(C) Pennsylvania Capital-Star
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50,000 students rely on SEPTA in Philadelphia. They need to be prepared for service cuts. • Pennsylvania Capital-Star [1]
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Date: 2025-08-22 21:45:22+00:00
As Philadelphia students prepare to return to school on Monday, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is advising them to make a plan since service cuts are set to go into effect over the weekend.
“We never wanted to be in this situation,” SEPTA General Manager Scott Sauer said during a press conference on Friday. “Taking away service is at odds with everything that we strive to do at SEPTA.”
“Our hope is that the coming days will see progress in Harrisburg toward a long-term sustainable funding solution for public transportation,” he added. “So that this disruption for our customers, our city, and region will be as brief as possible.”
Without a funding package approved by the General Assembly, SEPTA has warned for months that they would have to proceed with service cuts and fare increases. Starting on Sunday, the authority will cut service across all buses, subways and trolleys, by 20%. Reductions in regional rail will follow on Sept. 2. Fare increases are also slated to go into effect on Sept. 1.
A second wave of major service cuts would follow in January, if state funding is not approved for mass transit services across the commonwealth.
SEPTA serves about 800,000 people daily across the Philadelphia-region. More than 50,000 students in middle school and high school rely on it daily to get to school.
“Service reductions will impact students, just as they will all of our riders,” Sauer said.
“This weekend, we encourage students and their families to review the service plan that we have on SEPTA.org to see how the cuts will impact them,” Sauer advised. “Map out their travel to and from school.”
In preparation for the service cuts, Sauer said that SEPTA attempted to “take away as many pain points” as they could, and noted that with some bus routes being eliminated, there will be alternate services nearby, although more walking and transfers may be necessary. Extra time will be needed for riders, they said, as they get used to these changes.
The authority will have ambassadors stationed at transit hubs to assist riders with questions.
SEPTA Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson said the agency has a school safety plan in place, like years prior. However, he acknowledged the looming service cuts have provided some changes.
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SEPTA will increase staffing during student travel, Lawson said, by “virtually doubling” the available staff when the bulk of students are traveling on the system, assign video patrols to locations where they don’t have active police presence, and increase their focus on bus service and bus routes.
“We are entering the school year planning on increasing police presence along about a dozen routes throughout the city,” Lawson said.
He noted that police officers will be on buses along those routes.
A new addition, Lawson said, will be a daily morning check-in call with school police. He also encouraged the use of the SEPTA Transit Watch app for students to report anything they see that makes them feel unsafe.
Sports fans were also advised about the looming service cuts since the Philadelphia Phillies have a game on Sunday – the first day for the reductions to be in effect.
Where do things stand with the state House and Senate?
Mass transit funding has been front and center during the seven-plus week budget stalemate.
The state House, led by Democrats, has advanced legislation on multiple occasions that would fund mass transit agencies, along with roads and bridges. Their most recent effort was House Bill 1788, authored by Rep. Sean Dougherty (D-Philadelphia), which would provide $600 million to mass transit and roads and bridges, while also increasing accountability on the transit agencies and public-private projects.
The Senate, led by Republicans, responded by passing a proposal that would provide about $300 million to the state’s mass transit agencies for the next two years. This proposal would also take money from a fund for public transit to spend on roads and bridges. The House Appropriations Committee rejected this measure.
Democrats and Republicans find themselves at odds over how much should go towards mass transit agencies like SEPTA and where that money should come from.
In response to a question on Friday, Sauer said that SEPTA has a need for operating dollars and capital dollars.
“So taking from one pot to get to the other is not a sustainable solution,” Sauer said. “It could be a quick fix, I suppose. But that’s for them to decide. But we need to focus on the moment and the moment right now is on service.”
If the General Assembly were to reach a deal over the next 48 hours, Sauer said, SEPTA would do “everything” in their power to put as much service back on the street as fast as they can.
“But it will be very difficult for us to restore service in a manner that the customer would be used to,” Sauer said. “There’s a lot of back end systems that are in play to provide both information and safety of the operation that we would have to go in and manipulate to get it back onto a normal schedule.”
“So, while I won’t rule out that the possibility exists to go back to some semblance of normalcy by Monday or Sunday, as the clock ticks forward, it gets more and more difficult to do that,” he added.
In addition to SEPTA changing services due to the ongoing budget impasse, other agencies and human services providers are also sounding the alarm.
On Friday, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania sent a letter to lawmakers saying that without a state budget, “counties may have no choice but to raise property taxes and cut services – directly impacting taxpayers due to state inaction.”
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