The Pennsylvania State Senate has decided that the transit system of America’s fifth largest city should be substantially destroyed. Similar dramas are playing out in Illinois, Oregon, and Rhode Island. Each crisis has arisen from the state legislature’s refusal to find new funding to save public transit, but Pennsylvania is the first state to actually push its biggest transit agency over the cliff.
(Oregon will be next to decide, at a special legislative session in late August. Look for action in Illinois later this fall.)
In the Philadelphia area, SEPTA is making a 20% service cut but will eventually have to cut service 45%. Cutting almost half of a transit system is not a way to make it more efficient. It more like asking whether you’d like to keep your heart or your lungs. Back in 2018 our firm did a detailed study of the Philadelphia network, and while we found many things to improve, none of those things would save even 10%, even if there weren’t unmet needs on which any savings should be spent.
So this will be a disaster with far reaching consequences. A city whose high density makes transit essential for the city’s functioning will soon not function very well. Service cuts will push transit riders back into cars (either as drivers or as people being given rides) triggering increased congestion. It will also cause people to lose jobs and opportunities due to lack of transportation.
From what I can tell, the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania State Senate seems to be motivated by pure cultural animus toward urban life. One state representative has already replied with a proposal to return tax revenues to the county from which they came, to make the point that the rural counties are actually net recipients of government spending that is funded by urban -generated prosperity.
This raises one of the most insidious aspects of how many US states have constructed the powers of local governments. Conservative state leaders appear to be nearly unanimous in their view that big cities should be prevented from governing themselves. In particular, they are committed to denying local governments the freedom to ask their own voters to raise their own taxes to pay for things that they value. The idea is to make city governments helpless while continuing to blame them for everything that goes wrong in cities. It plays well in conservative media, but it’s not fair and it’s certainly not democracy. When dense cities are not allowed to fund their services in a way that reflects their needs and values, it guarantees that the city will be a site of failure — failure that will be especially visible to the media because in dense cities everything is more visible.
A good backgrounder on this, which I’m reading now, is historian Steven Cohn’s book Americans against the City. It’s a history of anti-urbanism the explains how foundational hating cities has been to America’s sense of itself. None of which changes the fact that cities are engines of prosperity, and that to hate the city is to hate your own prosperity.
Cities need more transit. Rural areas need more roads. Let’s let everyone pay for what they value.
Jarrett, I’m a lifelong Philadelphian and lifelong non-car owner who lives in the (very walkable) center of the city. I keenly feel the pain of the situation you describe so well here.
May I share your piece with friends and post it on my pathetic little Instagram account, https://www.instagram.com/janicetheeditor/ ? I have no other social media presence, and no LinkedIn, either. I’m a freelance editor and Lecturer in Communication at the Wharton School at Penn.
Before the current political insanity, I would have been certain that SEPTA would not be permitted to suffer this fate. At this point, though, just about anything seems possible, though I still hold out a sliver of hope that our extremely ambitious governor will pull some rabbit out of a hat.
Thanks and best regards– Janice
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Janice. Of course you can share with attribution and a link back to the original.
The real problem is that SEPTA is financed by the state government. This is absurd. Why should people in rural Pennsylvania support transit in Philadelphia? They have no interest in doing that. This needs to be changed if SEPTA shall survive. SEPTA should be financed by the counties served by SEPTA.
I thought Jarrett explained pretty well why the wider population of a state or a nation would want the population of its cities to be well served by transportation. And how that provides prosperity for all. Maybe I’ll have to read his article again…
Why should residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania be responsible for funding rural roads? Democrats have repeatedly tried to pass legislation allowing SEPA to tax itself, but Republicans in the state legislature have consistently blocked those efforts.
Why should tax revenues in the Philadelphia area support rural Pennsylvania? If you really want to go that route, I’m confident that rural counties would quickly run out of money, especially for infrastructure improvements.
“Why should tax revenues in the Philadelphia area support rural Pennsylvania?”
To be fair, one reason might be because the residents of Philadelphia need to eat. There’s not enough land in cities to be food self-sufficient, so cities need rural farms in order to exist. And only way for the food to get from the farm to the city involves trucks driving down rural roads.
You’d think someone who spends half his life in a car would have put a little thought into who funds all his roads, and sidewalks, and emergency services.
If you want that, you should also be for funding rural roads using only funding from rural counties.
If so, go ahead.
Urban transport will be fine and rural transport will collapse.
However, Republicans in PA seem to want only rural roads to be funded by the state.
You’re framing this like it’s rural Pennsylvania paying for Philly out of generosity, but that’s not how state finance works. Philadelphia and its suburbs generate a huge amount of tax revenue that goes to Harrisburg. If the city’s economy is strong, the whole state benefits. Cutting SEPTA hurts that economy, which means less money for the state overall.
So why shouldn’t some of the money that Philly sends to Harrisburg come back to support the infrastructure that keeps that engine running? Rural counties benefit from the state’s redistribution all the time, whether it’s road projects, farm subsidies, or school funding. It goes both ways.
If Republicans are going to pretend the city is the enemy, it’s the same problem we see with red and blue states where blue state finance everything in the country and red states get handouts while hating blue states.
Republicans in the state Senate need to recognize septic benefits the entire state.
Johnny,
That is a wonderful argument. And at the same time the rural counties not serviced by SEPTA can pick up 100% of the cost of maintaining their roads, electric grids, and and emergency services. Why should urban counties support the cost of maintaining large infrastructure to support spread out populations? The reason is that we live in a society and we all support each other in the ways that are needed. And that means for the most part urban dwellers who live much more economically efficient lives supporting those who choose not to (and before you go “but the rural areas feed us all” less than 5% of the rural population is actually engaged in agriculture ~150,000 of a total population of 3.4 million)
Oh I agree, Johnny. Let’s take it a step further. Philadelphia tax dollars should not go to rural counties. Rural counties should survive on their own… Oh wait!…
Getting the picture yet?… Probably not.
Simple actually. It’s financed by the state because the area where SEPTA operates is where most Pennsylvanians live. Does that help?
I guess if we’re disallowing the five dollars that flows from rural areas to the city, maybe we should also discuss the five hundred dollars that flows from the city to rural areas? After all, that won’t benefit the millions of Pennsylvanians that live in the cities. Seems fair.
Just because people in certain counties don’t ride SEPTA doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from it. Philly drives a huge part of Pennsylvania’s economy, and keeping the city moving helps the whole state through jobs, tax revenue, and business. Plus, we all pay for plenty of things we don’t personally use — rural highways, farm subsidies, or hospitals in areas we’ll never visit — because the system works better when costs and benefits are shared. Transit is no different. Even folks outside the city gain from less highway congestion, stronger state finances, and a more connected region.
Jarrett already explained this. People in rural Pennsylvania should support transit in Philadelphia because they benefit disproportionately from the prosperity of the biggest city in the commonwealth. Take note of that word: commonwealth. They should support it because it is essential to their common well-being.
If you think rural Pennsylvania’s have no stake in the city that generates the vast majority of the states revenue, fine but let’s then also have the state defund all of the programs that “only” benefit rural Pennsylvania and let the local counties take up the burden. After all why should Philadelphia support those programs? “they have not interest in doing that”.
The entire point of this post is that the state DIDN’T do that. The state as FORBIDDEN Philadelphia and the local counties from raising taxes to close this funding gap. Rather than recognize the shard interest in everyone’s success and economic prospects, or at least the right of self government, the state has elected to punish the city that is the heart of its economy. Because they feel like it.
Why should city residents support roads in rural Pennsylvania? Perhaps everyone in Philly would be happy to keep their gas tax dollars and spend them on city priorities like transit, vs. repaving some road in central PA that they never drive on and never will drive on?
Rural folks are heavily subsidized by urban and suburban drivers and taxpayers. There’s no way that a rural road with, say, 5 homes on it ever pays enough tax to repave that road. Rural roads cost something like $2-3 million to repave… and the median home in PA pays $3K in property taxes while the median car owner pays about $300 in gas tax every year… gonna take a lot of years for those rural roads to “pay for themeselves” in the same way that you’re demanding transit do in cities.
I think you’re not understanding that most of the funding for everything comes from cities. Rural roads and other rural public works projects are funded by the taxes from the city residents and business.
The real problem is populations leaving rural Pennsylvania en masse for better opportunities in the city. Why should people in Philadelphia pay to maintain your highways? They have no interest in doing that. This needs to be changed if rural Pennsylvania is to survive. Highway projects should be financed by the counties served by new highways.
its illegal in the state of PA for localities to tax and fund services so they can’t do that unless rules are changed.
It plays out time and again that rural areas typically receive more in government spending, on a per capital basis, than larger cities.
People in Philadelphia ARE paying for SEPTA. They’re also paying for roads and other infrastructure in rural Pennsylvania that would be a massive burden on the folks that lived there if they had to pay the full cost themselves.
Then why should urban counties support governmental costs in rural Pennsylvania counties? Let each county pay for all services with the tax money raised in that county. Soon the rural counties will be cutting poiice, fire, roads, hospitals and other services because the money used to pay for these services comes from the urban counties.
The “why should urban areas support rural areas” is a dangerous one for urbanists or transit advocates. At least in Pennsylvania, it is not the urban areas with the wealth, but the suburban ones. The city/county of Philadelphia is among the poorest third of counties by per capita income; the wealthiest are the suburban ring counties like Chester, Montgomery and Bucks. If you take the attitude of “urban areas won’t help poor rural ones”, you run the risk of suburban counties deciding they won’t help poor urban ones. In that case the Main Line commuter rail would be well funded, but Philadelphia would have few local busses. More generically, almost every transit system is subsidized, what if that attitude was extended to an individual level: transit users have to pay full operating costs out of fares, with income tax from people who drive being used for roads only, never trains or busses. This would be terrible for transit.
Septa serves Chester, Montgomery and Bucks counties. Septa != Philadelphia
This is true, but if you can make the argument that SE Pennsylvania should keep its tax money at home to spend in SEPTA instead of sending it to the state, then Bucks and Chester can make the argument that THEY should keep their tax money in the county instead of sending it to SEPTA. This would be equally disastrous for SEPTA and for the City of Phila. SE Pennsylvania is wealthy but Phila. is poor like many rural counties in the state. SEPTA might not equal Phila., but it is overwhelming focused there (all of the subway except one station, most trolley lines, the majority of frequent busses, etc. SEPTA is facing the fiscal cliff because during COVID those people in Bucks and Chester etc. learned that they don’t have to go downtown to get their wealth. They no longer have a big investment on the SEPTA service that does reach them (mainly commuter rail). Making the argument that the rich places get to keep their money won’t work out the way you think it will.
If I framed the argument that rich people should keep their money and billionaires shouldn’t pay more in taxes to subsidize ‘poor’ transit consultants like Jarrett, liberals and transit advocates would howl about inequity. But define it as rich cities vs poor rural counties and suddenly those same liberals are all about leaving the poor to their own devices (if they are conservative poor people). Isn’t the left supposed to want to take money from those more rich to help make things better for the poor?
Because the people in these rural areas don’t generate enough tax revenue to take care of themselves. The 5-county Philadelphia area that is served by SEPTA generates the lion’s share of our state’s tax revenue and much of that goes into keeping these rural areas functioning. But if you’d prefer to take that view, why do the people in the Philadelphia area pay for roads and schools in the rural areas. I know at one time they only kept 60% of our highway taxes, the rest going to the “taker” rural counties. So allow them to keep 100% of their highway taxes, the portion of the PA Turnpike tax we generate, and the vast majority of their income and corporate taxes and let the rural counties try to find some way to take care of themselves. Good luck with that.
State law prohibits the sepa counties from raising their own transit tax to do that. The GOP won’t ever let such a law to pass because their goal is to hurt Philadelphia. I notice that you don’t have any problem with sepa residents paying for rural roads though. Do you really not see the hypocrisy?
I thought Jarrett explained pretty well why the wider population of a state or a nation would want the population of its cities to be well served by transportation. And how that provides prosperity for all. Maybe I’ll have to read his article again…
The real question should be why people in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties would want to continue to subsidize the rest of the state when their lawmakers consistently vote against the majority’s interests.
Johnny, the rural area transportation is “subsidized” not vice versa. It is not in the urban dwellers interest to make farmers run on dirt roads, and not in the interest of farmers to have a weak city that cannot afford to buy their goods.
Furthermore, every region needs occasional major investments. They cannot raise this money all by themselves.
The larger issue is that redevelopment of Philadelphia, Greater Delaware Valley, Southern NJ, Eastern PA has not been part of a competitive growth regional economic coalition to make it a 1 Trillion economic corridor with 10 million people by 2040..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_metropolitan_area
Without full integration of the region then the transit masterplan is limited as the connections are too limited, high friction, legacy etc..
The region should have a Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonino focus of transformation in terms of friendly for business, investors, building (housing, commercial, retail etc..)..
There is a massive shift required for the region to compete to create the investment to massively expand the regions transit..
You don’t seem to understand that undermining the Philadelphia economy reduces the state taxes that are collected and get distributed to the rural areas far in excess of what they pay. They are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The first paragraph of your post contradicts the rest. Later paragraphs paint this as a Democrat-vs-Republican story, but Illinois, Rhode Island, and Oregon (states mentioned in your first paragraph) are Democrat-dominated.
To be fair, those other states are still trying to find solutions. They have other political problems to deal with, but at least there it isn’t inherent hostility to cities. Mostly it’s just trying to figure out how best to pay for it. We’ll see how their transit cliffs unfold soon enough, but hopefully it won’t be as foolish as what’s happening in PA.
They really aren’t, though, outside of their big cities. I’m less familiar with Illinois, but here in Oregon, it doesn’t take being far out of Metro Portland before you start to see lots of Trump paraphernalia.
I did a study many years ago comparing state funding for transit in different states and came away thinking that the most robust and secure funding for transit was in places that had authorized significant local funding options and had little reliance on state funds.
Transit funding needs are most concentrated in urban areas, but most state legislators are from rural areas, and as transportation modes get caught up in the culture war between urban and rural America, state transit funding is vulnerable. And when states do provide substantial funding the strings attached can be onerous, like requiring unsustainably high farebox recovery rates.
Meanwhile, urban voters are usually more than willing to support high and consistent levels of taxation for transit even if they don’t use it. If I was in a state legislature I’d focus on a level of state funding that can keep transit systems in small cities sustainable, but enable and rely on local revenue to support the larger urban systems.
Urban transit was experiencing a bit of a renaissance in the late 2010s, new thinking like all door boarding and fare capping; new projects including subways in NY, SF, LA; big expansion plans in Seattle and Denver. Then COVID happened, and people were told to stay home, which means that they didn’t ride transit. The only reason SEPTA is facing a fiscal cliff is because of the dramatic ridership and fare revenue losses that have persisted over the past five years. Jarrett talks about cultural animus towards urban life from conservatives, and that to hate cities and aggregation is to hate prosperity. However, the people that did the most to negatively effect urban prosperity was not rural conservatives, but urban liberals who for months or years argued against coming together in a city center. Millions of people found that they could generate prosperity from a home office, and no longer had to take transit to get to the downtown office.
This is only partially true. Most Philadelphia business have returned to offices at least in a hybrid mode. Total numbers of rides per week is down (and thus total revenue is down) but the number of actual people relying on septa each week fir their in-office days is mostly recovered. We’re at 80% of pre-Covid ridership. Agree that this is a problem but I think your comments suggest people don’t use septa anymore, which is just not the case.
https://recovery.septa.org/
The fact that ridership has partially recovered doesn’t make my argument partially true. The fact is that the stay-at-home orders caused a plummet in transit ridership that has directly led to this crisis. The transit system doesn’t run on “how many people used us sometime this month”, it runs on revenue, and the same number of users riding less often equals less revenue. This is a problem that urban areas brought on themselves.
I live and work in South Philadelphia. SEPTA is already unreliable enough and now they are cutting service? I don’t understand how this works! I’m retiring in 5-6 years but still…I will be dependent on public transport to get to my doctor and to shop. It’s almost as if they want to see working class people suffer. We’re the ones that need public transit the most.
I spent my first 30 years using private and public transportation in Philadelphia. My much older brother and my father rode the PTC, Reading and Pennsy RR when they were private companies before SEPTA in 1963. We were trolley and RR buffs and believe thoroughly in public transportation. My brother even wrote a paper on the demise of the trolley systems in the US engineered in the 50’s and 60’s by GM to sell busses.
In the next 33 years I lived in York PA. While a small city, it is a rural area that fits your view of the non large city PA rural counties. So I have experienced both sides of the coin equally in terms of years. I actually agree that SEPTA should be funded. Rural governments like York have their own misplaced spending issues. However I can tell you firsthand that the corruption and at times ridiculous misuse of funds by both the Philadelphia City and surrounding County governments and SEPTA over the past 60+ years has been the main source of this current situation.
The burden for the bill should be born by Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery Delaware and Chester Counties. They are the prime beneficiaries of the SEPTA system. Some outlying destinations on the rail system lie outside those jurisdictions, but they are few and not significant.
Yes, Cities can provide an economic engine to assist rural economies in a state. However they have a responsibility to run their affairs honestly and efficiently. They have become too used to having their lack of fiscal responsibility bailed out by Federal and State tax monies that are not generated by their own constituency. The reason they are so poor as you state is their own mismanagement. It is therefore not surprising that the wake up call is being issued not only on the state level to Philadelphia and SEPTA, but on the national level as well. If you want to take it to a political level as you infer, then ask why over all these years the situation has only gotten worse in the cities? My brother was intimately involved in this city’s politics even running for mayor. I saw and still see the real problem. Your article suggests we are all in this together. Those in power in the cities over the past 60 years do not share your view. For them it’s about power and keeping it. That conflicts directly in doing what is right for the people they govern. Power by any means necessary including using other people’s money. The clock has been stuck for too long. The pendulum is now finally swingin the other way.
Looking at this from Europe, including the political panorama that is going in the US (or should I say disaster), it surely looks like the fall of the Roman Empire. It amazes me how the US still is the biggest economy in the world and I really wonder how common people get day by day without snapping.