Join us as the SEPTA Board meeting today, Thursday July 26 to protest SEPTA’s decision to eliminate transfer as of August 1.
The SEPTA Board meets at 3:00 PM on the mezzanine level at 1234 Market Street.
No one is exactly sure why SEPTA is so determined to eliminate transfers since, once we factor in the loss of ridership that will inevitably when transfers are eliminated, it is very hard to believe that they will save much money. After all, anyone who needs a transfer to travel on SEPTA to work five days a week and to take one other round trip on the weekend will find that it makes more sense to buy a pass.
The only ones, in other words, for whom the pass makes no sense, are occasional SEPTA riders. Their fares will rise by 36% if they use one transfer and 55% if they use two.
Occasional riders who can afford alternatives to SEPTA are likely to take them…thereby costing SEPTA riders immediately and discouraging people from getting in the habit of using Public Transit.
Those who can’t afford alternatives, on the other hand, will face serious problems in paying for the fare increase. And some of them may forced to put off trips—to a doctors, to see their children’s teachers, to a day program, to the library, to a class, to a drug rehab program, to visit relatives——that they should be taking.
SEPTA has never provided any specific estimate of the money it would save by ending transfers nor any analysis about how it would save money. That is why transit experts around the city don’t understand SEPTA’s plans.
Sign our on-line petition , demanding that SEPTA keep the transfers. Or you can contact SEPTA at 215-580-7800
Response to Daily News Editorial
Last week, the Daily News supported the elimination of transfers. My response to their editorial follows:
To the Editorial Board.
Your editorial is a very poor piece of analysis.
First, If SEPTA wants, finally, to push the school district to move to passes rather than transfers, then it can do so without eliminating transfers for folks who use SEPTA occasionally and for whom passes make no financial sense. We at the PTC would certainly help them in that effort if it makes sense. But, as usual, SEPTA doesn’t want to take the direct route and encourage activists and politicians to address an issue openly. That might mean actually listening to what other folks have to say. Instead they are bullying the city, riders and everyone else to get what they want.
By the way, it is not clear that moving schools kids to passes instead of tokens and transfers does make sense. We have heard stories of people, sometims including the boyfriends of mothers, lifting the tokens from kids. I don’t know often it occurs, but if it does occur, it is a problem likely to worsen worse when we start issuing kids passes. It would be nice if someone actually did a little research before taking a step that would create hardships for kids and more problems in already troubled families.
Second, the result would be self-defeating. No sensible transit agency would take any action that would make it harder for occasional riders to use the system. That is not how you build up rider-ship.
Third, eliminating transfers is simply not a necessary step, as you suggest, to moving to an electronic fare system. When we make that move, transfers will go away. There is no need to get rid of them in advance.
Fourth, if only a small percentage of SEPTA riders use transfers what is the urgency of getting rid of them? They clearly can’t cost SEPTA all that much money. And, anyway, SEPTA’s shortfall after the July fare increase was about $100 million and they are getting $140 to $156 million from the state. Money is not the issue.
Fifth, to the extent that your notion that transfers are unnecessary because passes make more financial sense is true, then why get rid of transfers? People are not stupid and will move to transfers of their own accord unless they find it difficult to pay the whole cost of a pass at once—and there are some folks like that in this city. The fact is that SEPTA is—or should be—more worried about the opposite case. They did not increase the base fare and cost of tokens and did increase and the cost of passes. So, it is possible that some people will start using tokens and transfers instead of passes. That actually may be a serious concern. It depends upon how many people use the pass for five workday trips and no more. (And try getting those numbers out of SEPTA.) But it is a problem that could be easily fixed with some judicious tinkering with various fares. SEPTA didn’t need to kill transfers to solve the problem. I suspect that they decided to kill transfers for other reasons and then made fare decisions that didn’t take this issue into account.
Finally, for those people who ride SEPTA occasionally—and who are either marginally employed or are taking SEPTA on non-work related trips that are probably important to them such as a visit to a doctor—passes make no sense. They are facing a fare increase of 36 or 55%. This is cruel and unfair.