IL: Derailed: Looming funding cuts to Philadelphia’s transit system offer a lesson for Chicago

The rhythmic rumble of the “L” isn’t a death rattle — yet.

But Chicago’s public transit systems are set to get gut-punched early next year by a funding deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If state lawmakers don’t agree to allocate more money to public transit, branches on half of the CTA’s “L” lines could go silent. So many bus routes would get slashed that Chicago would have fewer of them than Kansas City. Metra trains could be spaced one or even two hours apart, depending on the day of the week.

Chicagoans don’t yet know which train stations would close, which bus lines would stop running or how much longer, exactly, it would take them to get to work and school each morning.

That clarity isn’t expected to come for months. The cuts themselves wouldn’t start until January at the earliest.

But 700 miles to the east, in Philadelphia, one potential version of Chicago’s future is coming into focus.

The city is facing up to its own massive transit deficit, caused in large part, like Chicago’s, by the expiration of federal pandemic aid and exacerbated by ridership numbers that simply haven’t recovered to 2019 levels.

There, catastrophic transit cuts are slated to start in just weeks unless lawmakers come to a last-minute agreement on funding.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which runs subways, buses, trolleys, light rail and commuter rail lines throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs, is facing a more than $200 million deficit. The agency, the equivalent of the CTA, Metra and Pace all in one and the sixth-largest public transit system in the nation, expects to eliminate nearly half of its service if lawmakers don’t avert the funding crisis.

Weeks from now, a first round of cuts will eliminate close to three dozen bus routes. Other bus lines would be truncated, cutting off service for those who need to travel to the end of a line. Trains, trolleys and buses will all come less often, and fare increases mean riders will pay 21.5% more for the diminished service.

Things will get even more dire in January. A second set of cuts would put all rail service to bed after 9 p.m. Some regional rail lines would be totally cut, including one of SEPTA’s most popular lines.

“The cuts are everywhere, in every neighborhood, every mode,” said Leslie Richards, who served as SEPTA CEO until late last year.

“The public has just been universally distraught by this,” said Connor Descheemaker, a transit activist who lives in Philadelphia.

When she saw the announcement of the planned cuts in Philly, Senia Lopez went into “panic mode.”

Lopez, 30, takes the bus to and from home to her work at a grocery delivery warehouse in North Philly. These days, Lopez has the option of taking a couple of bus lines for both portions of her route, meaning she typically waits only 10 or so minutes for a ride.

That’s going to change when the first round of transit cuts hits just weeks from now. Two of the buses Lopez regularly uses to commute will be slashed entirely. The others will see reduced service.

“There’s no viable way for me to get from my neighborhood to the neighborhood of my job without having to go farther away and come back,” she said. Lopez said she might have to alter her commute by taking a bus to a train toward Philly’s downtown — traveling the opposite direction from her job — and then taking a bus from downtown to the warehouse where she works.

“It would double my commute,” said Lopez, who doesn’t have a drivers’ license. “There’s no way around it.”

That’s not to mention the impact of the impending cuts to Lopez’s commute to her second job as a photographer’s assistant for weekend events. In January, rail service is slated to stop entirely after 9 p.m., which would leave Lopez stranded downtown after working events such as weddings.

“I’m never done earlier than 10,” she said, meaning she’d have to take a ride-share home to the tune of $30 to $60, eating into at least an hour or two of her earnings from the event in question.

Negotiations around transit funding in Pennsylvania have been fraught, intensely partisan and marked by a rural-urban divide. Unlike in deep blue Illinois, the Pennsylvania statehouse is divided, with Democrats holding onto a narrow one-seat majority in the House and Republicans controlling the Senate. The legislature is weeks past the deadline for its budget, in which transit funding is a major sticking point. “There is still no deal in sight,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week.

“Funding transit is something that we can live without in our caucus,” Joe Pittman, the state Senate majority leader, a Republican, said in June.

State Sen. Nikil Saval, a Democrat whose district includes Philadelphia’s downtown and who has pushed for transit funding, told the Tribune he wouldn’t vote for a budget that didn’t include transit dollars. “That can’t be an option,” he said.

But the cuts are getting closer.

Last week, SEPTA started posting alert signs at bus stops, letting riders know their routes are on the chopping block.

“We’re all systems go, planning for the cuts to be put into place. The hope is obviously that we would be able to roll those back, but there does come a certain point where you can’t roll them back,” SEPTA’s budget director, Erik Johanson, said in an interview two weeks ago.

Northern Illinois’ transit agencies have issued similar warnings to state legislators, who failed to pass transit funding during their spring session.

Without a legislative solution soon, they warn, planned cuts could be hard to reverse. The CTA, Metra and Pace are in the midst of planning multiple budgets for different funding scenarios next year. Layoff notices for some of the 3,000 workers who could lose their jobs under the new paradigm could go out as soon as September or October.

Here, negotiations around transit funding are tied to the overhaul of the structure of the region’s transit agencies. A mantra of “no funding without reform” has come to dominate conversations around the topic in Springfield.

During the spring legislative session, lawmakers in both chambers introduced bills that would have replaced the Regional Transportation Authority, the governing body for CTA, Metra and Pace, with a new entity called the Northern Illinois Transit Authority that would be given broad planning responsibilities.

But after months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, lawmakers only started sharing ideas for revenue generation days before the end-of-session deadline.

Shortly before their legislative deadline, the Illinois Senate approved a version of the bill that would have funded the state’s public transit systems with revenue streams that included  a controversial $1.50 package delivery fee.

But the bill was never called in the House.

Lawmakers plan to return to the Capitol for a veto session in October, although they’ll now need a three-fifths majority in each chamber to pass legislation that would take effect before Illinois runs out of federal funds. Transit advocates have said that meeting during veto session isn’t soon enough to avert disaster. They’ve urged lawmakers to return for a special session this summer, though, as of the end of July, there was no indication they planned to do so.

Last week, Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters he didn’t “see any reason” to call a special session.

In an interview with the Tribune, state Sen. Ram Villivalam, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the transit funding bill that passed the Senate, said legislators “saw the sense of urgency.”

But when asked about whether he supported returning to Springfield before October, Villivalam said the decision was one for the governor and legislative leadership to make. “That is above my pay grade,” he said.

Other mass transit systems across the country, including in Boston, Washington, D.C., and the Bay Area are also facing looming funding gaps exacerbated by the expiration of federal pandemic aid.

Local transit agencies have stretched their pandemic dollars further than most peer agencies, the RTA has said.

Chicago-area transit agencies receive a smaller share of their operating revenue from the state than their peer systems, according to 2019 data from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

However, other agencies, including SEPTA and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in D.C., have seen infusions of short-term funding from state and local governments that have delayed severe service cuts.

That was the case in Pennsylvania last year, when the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, directed $153 million in federal highway funds to SEPTA.

SEPTA also increased fares by 7.5% at the time, delaying the additional and more significant increase it plans to make this year. The agency has said it is operating under an austerity program.

In Illinois, the CTA has faced some criticism for its finances, but has defended its efficiency, arguing that it has the lowest overhead expense ratio and lowest level of public funding per trip among its peer agencies.

Meanwhile, the transit timer is running out. The impending budget deficit, which has been previously estimated to be around $771 million in Illinois, could end up being roughly $150 million to $225 million lower than expected due to revenue from online e-commerce sales.  But even in the best-case scenario, the deficit would still total more than $500 million without more funding.

Villivalam said he had not heard of a temporary funding measure being discussed in Illinois. Lawmakers, he said, were focused on passing legislation that would see transit fully funded here.

But as the deadline for cuts creeps closer in Illinois, regional transportation administrators are keeping a close eye on service cuts elsewhere.

At their monthly meeting Thursday, members of the RTA’s board discussed the similarly precarious financial situations of peer transit agencies, including SEPTA.

The sheer scale of the potential service cuts in Pennsylvania hit home.

“45% service cuts in Philadelphia,” remarked RTA board Chairman Kirk Dillard at Thursday’s meeting. “It’s unfathomable.”

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