Another Hearing on SEPTA Transfers<\/p>\n
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.)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
No one I know is entirely sure what issues prompted Judge DeVito to call the hearing. Perhaps he wants more information about one of the following issues:<\/p>\n
1. SEPTA’s claim that ending transfers is necessary to moving to a new electronic fare system, a claim that I have refuted at the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition website. Ronnie Polaneczky picked up this part of the story in her Daily News column on Friday.<\/p>\n
2. SEPTA’s failure to follow the Federal Transportation Administration requirement that transit agencies must do an analysis of the impact of fare and service changes on racial minorities and the poor. SEPTA admitted last week that it does not perform such an analysis. And, the city\u2019s attorney\u2019s showed last week that, while fares for children and adults who take one or two transfers will go up anywhere from 36 to 200%, fares for some people in the suburbs will decline 27%.<\/p>\n
Other transit agencies do this kind of analysis. And they publish the results. For example, when the MBTA in Boston raised fares and changed service in 2002, it put a lengthy analysis of its proposal on-line. A section of that document (beginning on page 25) discusses the impact of the fare increase and service changes on the poor and minorities.<\/p>\n
There is no question that the elimination of transfers will have a unfair impact on the poor and minorities. Even if Judge DeVito does not accept the city\u2019s claim that SEPTA\u2019s new fares violate the Equal Protection Claus of the 14th amendment\u2014and that argument is not implausible\u2014he could well rule that SEPTA\u2019s fare decisions were unreasonable or a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion.<\/p>\n
(Here is another unresolved legal point that might come: SEPTA insists that the Court of Common Pleas can only overturn a SEPTA fare decision if it is a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion. The city says that is only has to show that SEPTA\u2019s decision is unreasonable.)<\/p>\n
3. SEPTA\u2019s failure to follow the sunshine laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. At its July meeting, a member of the board talked about the long discussion of the transfer issue that had taken place at its executive session. However the sunshine laws require that such discussions take place in public. At the hearing before Judge DeVito last week, SEPTA claimed that these discussions were irrelevant because the decision to eliminate transfers had been made in May. But the SEPTA by-laws and the state legislation that created SEPTA clearly allowed the agency to change its mind on the elimination of transfer in July.<\/p>\n
By the way, at its July meeting, a member of the SEPTA Board claimed the agency could not reverse its decision on transfers because such a change would require another set of public hearings. This is false, for two different reasons. First, the SEPTA Board always has the power to modify fares for up to 90 days without a hearing. And, second, when the City challenged SEPTA for adopting a fare proposal\u2014the so-called hybrid proposal\u2014that had not been put forward at public hearings, SEPTA\u2019s attorney pointed out that the agency has the authority to adopt any fare proposal that would be only a small modification of the proposals that had been put forward at public hearings. Since one of the proposals considered at public hearings before the May meeting did not eliminate transfers, the SEPTA Board clearly had the right at its July meeting to keep transfers.<\/p>\n
The Broader Ramifications of the Transfer Issue<\/p>\n
That a board member claimed in July that SEPTA could not keep transfers is just one more example of SEPTA\u2019s willingness to mislead the public about what it is doing and why. And that points to one of the critical issues at stake in the fight over transfers. (Another example is SEPTA\u2019s utterly false claim that it must eliminate transfers as part of the effort to move to an electronic fare system.)<\/p>\n
And this event points to one more issue at stake in the fight to save transfers. Saving transfers is critically important for its own sake, because so many of the adults and school children who depend on transfers can\u2019t afford to pay an additional 36% or 55% and because it is unfair for SEPTA to raise fares on the people in Philadelphia it serves least well.<\/p>\n
But the transfer issue also has broader ramifications. Now that SEPTA has received at least part of the dedicated funding it has long needed, it is time for us all to start working on the dramatic improvements in our transit system we have also long needed. We need both big changes\u2014new transit lines and massive improvements in existing lines\u2014and small changes\u2014cleaner trains, buses, and station; more sensible schedules; more timely information and so on. We won\u2019t get either the big or small changes we need unless SEPTA is willing to start working with\u2014and listen to\u2014community groups and political leaders. And a critical element of working together is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Whether<\/p>\n
Whether deliberately or because it did not care to work with the community, SEPTA has not listened or talked honestly to the public in the past. It is time for it to start, even if it has to be forced to do so by judicial order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-uV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5959,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions\/5959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}