On Sept. 8, Governor Josh Shapiro’s (D-PA) administration allowed the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) to use $394 million from a state trust fund designated for long-term public transportation maintenance. The money represents a one-time infusion that will allow the agency to reverse (for now) the severe service cuts that the region has been dreading.
Despite the relief that it offers, many advocates feel that the decision is yet another temporary solution to a fundamental problem. “We’re running out of flexing,” noted Tim Kearney (D-26), Swarthmore’s state senator, in an interview with The Phoenix. Temporary fixes like this one — along with a similar move Shapiro made in December to flex federal highway money for SEPTA and the federal COVID relief the agency received — do not provide the structural, consistent funding that would address the $213 million deficit in its budget that has left SEPTA in a years-long crisis mode. That funding would have to be appropriated by the state legislature — “where it really should be coming from,” according to Kearney.
Kearney said the inability of the state legislature to adequately fund the public agency results from crucial misunderstandings of its funding structure. Republicans, skeptical of providing more funding for public transit, see the regional borders of SEPTA’s services as mismatched with the state-wide funding it relies on. What Democratic leaders tried to make clear in budget negotiations all summer, however, was the way that the transit network empowers the Philadelphia area to be the economic hub of the state and, by extension, send a disproportionate amount of tax revenue up to Harrisburg.
SEPTA’s ongoing warnings about its deficit and an April announcement of deep service cuts set the stage for a high-profile legislative battle to take place as Pennsylvania’s divided government met to pass the 2025-26 state budget. The stopgap funding is only the last event in that saga. “I think the most interesting thing about [the stopgap funding] is that the legislative battle never ended,” Kearney said.
Despite having Shapiro in the governor’s Mansion and control of the Pennsylvania House, state Republicans were able to use their majority in the Senate, whose approval would be necessary for any deal, to block any progress on the issue. John Caskey, Joseph Wharton professor of history and political economy at Swarthmore, who calls himself the “dean” of Swarthmore’s train commuters, emphasized those political fundamentals to The Phoenix. “The Democrats tend to support giving more transportation funding to public transit (which serve far more people in urban areas); the Republicans tend to favor giving more for highway infrastructure,” he said. “The state legislature could not overcome this divide.”
The lack of progress on SEPTA funding became clear in the final weeks of the summer, diminishing the early optimism many felt about the chances for a solution. When the agency originally announced the cuts in April, Democratic leaders decided that the best way to save SEPTA and public transit agencies around the state would be to show the economic value that rendered them too crucial to cut. Even deep into budget negotiations, leaders like Kearney kept holding out hope that Shapiro and House leadership were nearing a deal with Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-41) that would include a long-term revenue-sharing plan for state public transit agencies.
It was clear what kind of revenue-sharing plan Shapiro and Democrats in the House wanted out of any negotiations. Over the past couple of years, while SEPTA has made its financial woes known, Shapiro has proposed and the House has passed (in multiple different forms) a plan to allocate 1.75% more ($292.5 million) of the commonwealth’s yearly sales tax revenue to mass transit agencies all over the state, many of which are financially underwater. Had the Republican-controlled Senate approved this bill, SEPTA, the largest mass transit agency in Pennsylvania, would have received $161 million in new yearly funding. According to former SEPTA CEO and General Manager Leslie Richards, this amount would have allowed the agency to stave off cuts, but is less than its current deficit.
Before the summer, there was much discussion about state Republicans potentially wanting to tax the “skill games” — arcade-style gambling terminals that have proliferated in bars, stores, and elsewhere — in Pennsylvania to pay for any new transit funding. Kearney and many Democrats felt that this was “a cynical approach,” citing the higher prevalence and usage of such games in poorer communities, but were willing to compromise to reach an important deal for transportation funding.
Despite this potential opening for a deal, the Senate Republican caucus never reached agreement on whether and how to tax the games. This was not the only funding proposal that fell on deaf ears. Kearney told The Phoenix about a Transportation Advisory Committee study that found that a simple $1 tax on ecommerce packages (which require public infrastructure to get to their destination) would potentially raise $750 million in revenue every year, likely more than is necessary to address the deficits that public transit agencies around the state, including SEPTA, are facing in this period where federal COVID funding has run dry.
In retrospect, Republicans’ unwillingness to engage with any such proposals was a sign of their larger skepticism of SEPTA. “None of the arguments were really about the finances,” Kearney observed. “They were really about the sort of tired tropes that the Republicans kept bringing up around waste, fraud, abuse, fare evasion, and the like.”
These narratives have been passed around for years as potential internal failures behind the deficits, but have seen special emphasis in the wake of the brutally anti-spending ideology of President Trump’s federal Department of Government Efficiency.
SEPTA has been receptive to these critiques in recent years, though, cracking down on fare evasion, threats to rider safety, and inefficiencies. While the agency’s leaders travelled to Harrisburg this summer and presented these developments, including its relative efficiency, to Senate Republicans in an attempt to challenge those narratives, the message wouldn’t stick. Kearney commented on this dynamic, saying, “We have lots of issues in this world right now about what truth is.” He continued, “In the end, [Republican obstructionism] had really nothing to do with any of those [financial concerns]. It had to do with the culture war of the rest of Pennsylvania versus Philadelphia.”
Of the Republicans’ usage of their Senate majority to block any long-term funding for SEPTA, Caskey wrote, “I’ve seen previous SEPTA funding crises, but I can’t remember one getting this bad.”
Kearney hypothesized that what could have made this stalemate so strong was its political implications. Shapiro has, in recent years, risen to national prominence after impressive electoral showings and high approval ratings in a perennially important swing state. He was the runner-up to be Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 election and has not shied away from rumors of his ambitions for national office.
“I think there’s a lot of pressure on the Senate Republicans from the Republican National Committee and their national folks to do anything they can do to try to make Shapiro look weak or ineffective,” Kearney shared.
That political clash might go the other direction as well, causing Shapiro to keep authorizing funding flexes to avoid a death spiral for SEPTA under his watch rather than letting the devastating service cuts force Republicans’ hand. “I assume [the danger of appearing ineffective] is the reason why he jumped on the administrative fix,” Kearney wrote.
This recent decision to authorize $394 million from the Public Transportation Trust Fund (PTTF) to keep SEPTA’s full service came after a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge sided with consumer advocates in a high-profile lawsuit alleging that the potential cuts would disproportionately harm Black, Latino, and low-income communities over the wealthier, suburban Regional Rail commuters.
While Judge Sierra Thomas-Street ordered a temporary injunction on any further service cuts, Kearney pointed out that the ruling didn’t offer a remedy and therefore didn’t directly cause the final PTTF solution. “I’m not sure that the lawsuit had much to do with it, but it was because those conversations were going on,” he said.
Still, the implications of using PTTF funds intended for long-term equipment maintenance and growth to enable current service frighten many. “Much of SEPTA’s equipment is old, and taking money from the fund intended to address this problem will create problems down the road,” Caskey said.
“It’s kind of rule number one for good governance: you don’t take capital things and use it for operations,” Kearney added.
The various long-term problems remaining after this summer’s SEPTA battle will likely be the focus of aggressive issue campaigns in the 2026 midterms. The elections will come around the same time that SEPTA will again run out of temporary funding.
Democrats haven’t held a trifecta in the state government (control of the House, Senate, and governor’s Office) in 32 years. Still, Kearney sees the potential for Democrats to win a majority (which would require them to flip only two seats) in the Senate, while holding onto the House and governor’s office, as the best chance to address SEPTA’s long-term funding imbalances. Given the unpopularity of both President Trump’s second term in office and Republicans’ obstruction of any transit funding proposals, Kearney sees such a result as more in reach. Caskey also emphasized the importance of state elections for these kinds of issues, saying that while tax hikes would be an obvious way to raise revenue for funding, “neither party wants to be associated with a tax increase” in a closely divided state.
If the Democrats do take the Senate, and with it, control of the state government, Kearney thinks that finding a long-term funding solution for SEPTA and replenishing the PTTF would both be high priorities.
In correspondence with The Phoenix, however, Swarthmore Assistant Professor of Art Sony Devabhaktuni, an architect and urban researcher, called for a reevaluation of SEPTA’s funding structure. “The current model within the current political climate is not sustainable for SEPTA,” Devabhaktuni wrote of the statewide dependence for a regional agency in a polarized environment. “I think working towards a new model in which the region finances and pays for SEPTA rather than depending on the goodwill of the rest of the state is what needs to happen.”
“This isn’t because the region’s prosperity (and SEPTA’s contribution to that prosperity) doesn’t have benefits for the entire state. It does. The conflict between the Philadelphia region and other parts of the state, in that sense, seems to mirror national conflicts between blue and red states — about funding and agency for shaping the future,” he continued.
While Kearney feels such a proposal “gets at the heart of what I think are fundamental truths and flaws in the whole system,” he thinks it is unlikely to be realized because the Republicans who would have to authorize it know how much more they get from the Philly region than give to it.
Without a change in the fundamentals, such as which party has control over the state government or how much the agency relies on state funding, a similar legislative battle is set to take place again in two years. While the region would be past an intense 2026 lineup of high-profile and tourism-heavy events, the impacts of widespread service cuts would be devastating then as well.
Caskey explained the “chaos” that would emerge from cuts like the ones SEPTA announced in April but were temporarily avoided: “Lots of people depend on SEPTA to get to work and make other trips. Some could drive, but if a significant share of SEPTA riders start to drive, traffic congestion in the metro regions would get much worse.” He continued, “Dense cities, like Philadelphia, tend to be engines of economic growth, but they need public transit to function. Cars are space hogs.”
Swarthmore’s continued enrollment in SEPTA’s UPass Key program, which gives students and faculty free and reduced price, respectively, transit passes, brings this chaos right to campus, even if the Media-Wawa line might survive. In reference to the college, Kearney commented, “The students make use of SEPTA like crazy.” He added, “I know the importance of it all and I’m disappointed that we haven’t been able to convince our colleagues of it.”
