(The following story by Brian Scheid appeared on the phillyBurbs.com website on March 25.)
PHILADELPHIA — It’s colder here in March, but Yardley and the San Francisco suburb of Menlo Park have a lot in common.
Both are affluent bedroom communities where the median age is under 40. Menlo Park is a 30-mile commute from San Francisco. Yardley is a 30-mile commute from Philadelphia.
However, a major difference between the two towns can be found at their commuter rail stations.
Menlo Park commuters could soon pay as much as $850 less per year to travel between their homes and their offices in San Francisco than a Yardley commuter will pay to get to and from Philadelphia.
Facing a $129 million budget shortfall and slim state aid, SEPTA has proposed a “worst case scenario” to raise fares on commuter rails in Bucks by 31 percent and cut service by 20 percent, a scenario that would go into effect in July. The transit agency has also pitched a plan to raise rates by 11 percent if it receives a $100 million state subsidy.
Using the Yardley station as an example for the “worst case scenario,” commuters will pay $210 per month, a $47 per month hike, to travel on the R3 line to and from Center City.
According to a Bucks County Courier Times analysis, that regional rail fare will be pricier than similar, roughly 30-mile rail commutes in nearly every city in the country. Commuters traveling similar distances on regional rail lines in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Seattle will pay anywhere from $288 to $1,740 less next year, if SEPTA’s fare hike were approved.
Only suburban Manhattan and Boston rail commuters will pay more than regional rail commuters in Bucks and other Philadelphia suburban areas this summer, according to the analysis.
Even without the fare hike, SEPTA’s commuter rail fares in Bucks, which have not risen since 2001, will still be among the priciest in the country.
“I think [SEPTA’s] going to be pricing some people out of using the system, but they’re also banking on the fact they have a lot of customers that have no other choice,” said Matthew Mitchell, a spokesman for the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers.
Brian Bittmann, an accountant who has commuted on the R3 line from Yardley to Center City for the past year, said SEPTA’s fare increases are an unfortunate reality for a transit agency that is struggling through mammoth budget shortfalls and stagnant state aid every year.
“No matter how much they raise the fares they’re still going to be losing money hand over fist,” Bittmann said.
For three years Bittmann commuted from Yardley to Manhattan and commuting costs quickly became “outrageous.”
However, he said the proposed fare hikes on SEPTA were no less outrageous and said he was only “slightly surprised” that costs to commute from Yardley dwarfed nearly every commuter rail fare in the country.
WHY SUCH HIGH FARES?
The reasons behind the high cost for regional rail service in suburban Philadelphia are complex and plentiful, several mass transit officials said this week.
A decade of stagnant funding from the state for mass transit, a costly, aging infrastructure and little financial commitment from local governments were among the top reasons.
“They have made a public policy decision [in other states] to encourage public transportation,” said David Johnson, an assistant director with the National Association of Railroad Passengers. “That has not happened in Pennsylvania.”
Pasquale “Pat” Deon, chairman of SEPTA’s board of directors, was not surprised that his transportation authority was among the most expensive to ride in the country. He said transit agencies in Los Angeles, Chicago and every other major metropolitan area receive more state aid and funding that is guaranteed, and rely far less on revenue from fares to keep their agencies financially afloat.
“Yeah, [regional rail fares in other cities] are cheaper, but we get far less from the state,” Deon, a Middletown resident, said. “It’s disheartening how little attention mass transit gets in Harrisburg.”
Unlike transit agencies in nearly every major American city, SEPTA’s funding source from the state has been stagnant since 1997, a condition that has forced SEPTA officials to plan for budget gaps each year. In 2004, Gov. Ed Rendell flexed $425 million of federal highway and bridge funding to bail out the ailing transit agencies until this year, a fate SEPTA officials are confronting.
The lack of a guaranteed funding source has put SEPTA in a precarious financial state, according to Virginia Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Public Transportation Association.
“If you don’t know from year to year what your funding is going to be, that seriously impacts you,” said Miller.
Along with sky-high rate hikes, state aid doubt also keeps SEPTA from expanding or improving service, according to Patrick Eiding, a co-chairman of the Philadelphia Transit Campaign, an advocacy group for mass transit in the region.
“There’s no vision for improvement because there’s no funding for that improvement,” Eiding said. “They’re constantly trying to defend what they have. It becomes kind of a band-aid effect. Any household knows that if you don’t have a paycheck coming next week you can’t plan to buy something new.”
COUNTIES PAY LITTLE
While about 50 percent of SEPTA’s operating budget comes from fares, county governments in SEPTA’s five-county service area contribute very little to run the transit agency compared to nationwide averages.
In the 2005 fiscal year, for example, about 47 percent of Chicago’s Metra’s operating budget came from local government revenue and about 45 percent of Los Angeles’ Metrolink’s budget came from local funds, according to the National Transit Database.
According to Felipe Suarez, a SEPTA spokesman, only 7.9 percent of SEPTA’s fiscal year 2005 operating budget came from local funds. Only 7.5 percent of SEPTA’s fiscal year 2008 is expected to come from local funds, Suarez said.
However, commuter rail passengers throughout the country have not been immune to fare increases that SEPTA customers could soon face.
“Like any business there’s increased costs that need to be addressed,” said Miller. “There’s all kinds of costs that have risen.”
Those costs include the skyrocketing costs of fuel and medical insurance for employees, she said.
This year, New Jersey Transit plans to raise fares by nearly 10 percent to cover a $60 million budget shortfall, the third fare hike the agency announced since 2002.
Commuter rail passes in Boston’s suburbs were increased by 22 percent this year after two years of budget shortfalls.
Metrolink riders in Los Angeles’ suburbs pay 5.5 percent more in fares than they did last year while Metra customers in Chicago’s suburbs were hit with a 5 percent fare increase last year.
Chicago mass transit, which relies heavily on revenue from a six-county sales tax, might be an example that tax revenues may not be a panacea for transit funding woes. Illinois Auditor General William Holland this month said the Regional Transportation Authority, Metra’s parent agency, would need more state funding to avoid a financial crisis. Even doubling fares would not avert the crisis, Holland said.