At the very least, move the casino parking off the river

There are a lot of people in this city who are not giving up the fight against casinos. I’m one of them. But our political officials have given up. After kneeling by our side during the 2007 election (you can’t call what they did standing), City Council members and our Mayor have thrown in the towel. Badgered by a Governor intent on securing the most dubious part of his legacy, and a state legislature that wants to suck every possible dollar out of our fellow citizensā€”and hampered by the need for legislative approval for the tax increases we need to survive the recessionā€”Mayor Nutter and City Council have given up the fight. We’ll fight on without them. But here is one thing I just don’t understand. If they won’t fight to keep the casinos out of Center City and the Delaware Waterfront, why won’t they at the very least fightā€¦ Continue reading

Encouraging news from SEPTA

That is the title for a blog post I’ve wanted to use for years. SEPTA has named a consumer advocate, Kim Scott Heinle, who is going to focus on msking the agency “available, responsive, honest and open.” Details are here: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20080425_SEPTA_names_customer_advoc…. I was a little skeptical of the appointment of an insider, Joe Casey, to replace Faye Moore as General Manager of SEPTA, although I said at the time that I have found most of the SEPTA managers I’ve worked with to be honest and responsive individuals who seem caught up in a system that too often was unresponsive and prone to dissembling. I knew Joe Casey just a little but he seemed like a decent guy. Now I’m really happy a to say that Casey is starting out very well. This move, along with others he has made, shows that he understands how frustrated people are in their dailyā€¦ Continue reading

The sound you heard on the El today was the fat lady singing

The transfer issue is finally, totally over. Today was the last day for SEPTA to file an appeal of last month’s Commonwealth Court decision that kept transfers in place. (Technically the Commonwealth Court declared that SEPTA’s appeal of Judge DiVito’s decision to block it from eliminating transfers was moot because SEPTA had already adopted a different fare plan, one that kept transfers.) SEPTA did not appeal. I don’t know why SEPTA made this decision, since they typically play everything out to the end. I suppose one reason is that they saw that they were unlikely to prevail. But I’m going to be an optimist today and hope that SEPTA’s decision is a sign that SEPTA is going to be a better partner for the city and for transit riders. There is no reason SEPTA shouldn’t be. There are a lot of people in this city who really believe in publicā€¦ Continue reading

Making the world safe for transfers

The Commonwealth Court ruled today against SEPTA in its appeal of Judge DiVitoā€™s injunction against SEPTAā€™s decision to eliminate transfers. And, as I will explain below, it was not just the great legal work of Mark Zecca and Stella Tsai but also the opposition of citizens to the elimination of transfers that made the difference. Continue reading

SEPTA to city: stick it

I did something unusual for a transit activist the other day. I didnā€™t protest SEPTAā€™s new fare increases for tokens and transfers. Instead, I said that while I had some doubts about whether fares needed to be increased as much as SEPTA claimed, I thought it was much better for transit agencies to have regular, small increases than to sock riders heavily every five or six years. And I also said that along with proposing small increases in tokens and transfers, SEPTA should drop its appeal of Judge DiVitoā€™s decision blocking their plan to eliminate transfers. The new fare increases are meant to make up for the revenues lost due to Judge DiVitoā€™s decision. Until the SEPTA Board Meeting last Thursday, SEPTA said that it would rescind these fare increases if the courts allow the elimination of transfers to proceed. At that meeting they adopted a proposal that brings theā€¦ Continue reading

Feeling the pain of the MTA and SEPTA

I donā€™t often feel sorry for government agencies. But, in the aftermath of yesterdayā€™s shutdown of parts of the New York City subway system after a major rainstorm flooded subway tunnels right before rush hour, Iā€™m sharing the pain of the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA). We have very little tolerance for failure in the United States whether it be personal failures, the failures of corporations orā€”what is most intolerableā€”the failure of public agencies to do their jobs. Most of the time, we should have high standards. People should do their jobs and businesses and governments should provide the goods and services they are supposed to. Iā€™m not here to make excuses for a Philadelphia Police Department that canā€™t get a handle on violent crime or a Department of Human Services that regularly loses tracks of children at risk. But accidents happen. And when those accidents are due to circumstances thatā€¦ Continue reading

Live blogging the SEPTA transfer hearing

Iā€™m going to try live blogging from the courtroom where the SEPTA hearing is going on. The highlight so far has been the introduction of a letter from the federal transportation administration to SEPTA telling it that it is inappropriate to raise fares without a study of the possible disparate impact on the poor and racial minorities. Chris Zearfoss, of the cityā€™SEPTA strategic planning team, has been explaining why SEPTAā€™s estimates of the percentage of riders who use transfers is absurdly low (8%). SEPTA uses as the denominator in its calculations what the industry jargon calls ā€œunlinked trips.ā€ If you transfer twice to get to your destination, you take 3 unlinked trips. If you want to know how many PEOPLE are affected by the elimination of transfers the proper denominator is linked trips. By that calculation, Zearfoss concluded that 19% of riders use transfer. Last week SEPTA estimated the costā€¦ Continue reading

SEPTA Transfer Hearing Monday 10:00

Another Hearing on SEPTA Transfers Last week, after a day-long hearing, Judge Gary DeVito issued a temporary injunction blocking SEPTA from eliminating transfers. (See stories in the Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer.) Judge DeVito had planned to issue a final ruling tomorrow. But he now has called for another hearing on the transfer issue on Monday. It will be at 10:00 in his courtroom, City Hall, Room 232. Come join transit activists from around the city to express your support for transfers. You can join us for a few minutes or all day. Continue reading

Transfers forever

The Confusion Over Transfers Conceptual confusion has marred the transfer debate ever since SEPTA wrongly justified eliminating transfers by saying that they would not be necessary once an electronic fare system was in place. I spent some time trying to correct the confusion in blogs and my emails. But the politics of saving transfers took precedence over the clarifying the difference senses of ā€œtransfers.ā€ So now is a good time to get some clarity about the multiple meaning of ā€œtransfersā€ and, also, about what moving to an electronic fare system might mean for our fare structure. Two meanings of ā€œtransfersā€ We use the word ā€œtransfersā€ to talk about two different things. The first is what, from now on, Iā€™m going to call ā€œpaper transfersā€ that is, the physical mechanism by which SEPTA implements a reduced fare for someone who takes two (or more) different buses or trains on one tripā€¦ Continue reading