Transit cuts begin in Philadelphia as state budget battle continues

Now the transit funding crisis in Pennsylvania is real.

With the state budget nearly two months late and no end in sight, Monday was the first time weekday commuters in the Philadelphia area faced 20% service cuts from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority because of a $200 million funding shortfall. On weekdays, the agency carries 800,000 people on commuter trains, subways and buses, including thousands of public school students who had their first day of classes on Monday.

Pittsburgh Regional Transit is facing a $100 million deficit and has proposed service cuts of 35%, laying off 38% of staff and increasing fares by 25 cents to $3, but its changes wouldn’t start until February.

As a result, advocates say they believe the emphasis has shifted from developing a long-term solution to fund transit to finding a budget compromise that funds transit well enough to avoid drastic cuts for now and buys time to develop a more comprehensive plan later.

At a news conference Monday, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said he continues to work with Republican leaders in the state House and Senate to find a budget compromise that all parties can live with. Shapiro, one of two governors in the country dealing with a House and Senate controlled by different parties, said the state has an $8 billion surplus and leaders are dickering over how much to save, how much to spend and where to spend it.

So far, Shapiro has wanted to spend a little more, especially on education, tax cuts, transit, roads and bridges. Republicans, especially in the Senate, generally want to spend less and use less money from the Public Transportation Trust Fund.

Shapiro said he is “frustrated” and called it is “wrong” that the budget process has taken so long, especially since the Legislature has only been in session for 26 days since he introduced the budget in February. But he said he is “confident” they will pass a strong budget that meets the state’s needs, even if it means Republicans have to make “uncomfortable” decisions.

With Republican support, the House has passed five different bills that would increase transit funding for the first time in 12 years, but Republicans who control the Senate haven’t found a package they can support.

“There are real differences between the parties …. We are all going to have to compromise,” the governor said. “I’m going to stay committed. I’m going to stay at the table. I’m going to keep working.”

SEPTA cuts

The transportation crisis leaped forward this week with the first round of service cuts at SEPTA. Many transit agencies across the state – and the country – are facing tough financial outlooks because emergency money they were awarded during the pandemic to make up for extremely low ridership is running out.

In Pennsylvania, that is even more extreme because the state’s 10-year funding bill for all forms of transportation ended two years ago and the Legislature hasn’t taken any action to renew it. As a result, agencies have been lobbying for more funding for more than a year, and cuts are starting to move forward.

The service cuts for SEPTA, which serves five counties around Philadelphia, are the agency’s first step toward what its previous executive director called a “death spiral” without more funding. The first round of cuts that eliminated 32 routes is scheduled to be followed by a 20% fare increase in September and another 25% service cut in January.

Funding transit has become a partisan issue because 87% of the state subsidy funds go to SEPTA and Pittsburgh Regional. The remainder is divided among agencies in the rest of the state’s 67 counties, all of which provide some form of transit.

Senate Republicans say that financial breakdown is a hard sell for their members, who don’t represent many transit riders and would prefer more money for roads and bridges in their areas.

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans angered transit advocates and Democratic leaders when they passed a bill that would have provided two years of transit funding. The problem, according to Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, was that the funding would have come from the fund to pay for capital projects and would have set an automatic fare increase every two years.

“While real people are scrambling to make plans to get to work, school, appointments and more as drastic cuts to transit services loom, Senate Republicans passed a transit bill that would raid capital funds for a two-year transit fix – an insufficient Band-Aid [that would] put us in this exact same position two years from now,” Costa said in a statement Saturday.

“These are funds already earmarked to fix buses, improve railways and repair aging infrastructure that’s critical to making transit run. Further, their transit plan included mandated biennial fare increases in perpetuity that would put transit out of reach for many riders who rely on buses and trains to navigate their communities.”

Laura Wiens, executive director of Pittsburghers for Public Transit, called the effort by Republicans “a false solution” and “a joke.”

Real consequences

While the battle goes on, residents around Philadelphia are dealing with the first round of cuts.

For several years, SEPTA officials have stressed the importance of their operation not only to riders but also to the economy of the state. In addition to carrying millions of riders to work every week, the agency pays thousands of employees who keep the economy going and spends more than $4 billion on supplies and services across the state each year.

SEPTA and elected officials have stressed that workers who depend on transit would have a hard time driving themselves to work because the city doesn’t have enough parking spaces to accommodate them.

Another group hurt by service cuts will be public school students. About 19% of the nearly 200,000 Philadelphia public school students rely on public transit, according to Peter DeCarolis, coordinator for Safe Routes Philly, a program that works to get students to school safely.

DeCarolis, in Pittsburgh for the annual conference by the Governors Highway Safety Association, said in an interview the cuts will be inconvenient for students and could lead to safety concerns depending on the alternate methods students use to get to school.

“The simple answer is those kids are going to have to find other ways to get to school,” he said. “I imagine more kids are going to get driven to school.”

Wiens stressed that advocates have been warning for months that the cuts would hurt the most vulnerable riders. Now, with the cuts occurring, Shapiro’s call for $292 million more for transit this year may be the best they can hope for, she said, even though that would not come anywhere near closing the deficits for PRT and SEPTA.

Still, it’s “a critical Band-Aid” that the agencies need, she said, and buy more time for advocates to push for a long-term solution. That would include a “robust” effort for the plan supported by Transit for All PA that would generate $500 million for transit from increased fees for rental and leased vehicles, plus a surcharge for shared-ride services like Uber and Lyft.

PRT has said it would begin taking the steps for February’s cuts in September if there is no long-term funding solution. Spokesman Jim Ritchie issued a limited statement about the on-going fight for funding.

“PRT remains hopeful for a statewide solution, but our funding status has not changed.”