State transit agencies fear cuts
Say systems need sustainable funding
Without sustainable funding, transit service will have to be cut substantially, hurting not only riders but also the businesses whose employees depend on transit to get to work and the dozens of companies the agencies hire or buy products from to keep their systems running, the heads of Port Authority and SEPTA told the state House Transportation Committee Wednesday.
Leslie S. Richards, general manager of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, said that with unsure state funding and the steep financial hit caused by the COVID-19 virus, her agency is “at a crossroads.” She said the agency needs guidance from the Legislature — in the form of a steady source of financing — on whether it should continue to upgrade and expand its system or retrench and cut service.
“Without action now, we will be forced to cut back on expansion projects,” Ms. Richards said. “This is a very, very critical time.”
The Transportation Committee held its second day of hearings on a series of bills dealing with funding for public transit and state police traffic enforcement, road construction procedures and public-private partnerships. Transit funding is particularly timely because the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s requirement to pay $400 million a year to those agencies for capital and operating subsidies expires in 2023, plus the turnpike has deferred one payment of $112.5 million this year and asked to defer another because of its own financial difficulties due to the pandemic.
Federal stimulus money approved in March earmarks about $644 million for SEPTA and $141.75 million for Port Authority to cover losses due to the pandemic, but the agencies said that money likely will last only until fall 2021.
Since the pandemic began in March, Ms. Richards said, ridership on her agency’s subway, bus and regional rail systems is
down from about a million trips a day to about 350,000, and fare revenue is down from about $40 million a month to $4 million. The agency has delayed about $250 million in capital projects this year because of the lack of state funding.
Ridership has improved slightly from its worst level of about 3% to 4% of normal levels, Ms. Richards said, but it’s impossible to say whether it will return to prepandemic levels. Without a steady funding source, she said, the agency would have to begin cutbacks that by 2030 would leave 300,000 daily riders without transit.
“We’re not going back to normal any time soon … maybe never,” she said. “We know it’s not going to be coming back any time soon.”
Ms. Richards stressed what she called SEPTA’s vital role in the economy not only of Philadelphia but also the state, comparing its impact to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. A study earlier this year showed the agency stimulated more than $3 billion in economic activity across the state last year and since 2015 has issued about 19,000 contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to companies in 38 of the state’s 67 counties.
“We need to be up and running,” Ms. Richards said. “If we are not functioning, the recovery of our area and the recovery across the state will be slowed.”
Port Authority is substantially smaller than SEPTA, moving about 220,000 riders on weekdays before the pandemic, but it had losses of $21 million from March through May as ridership dropped 80% below last year’s level. Ridership has returned to about 40% of last year’s level, but the agency is getting only about 7% of revenue from fares compared with the normal 21%.
When it resumes a full service schedule next week, it expects to hire 60 additional maintenance workers to sanitize vehicles and facilities daily.
“We don’t know when our customers will come back,” CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman said. “If we don’t have steady funding, we will have declining service.”
A study released last year claims the agency has a $929 million annual economic impact on the Pittsburgh region.
Chairman Tim Hennessey, R-Pottstown, couldn’t be reached for comment on when the committee will vote on the bills.