The Commonwealth Court ruled today against SEPTA in its appeal of Judge DiVito’s injunction against SEPTA’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.
You may recall that Judge DiVito had ruled that SEPTA’s decision to eliminate transfers was “capricious”. In the words of Judge Doris Smith-Ribner, who wrote today’s decision, Judge DiVito held that “ the evidence demonstrated that SEPTA’s Board voted to eliminate paper transfers to mollify the legislature in hopes of ensuring funding, without any study of the impact on those who would be most adversely affected, without any semblance of a “modernization plan” ready and with no agreement with the Philadelphia School District in place, when they could have designed a plan with an equitable impact on all riders. In view of the real potential for harm to those who most heavily rely upon SEPTA, the trial court concluded that the decision was “capricious” and was a manifest and flagrant abuse of the Board’s discretion.”
The Court today did not reconsider Judge DiVito’s decision. Instead it held that the whole issues was now moot, mainly because on September 27 the SEPTA Board adopted a new fare proposal, one that instead of eliminating transfers, raised the price of tokens and transfers by 15 cents. At that time, SEPTA Board explicitly rejected a proposal to eliminate transfers and rescind the fare increases if the Commonwealth Court ruled in its favor and overturned Judge DiVito’s injunction. Instead, the SEPTA Board decided that if it were to win in Commonwealth Court, it would revisit the transfer issue. In the Commonwealth Court’s view, by taking that step SEPTA adopted a new fare structure, one which did not include the elimination of transfers. As a result, any further decision by SEPTA to eliminate transfers would create a whole new legal issue and set of facts which would have to be argued from the beginning.
Having decided that that case was moot, the Court did not have to rule on the substance of Judge DiVito’s decision.
So why did we win? For two reasons.
The first is that the city’s legal team cleverly recognized that the SEPTA Board’s decision to adopt a new fare structure had legal implications that SEPTA had not expected. So let’s thank Mark Zecca and Stella Tsai for recognizing this and for making a powerful argument in their briefs and in court. And thank Mayor Street, too, for directing the city to oppose the elimination of transfers in Court.
But the legal strategy only worked because SEPTA partly backed down on transfers. And they did that because of you. The SEPTA Board room was packed on September 27th by citizens and activists who opposed the elimination of transfers. Every speaker that day was on our side, from Lance Haver to Irv Ackelsberg to the representative of DVARP (I don’t remember who spoke for them that day.) And those who were not in the room had made their voices clear by signing the petitions circulated in person and on-line by the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition. SEPTA was, for once, bowing, if only a little to public pressure. So you can all thank yourselves for this result.
Will SEPTA now go back and try to eliminate transfers again? I hope not. The revised transit fare plan is working and few have objected to a small fare increase. There is no need for SEPTA and the city to waste more money on legal fees in defense of an indefensible proposal to eliminate transfers.
I have to admit it is nice to win and nice to see SEPTA back down in the face of public pressure, if only a little. But we shouldn’t gloat about this whole unfortunate episode. What we really need to improve transit in our city is not confrontation but collaboration, between the city and SEPTA, between the city and the counties that pay for SEPTA, between the city, SEPTA and the state that is providing new dedicated funding, and between SEPTA and its riders. We need to be working together to forge a vision of a twenty first century transit system in our region.
We are about to inaugurate a new Mayor who will, I expect, lead us to a 21st century transit system. I hope that the transfer issue comes to an end today so we can start working together with him to attain that goal.