No Excuses – Harrisburg Must Find a Way to Fully Fund SEPTA – Philadelphia Inquirer
- GVF TMA
- 12 minutes ago
- 1 min read
For the third year in a row, Philadelphians await the commonwealth’s budget with bated breath. Will SEPTA, our local transit agency, get the funding it desperately needs this time around? Or is it three strikes and we’re out half of our Regional Rail network?
The first time Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed funding public transit in 2023, Harrisburg Republicans said that SEPTA needed to shape up, particularly around how it handled crime and unruly behavior on buses and trains, before asking for more money.
The second time around, the following year, a grand bargain that funded infrastructure for urban, suburban, and rural areas was floated, only for Republicans to fail to come to an agreement once again, even after promising to take the issue up again in the fall. Shapiro was forced to “flex,” or transfer, federal highway dollars to SEPTA to keep it afloat.
