SEPTA board approves budget that will slash nearly half its transit service

SEPTA adopted a budget Thursday that will slash nearly half its transit service as it wrestles with a $213 million annual deficit — and cloudy prospects for new funding from Harrisburg.

The doomsday moment, if that is what it turns out to be, arrived with little drama — in a quick voice vote by the transit agency’s board — after six months of public protests and political fury.

“To our riders, we see you, we hear you, and we are not done fighting for you,” Marian Moskowitz, vice chair of the SEPTA board, said after Thursday’s meeting.

SEPTA will start a first round of service cuts in August under the plan and implement a 21.5% fare increase Sept. 1. Deeper cuts to services will be triggered Jan. 1, including elimination of five Regional Rail lines.

“We have to budget not on hope but on reality,” SEPTA General Manager Scott A. Sauer has said.

In all, service will be cut 45% in addition to the fare increase, which will bring SEPTA’s base price to $2.90 per ride.

» READ MORE: Is my bus route getting cut? What SEPTA’s proposed changes could mean for you

Meanwhile, legislative leaders say the state budget that could help won’t be finished before the July 1 start of the fiscal year. Lawmakers often blow past the deadline only to reach consensus in the weeks or months afterward.

SEPTA is required by law to have a balanced budget. Its leaders say they need to get going on solutions and can’t wait for lawmakers to finish.

Disagreement over increasing funding for Pennsylvania’s strapped transit agencies is a big factor in delaying any deal.

“Funding transit is something that we can live without in our caucus,” Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) said last week.

He and many Senate Republicans believe the state can’t afford what they have called a bailout of transit and that any aid must be paired with an equal amount for highways and bridges. In particular, many criticize how SEPTA is run.

» READ MORE: Not just SEPTA: Public transit is in trouble all across Pennsylvania, including in GOP districts.

The majority leader decides what gets to the Senate floor for a vote, and what doesn’t. Pittman, along with Gov. Josh Shapiro and House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) are the three people who will negotiate behind closed doors.

A lot depends on the timing. And how much.

SEPTA officials say they are working out scenarios, trying to see how long they can wait for new state funding before the first round of cuts.

The earlier help arrives, the better, of course.

“I don’t want to put a firm drop-dead date on it,” Sauer said after the vote. “Think of us like a big ship in the ocean. It takes a minute to get turned around.”

The later in the summer funding comes through will determine “how quickly we can turn things around,” he said.

Planners will have to know what is coming, or not, by early August, officials said. At that point, operators of buses and trains begin choosing their new assignments for the fall then, a process known as “the picking,” which is set by the authority’s union contracts.

In addition, new service schedules need to be produced and distributed to reflect lesser levels of service going forward. Some bus routes will be shortened or eliminated. SEPTA is working to prepare signs and maps to tell riders of those changes and new timetables for trolley, Regional Rail, and subway service.

“There are a lot of things we have to do for customers now to inform them of what’s coming,” Sauer said. “Everything from the destinations signs on the bus to the app that directs people’s travel has to be adjusted.”

One pressure point is the beginning of classes in the Philadelphia School District Aug. 25, officials said. SEPTA transports about 55,000 students a day.

If a state budget is finished that includes increased funding for SEPTA, the agency’s board can amend the existing budget to reflect the new revenue, draw money from its stabilization fund, a cash account, and roll back or stop some or all the cuts, spokesperson Andrew Busch said.

Shapiro proposed increasing state funding for all transit agencies by $292 million per year over five years. He’d finance the boost by increasing the share of the general sales and use tax that goes to the Public Transportation Trust Fund.

Pennsylvania currently spends about $1.5 billion a year on transit system aid, with a little over $1 billion going to SEPTA, the largest of them. Funds are distributed using a formula based on system size and ridership.

SEPTA would get about $166 million in the first year under the Shapiro proposal.

The state House, controlled by Democrats, passed a transit spending bill June 17 that incorporates Shapiro’s idea for mass transit and also authorizes the state to float $500 billion in bonds for highways and bridges, a priority of Republican lawmakers.

The House bill also would set up a bipartisan commission to devise a funding plan that would avoid near-yearly battles that leave transit agencies hanging.

But Senate GOP leaders, who hold the balance of power in the budget talks, don’t want to devote a bigger share of the sales tax to mass transit.

They are looking for a new source of revenue, with talk centering on a tax on skill games, the pseudo slot machines that have popped up all over the state and are untaxed.

There are strong internal disagreements and competing proposals over how much to tax the machines.