Our executive director Steve Noll recently wrote a guest opinion for the Bucks County Herald on the SEPTA funding crisis. You can read the article online HERE or view it below:
Quite a few people simply don’t get it.
Without subsidies from public sources, private sources, or some combination of the two, affordable public transportation service cannot exist. For those who will not believe this, I challenge you to drive the roughly 11 miles from Frankford Transportation Center to the Philadelphia Sports Complex for the $2.50 that you’d pay to use SEPTA, keeping in mind that the current federal reimbursement rate for vehicle mileage is $0.70 per mile. Or, better yet, ask a cab, Uber, or Lyft driver to take you there for $2.50. I’d imagine you’ll get some very interesting and likely unflattering responses to the request.
Public transportation systems across Pennsylvania have long relied upon subsidies from the Commonwealth and local sources, such as counties, to support affordable service in its communities. While the origin of these subsidies has changed over time, the need for them has not. Unfortunately, these subsidies generally go unnoticed until they are somehow threatened, at which point many are quick to condemn transit agencies’ request for “a bailout.” Make no mistake – the funding needed by SEPTA and many other transit agencies across Pennsylvania is not a “bailout,” as that would imply that transit agencies are failing businesses that require cash infusions to keep them in business. To the contrary, our transit systems are well-utilized and contribute a great deal to the regional economy – hardly how one would describe a failing business.
To those critical of public funding for transit, I submit this scenario: Imagine that your employer tells you that your salary is being cut by 65% effective the first of the month. It is reasonable to expect that you will look for, and hope for, some means to replace those lost wages. It is reasonable to expect that you will want to work far fewer hours while you remain with your current employer. It is reasonable to expect that you will have a very difficult time reducing your living expenses to a level that will let you get by on your much lower paycheck. Would it be reasonable for a friend of yours to respond to your situation by telling you that you made too much, anyway, and that you should learn to finance your present standard of living on that new, reduced salary? Of course it’s not reasonable, and, yet, that’s what so many people are asking of SEPTA and so many other transit agencies across Pennsylvania.
SEPTA’s proposed service reductions and fare increases are merely one symptom of a much bigger problem, and that is the failure of so many across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to recognize that, yes, a state investment in public transportation systems is a significant cost, but that the cost of FAILURE to invest in our public transportation systems – lost jobs and greater reliance on public assistance, increased traffic congestion, slower movement of goods and services, and the slow bleed of businesses from Greater Philadelphia and Pennsylvania to other states with more robust public transportation systems, is immeasurably greater.
SEPTA, having exhausted all options, is merely presenting its solution to what is ultimately a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania problem. Nobody likes it, least of all SEPTA, but they are doing what has to be done. Nobody wants this to come to fruition, and so we turn to our state elected officials and ask them to put a long-term solution in place immediately before irreversible damage is done to our economy, our quality of life, and our environment.
Stephen J. Noll
Executive Director
TMA Bucks &
The TMA Bucks Foundation
