens and transfers all the time – I can’t afford a transpass.”
“It will definitely cause a problem for me,” said Malik Diggs, 31. “I use tokens and transfers frequently. SEPTA shouldn’t have to ask for more money.” Diggs said many passengers pay more than the required fare already because SEPTA operators don’t make change.
SEPTA had threatened new fare hikes or service cuts in July after the state legislature passed a major transportation funding law that included about $150 million more per year for SEPTA in state operating subsidies.
SEPTA staffers said yesterday they would ask the agency’s board to approve the latest increases at its meeting next Thursday, citing $9 million less in revenue than anticipated for the year. If the board approves, the increases would take effect “on or about Oct. 1,” the agency said yesterday.
Philadelphia’s two representatives on the board could veto the increases, but the city’s veto could be overridden by the other 13 members at the board’s October meeting. That’s what happened with the previous fare increase.
City response
Instead of continuing the legal battle over transfers, the city will offer SEPTA a deal to make the new fare increases permanent, City Solicitor Romulo Diaz Jr. said. The city will also ask SEPTA to prepare a timetable for “real progress on fare modernization” within 60 days, Diaz said.
“Riders need some certainty. . . . It’s time to put a period on the 2007 rate case,” Diaz said. He said the Street administration was not opposed to fare increases that are “equitable across the board.”
SEPTA will not hold public hearings on the latest proposed fare hikes, general manager Faye Moore said. She said such hearings were unnecessary because hearings held last spring on various possible fare hikes had included scenarios with $1.45 tokens and 75-cent transfers.
“This is not the way we wanted to go,” Moore said. “But we have to fill the gap with something.”
She said SEPTA also wanted to “make sure all of our riders are feeling some of the pain” of fare hikes. The earlier increases, she said, had hit Regional Rail riders and purchasers of weekly and monthly passes, but not the users of tokens and transfers.
Revenue gap
As part of its earlier fare-increase plan, SEPTA wanted to eliminate paper transfers. But the city sued to keep transfers, and on Aug. 15, Common Pleas Court Judge Gary F. DiVito Jr. ruled against SEPTA.
SEPTA has appealed to Commonwealth Court, which is to expected to hear the case on Oct. 29. If the appeals court rules in SEPTA’s favor and lets it eliminate transfers, SEPTA will restore $1.30 tokens, agency officials said yesterday.
SEPTA said its earlier plan, designed to raise revenue by 11 percent, was raising only about 8 percent more revenue because of the court decision. Riders were using transfers and tokens instead of buying transpasses, undercutting SEPTA’s revenue projections, said John McGee, its chief revenue officer.
In August, SEPTA received about $1.9 million less than anticipated from its city division, which comprises most of the buses and subways, but $800,000 more than anticipated from Regional Rail riders, McGee said.
For the year, SEPTA said it anticipated the current fare structure would produce about $26 million more than last year, though it had anticipated receiving $35 million more.
SEPTA had said in July that new fare hikes or service cuts would not be necessary after the state legislature passed a major transportation funding law that included about $150 million more per year for SEPTA in state operating subsidies.
SEPTA had warned of additional fare hikes if it didn’t get $100 million in new state funding.
Why not use the extra $50 million from the state to offset the reduced revenue because of the transfer decision? Moore was asked yesterday.
She said legislators had insisted, in return for more state money, that SEPTA riders provide more, too. If SEPTA riders provided only $26 million more instead of $35 million more, she said, that would break faith with the legislature and invite recriminations from Harrisburg.
State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and a leader in the effort to get more state funding for SEPTA, said: “This is not what I think should happen.
“There’s got to be a better way to do business,” he said. But he was also critical of Mayor Street’s administration for suing to block the elimination of transfers, which he said forced SEPTA’s hand.
He said the city won a “short-term victory. . . . And I know nobody likes to hear this, but one way or another, the riding public is going to pay.”