Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 28, 2004
The artful compromise is one of the highest accomplishments in politics. Our great politicians are those who can bring opposites together or frame an issue in a way that generates broad support.
Right now, politics here is, with one exception, at an impasse. Our mayor and City Council are struggling over budget and tax issues. Transit agencies and commuters are pleading with state officials to provide the new, dedicated funding that would enable them to avoid disastrous cutbacks or equally debilitating fare increases. The governor and General Assembly are divided about education policy. Gov. Rendell’s Growing Greener II environmental program is an anathema to Republicans. It is only on the issue of slot machines that Democrats and Republicans seem to agree.
The solution to all our difficulties then is obvious: Put slot machines on SEPTA commuter trains.
You may laugh at the connection, but not all that long ago, Rendell, when he was mayor, proposed gambling on riverboats. What did riverboats have to do with Philadelphia? Trains, on the other hand, are central to our history. Given that most of the slot machines are to be placed at racetracks, artful politicians can certainly paper over the differences between horses and iron horses.
The benefits of this proposal are obvious. Putting slot machines on the trains would dramatically increase ridership. That, together with a small cut of the gambling take, would get SEPTA out of the red. Moreover, SEPTA would have a strong incentive to greatly increase the number of trains it runs. Those of us who live in Germantown, Chestnut Hill or Mount Airy might not be the most dedicated gamblersābut enough of us would start riding the train to justify giving back our half-hourly midday service on the R8 line. As gambling can be an all-night business, this proposal might finally persuade SEPTA to let the last trains run later than Quaker midnight.
Expansion of the train system soon would follow the introduction of slot machines. Transit experts tell us that commuters prefer “one-seat” rides, that is, trips that do not require them to change trains. But the many transit agencies in the region cannot seem to work together to make this possible. The appeal of slot-machine ridesāand the money generated by themāwould overcome the inertia that prevents New Jersey Transit and PATCO from cooperating with SEPTA.
If we transit activists are correct, more frequent trains would have an enormous positive effect on the local economy. The Philadelphia region would just take off. The environmental impact would be striking as well. Think about the reduction in pollution when gambling seduces 100,000 commuters out of their cars. Think, too, about how much we could reduce sprawl if suburbanites had a strong incentive to live near the train stations. Growing Greener would be made unnecessary by this proposal.
Putting slots on commuter trains also would solve the wage-tax issue. A slice of gambling revenues, plus all the revenue that would be created by business expansion, would enable the city to eliminate the wage tax entirely.
Some people think slot-machine gambling is a regressive way to raise revenue. There is a solution: We can bring back private railcars and use them for high-stakes poker, chemin de fer, and other games of chance open only to those rich enough to meet the minimum stake. Specialized betting also could be allowed on certain trains. Sports betting, for example, might be limited to the Broad Street Line on the day of sporting events.
Other sources of new revenue could be tapped as well. Gambling is known to bring a variety of other vices in its wake. We should put them on the trains, too. The aphrodisiac properties of train travel are well known, and Amtrak has plenty of easily refurbished sleeper cars for sale.
One final benefit should be mentioned. Gambling operations on the scale we are considering require powerful computers to run slot machines and monitor fraud. We could surely allow SEPTA a little time on those machines to finally get its computer-controlled systems working properly. And maybe we could also use these computers as a backbone for a 21st-century transit-ticketing system.
There will no doubt be problems to work out. We may need special no-slots rail cars for people who actually want to get to work or for those of us who cannot read our morning paper in dimly lit gambling cars. There may also have to be gambling-free cars for schoolchildren. On the other hand, if we ask the school system to tailor mathematics lessons to the needs of gamblers, interest in the subject might dramatically rise.
These problems, however, are just minor details. I have every confidence that once our transit agency receives the funding it needsāand once we light up their offices at 1234 Market St. with neonāSEPTA executives will be inspired to find the solutions.