(The following article by Regina Medina was posted on the Philadelphia Daily News website on November 30.)
PHILADELPHIA — The SEPTA crisis has seriously altered the plans of Temple University junior Dana M. Brown.
The 20-year-old commuter student from Mount Airy wanted to work a second, weekend job to pay for school, but with service cutbacks, fare hikes and layoffs seemingly around the corner for SEPTA, Brown’s idea may turn into a pipe dream.
The transportation authority’s contingency plan proposes to end weekend service, which she said “would be terrible.”
For Brown and the 15,000 college students, according to the transit agency, who use SEPTA daily.
Amanda Eisenhut, a Temple junior from Flemington, N.J., lives off-campus and walks to school.
But she uses the subway to buy groceries blocks away.
“It’s ridiculous that they’re cutting off money when so many people use it for work and school and to travel on the weekend.”
SEPTA is in need of $62 million in state funding before the legislative session ends tomorrow night. If the money doesn’t come through, the transit agency has warned that, besides ending weekend service, it will raise fares by 25 percent, end service earlier in the evening during the week and lay off 1,400 employees.
A bus or subway trip costs $2, a transfer is 60 cents and the regional rail fares vary.
The SEPTA board meets 10 a.m. on Thursday and “hard decisions” will be made, said spokesman Richard Maloney.
“There are no good choices,” he said. “The bottom line is we are regulated by state law to balance the budget.”
These SEPTA cuts would also have an adverse affect on the city’s attempts to keep high school and college graduates fromseeking greener pastures around the country.
Just ask University of Pennsylvania doctoral student Michael Carter. He takes the subway to do research in Center City because “it’s a safe way to get around,” he said.
“I have been strongly considering relocating to the Philadelphia area and since I’m from L.A., I regard the public transportation here as a plus since we don’t have it in L.A.,” said Carter, a 27-year-old studying history. “It would be a very negative thing for me if service were to be curtailed.”
About 19 percent of this year’s summer visitors said they used SEPTA to get around town, according to an on-line survey by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp.
GPTMC president and CEO Meryl Levitz would like to keep them and others content enough to come back.
“A lot of people, once they park their car, they don’t want to move it,” Levitz said. “They’re walking because Philadelphia is such a wonderful walking city or they’re using Septa.”
Also consider the 150,000 workers in the hotel and restaurant business who support the industry. The men and women who clean the hotel rooms, fill up coffee cups and greet visitors at the reception desk.
Philadelphia’s tourism industry reached $6.34 billion in 2003, a 12 percent jump from the previous year when $5.3 billion was pumped into the local economy, according to the GPTMC.
“It’s also a big image thing,” Levitz said. “We’ve been fighting an image that Philadelphia is closed in the evening and on weekends that if you don’t have a mass transit program that’s running in the evening and on the weekends, it doesn’t look good.
“You’ve compromised all the progress we’ve made.”