Protests hammer SEPTA fare hikes
By Joe Piette
Philadelphia
Drastic fare increases, service reductions and layoffs were
approved Dec. 16 by the board of the South East Pennsylvania
Transit Authority (SEPTA), despite the loud opposition of
hundreds of workers and transit riders.
SEPTA will increase transit prices from the current $2 fare
to $2.50 on Jan. 23, and then to $3 on March 1, making it the
highest fare in the country. Tokens will rise from $1.30 each
to $1.70, then to $2. Transfers will rise to 75 cents.
Twenty percent of weekday bus, train and trolley service
will be eliminated. Saturday service will be reduced to the
barebones Sunday schedule. The workforce will suffer layoffs of
500 to 1,400 workers.
Service Employees Local 62 rallied at the Clothespin, across
from City Hall, then marched to SEPTA's offices, where several
speakers explained why the SEPTA Board should vote "No" on the
doomsday proposal.
Only a third of the protesters were allowed to squeeze into
the hearing room. The chants of those outside could be heard
throughout the hearing.
Inside, speakers opposed to SEPTA's plan pointed out that 20
percent of Philadelphia's workers use mass transit. Ninety-five
thousand seniors use the system daily, as do 9,000 disabled
riders. None of the board members would answer a question on
how high the cost of student tokens would rise.
Lance Haver, the city's director of Consumer Affairs,
pointed out that while SEPTA claims to have a $62-million
deficit, the new fares would raise a whopping $150 million per
year.
War spending up while transit collapses
Military spending under the Bush administration has grown
from $310.6 billion in fiscal year 2001 to a projected $420.7
billion for 2005--an increase of $110.1 billion, or 35 percent.
And that's not counting over $100 billion more for ongoing
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, all of Pennsylvania's 40 transit agencies,
including 21 rural systems, are experiencing crises and massive
cutbacks similar to SEPTA.
Trying to look like he was making a compromise, a SEPTA
spokesperson announced that none of the new fares or cutbacks
would take place before Jan. 23, and would not happen at all if
adequate state funding was approved.
But the State Legislature doesn't come back into session
until Jan. 24, except for a Jan. 4 swearing-in ceremony. It
would take at least a month after that to implement all the
necessary changes. And as speakers pointed out, once fares go
up, they never come back down.
After the Board voted 13-2 for the cutbacks and fare
increase, Cheryl Honkola of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union
announced her group's intentions to organize a fare strike.
Reprinted from the Dec. 30, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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