PA: Transportation advocate calls SEPTA budget ‘A broken covenant’

The leader of the largest advocacy group for public transportation issues in Chester County lashed out in frustration Friday after the SEPTA Board of Directors passed a fiscal year budget that calls for drastic cuts in service and increases in fares across the region and county, citing the need to balance its budget.

“Passing the SEPTA budget met the requirements for the Commonwealth, not the needs of the people,” said Timothy Phelps, the executive director of the Transportation Management Association of Chester County (TMACC), in response to a query on the budget. “This should not be happening.”

According to a SEPTA press release, the budget vote came without action in Harrisburg to provide new funding for transit system all across the state. The budget will cut service by 45% and raise fares 21.5% to fill a $213 million recurring budget deficit.

“This is a vote none of us wanted to take,” said SEPTA Board Chairman Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr. in the release. “We have worked hard as an authority to prevent this day from coming because we understand the impact it will have on our customers and the communities we serve. To be clear, this does not have to happen – if state lawmakers can reach an agreement to deliver sufficient, new funding for public transit.”

Chester County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz, who serves as vice chairwoman of the SEPTA board, appeared equally as dejected in the vote as her colleague Lawrence.

“Today’s vote on our budget is one of the most difficult votes I’ve had to cast,” Moskowitz shared on her social media page. “I’ve spent my career working to build opportunity and equity — and I know firsthand how essential public transportation is to achieve both.

“Today’s vote on a balanced budget reflects a heartbreaking reality,” she said. “Without long-term, sustainable funding from state and federal partners, we are forced to make decisions that no one on our board wants to make — decisions that will affect workers, students, seniors, and families who rely on our buses, trolleys, and trains every single day.”

Phelps’ reaction was more of anger than of apathy, however.

The vote “feels more like a budgetary obituary than a fiscal plan,” he said in his own social media post.

The $213 million structural deficit “remains the villain,” Phelps said. “But make no mistake: this wasn’t an act of villainy. It was an act of desperation. This should not be happening.”

According to information on SEPTA’s website, the cuts will begin to have an impact in August, when shortened, reduced, or eliminated service will take place on the system’s bus and regional rail lines, including the iconic Thorndale/ Paoli R5 Line, known to generations as the “Paoli Local.” It connects western Chester County with Philadelphia.

The bus routes that serve the county that will be eliminated on Aug. 26 include: routes 106, the 204 and the 206, all in the eastern part of the county, including Paoli and the Great Valley. Services on the R5 line would be reduced, as would the 99 and 104 bus routes. The 124 and 125 bus routes would be shortened in Chesterbrook and Valley Forge.

SEPTA cuts, “and especially those to the Paoli/ Thorndale and Cynwyd train lines and the 44, 52, 103, and 106 bus lines, will have a devastating effect on the historic ‘Main Line’ community of Lower Merion Township,” reads a township resolution. (DAILY TIMES)

Then on Jan. 1, 2026, further cuts would take place. The Paoli train route would be eliminated, as would the 92 bus route that connects West Chester with King of Prussia. Both maintain ridership that is a crucial component of business operations in the county.

In an opinion piece written ahead of the vote Thursday, Mike Grigalonis president and chief operating officer of the Chester County Economic Development Council said, “Here in Chester County, and the greater Philadelphia region, our economic growth has been undergirded by this system, with SEPTA mass transit at its foundation.

“SEPTA is an essential cog in the economic engine of Southeastern Pennsylvania — an engine that generates billions in economic output and tax revenue for the entire state. A weakened SEPTA means a weakened regional economy, and that ripples out to the rest of Pennsylvania in real dollars. The income, business, and sales taxes generated here help fund state programs and services that benefit all 67 counties. When our region suffers due to impaired transit, the state’s ability to reinvest equitably across Pennsylvania suffers too.”

According to Moskowitz, the cuts “are not a reflection of SEPTA’s values — they are a reflection of the impossible position we’ve been put in. We’ve stretched every dollar, improved efficiency and safety and looked under every stone for alternatives. But the math simply doesn’t lie.”

Earlier this year, Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed a statewide transit funding plan that would provide new, sustainable funding that would prevent those devastating measures from taking effect and preserve essential transit service statewide. The state House of Representatives last week advanced that proposal, along with new funding for roads and bridges.

But Republicans who control the state Senate have appeared lukewarm warm at best and hostile at worst to the needs of SEPTA and the other public transportation systems across the state that would be buoyed by the new funding.

“Funding transit is something that we can live without in our caucus,” state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, a Republican from Indiana County, said last week.

He and many state 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.

His Democratic colleague, state Sen. Carolyn Comitta, D-19th, of West Chester, pushed back at how the budget would assuredly have “have a significant, negative impact on our economy, property values, traffic congestion, and the overall quality of life in Chester County and southeastern Pennsylvania.

“What we don’t know is when the Senate majority will act either on the mass transit funding bill recently passed by the House or a state budget that fairly and fully funds SEPTA and mass transit in all 67 counties,” she said in an e-mail. “I’m disappointed by inaction by the Senate majority in Harrisburg. And I’m disappointed that we’re days away from the state budget deadline and still don’t have a plan on the table to fund SEPTA, and other crucial services.”

Phelps, of TMACC, said that to leave the community without the means to get to and from where they need or want to go was an unfair choice.

“We should not be picking winners and losers within our communities,” he said. “We should not be rationing mobility. The passage of SEPTA’s FY2026 budget is a warning, not a solution. A covenant has been broken, and only bold legislative action can restore it.

“Public transportation in the Commonwealth needs long term dedicated funding; it is operational economic development. Harrisburg: the clock is ticking,” he said.

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