Transportation

‘It will be a disaster’: Labor leaders, teachers sound the alarm as SEPTA cuts loom

Massive service reductions and fare increases would impact students, workers and residents around the region

A potential sign of the times at SEPTA’s City Hall station in Philadelphia.

A potential sign of the times at SEPTA’s City Hall station in Philadelphia. Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The budget impasse in Harrisburg means one thing for the Southeast’s regional transit authority: cuts are coming. 

SEPTA, which faces a structural deficit of $213 million, said last week that if the system didn’t get the funding it needed by Thursday, it wouldn’t be able to reverse previously announced schedule reductions and fare increases. 

The GOP-controlled state Senate passed a spending measure that would utilize $1.2 billion over two years from the Public Transportation Trust Fund – which is typically used for ongoing maintenance and capital projects – along with some recurring revenue of about $43 million per year from taxes on internet gaming. However, Democrats, who voted down the spending plan in state House Rules and Appropriations Committees yesterday, have said the fund is not a viable funding source for SEPTA and that pulling from it would hinder transit agencies’ ability to make critical safety updates in the future.

SEPTA General Manager Scott Sauer said that without new funding, the system will face a 20% service reduction on Aug. 24 – one day before some 118,000 students return to classes in the School District of Philadelphia – and a 45% reduction overall for the fiscal year.

“We have to wait for a proposal that is both immediate and sustainable,” Sauer said. “Two years is not the sustainable solution we were hoping for. We need something that’s going to carry us into the future.”

With workers and students around the region anticipating the impacts of the drastic service cuts and fare increases, City & State asked union leaders, members and public officials if any contingency plans are in place to help residents get around the region. 

The resounding response: There is no contingency plan for this degree of cuts. 

“I don’t know that there is a way to plan around something this devastating,” Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Danny Bauder told City & State. “I hate to say this but, thankfully, SEPTA has a plan for how they’re going to handle the lack of funding in terms of bus routes and things like that. But this is going to be awful.”

Jesse Abrams-Morley, a teacher at Kensington CAPA High School and parent of a School District of Philadelphia student, said getting around is a top concern for him and his family. 

“There have been a couple of times since I’ve been a teacher where we’ve been on the verge of a SEPTA strike … Inside our school, there's not much we can do. There can be rules that are passed down to us about whether you excuse absences or whatnot …You can post stuff online, you can post an assignment online – but that’s not school.”

Like so many other parents of school-age children, Abrams-Morley said that proximity to the school and his commute are major factors in how the day is planned out. 

“It’s not walkable (for her to go) to school anymore, and I don’t want her riding a bike four miles around the city,” he said. “I don’t have a backup plan for that.”

Asked about the issue on Sunday, Gov. Josh Shapiro didn’t provide a clear answer as to whether the state can assist in getting students to school. Referencing his previous efforts to flex highway funds to keep the system running, Shapiro said, “I have (offered contingencies) in an attempt to give lawmakers more time and space to find the opportunity for common ground for a long-term solution.”

“The time for short-term fixes is over,” Shapiro added. “We need a long-term solution.”

Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson told City & State that councilmembers “warned everyone more than a year ago” about the need for “a steady, predictable funding source from the state, or devastating cuts to those systems were inevitable.”

“If SEPTA implements its 20% service reductions on August 24, the cuts will be devastating to our students going back to school, senior citizens going to and from doctor’s appointments and our workforce not having transportation,” Johnson said in a statement. “These SEPTA cuts will set off a chain of negative consequences for residents and businesses, the economy of the Greater Philadelphia region, and the commonwealth’s future tax revenues.”

Other labor unions have expressed similar concerns, including those that help operate or maintain SEPTA systems and others that rely on regional transit to get around. 

Ray Boyer, the general chairperson of Sheet Metal Air Rail and Transportation Workers Local 61, told City & State that less service could mean lost jobs. 

“We’ve got a lot of newer employees that left decent jobs – good jobs – to come here,” Boyer said. “They could potentially be laid off … out of work, with no money.”

Maurice Landon, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen’s first vice local chairman at SEPTA, said that on top of less work for members, the strain of more traffic and congestion will be felt throughout the region. 

“Any kind of cuts or reductions (in service) is a reduction in work … That’s the angst downstairs amongst the members,” Landon told City & State. “We will feel the effects of the increased traffic on the roads. It will lead to more people having to drive. We definitely have to leave earlier for work – and if any lines get cut completely, that’s (one less) option there.”

Bauder was even more forceful in describing the dramatic impacts the cuts will have on workers and residents: “It’s going to ruin people’s lives.”

“This is just a cataclysmic failure by elected leaders who have absolutely no intention to do anything good for anyone in this commonwealth,” Bauder said. “They just really seem to be focused on culture wars and very petty forms of politics and not articulating, let alone pursuing, any sort of a vision for anything in any way at any level to be better for any Pennsylvania.”

Barring any changes, teachers like Abrams-Morley said schools can expect more truancy in addition to absences and worsening performance among students struggling to get around without SEPTA. 

“To the best of my knowledge, there is no contingency plan,” Abrams-Morley told City & State. “And to the best of my knowledge, it will be a disaster.”