For the most part, there needs to be an intensified regional effort to increase the government subsidy level.

With the current national election results, democratic control of both the house and senate and the new prominence of many in our regional congressional delegation, there are renewed opportunities.

The commonwealth should continue to be a focus of more help, but the politics is more problematic.

What the city can do to help save and improve this critical regional asset, is a real analysis of our long and short term parking rates in Philadelphia in order to increase ridership from the suburbs and reduce highway gridlock and pollution.

Parking rates in Philadelphia are skewed to favor the long term commuter parker with low early bird special rates. These rates incentivize the commuter who uses their car rather than choosing public transit. This has the double negative effect of makng SEPTA less attractive to the suburban commuter and reduces valuable parking spaces for short term shoppers. This hurts the viability of down town shopping. It's about $9/10 for the all day early birds and $15/20 for the two hour shopper.

Most downtown parking lots are privately owned and my past attempts at controlling and messaging rates were unsuccessful. The solution may lie with the Parking Authority whose main misssion is parking policy.

This agency is empowered to acquire or build structured and surface level parking and has the revenue available to affect these parking rates within the market place. The PPA could become a major player in the reversal of the mass transit killing rate structure that rewards the commuter by car and punishes the downtown shopper.

Done strategically, this could have the effect of reversing the rate structure, increasing ridership because of the higher cost of long term parking and helping create a better environment for downtown shopping.

A more subjective effort could be made by the city to promote mass transit use by the mayor and others using the system in a more visible way. ala Mayor Bloomberg in NYC. This will help tout the system's safety and ease of use.

I don't think raising commuter pricing at private garages is really going to be effective--- many of these commuters are probably higher income earners with sufficient income to take the hit. The more probable outcome is that it would be yet another discouragement to locating a business in center city.

My sense is that at least some commuters commute because there is not enough parking at suburban stations and mass transit sites and what parking is available is very much insecure.

Remember a few weeks ago one of the TV stations did a piece on (IIRC) one of the R lines--- where a lady had been accosted--- the station stayed at the transit site for hours and did not see any security whatsoever.

If people don't feel secure using the mass transit lines and they don't feel that the lots to park their cars are secure--- the folks with sufficient income will just pay the higher parking fares in town.
But that does not achieve our goal.

I think we really need to study the reasons why people do not use mass transit and address those issues.

thanks for the bandwidth,

msl

Hello councilman:

I agree that if public officials (mayor and councilpeople) used public trans more visibly it would be strong positive point. I wonder how many of our councilpeople use public trans or walk or bike--- i.e., leave their car at home.

MSL

Some ideas off the top of my head, Councilman Kenney is right, attracting riders in the burbs and within the city is essential. This requires a number of things (in no particular order):

1. Continue to make captial improvements to the underground and elevated lines and stations.

2. Increased funding for safety and lighting on underground, elevated and trolley lines and stations, including increased policing after the work hours and during after school hours. If anyone has every riden the T in Boston or the Metro in DC, they are safe and clean, even at 1 A.M.! The EL and the Orange line are not even running!

3. The automation of ticket and fare collecting as much as possible (transit cards with declining balances as in D.C.) Maybe this can free up workers and resources for other things.

4. Increased marketing and parking opportunities at regional rail stations outside the city. More prediciable regional rail schedules.

5. Having municipalities promote commerical corridors and business districts, along with their proximity to public transit. Take Main Street, which has an R6 stop or Paskyunk Ave., that has 2 Orange Line stops very close.

In the inner city, safe, clean and reliable is best. In the burbs, predicability, reliability and marketing may be key. Unfortunately, due to all of the regional rail trains sharing lines, maintaining all the lines and having them run outside of time tables maybe be impossible.

Also, I would love to see another line running through the city. Two straight lines through a large city leaves out tons of space from the high speed area--what a waste. Purchasing and expanding PATCO (I think it was tried before), would be great. Ah dreams!

Continue to make captial improvements to the underground and elevated lines and stations. This is happending right now in west Philadelphia but look at how Septa has handle this situation and how it has hurt mon and pop stores along that the of the El line. Most of the mon and pop stores have had a tremendous lost of business some were force to close. So Septa has to improve they way they handle the improvents they will do in the future.

Speta needs to have cleaner buses and trains stops. The way the El and Broad Street train looks and smells make people not want to ride them. Why would a tourist,business or someone from the burbs want to catch the train or bus into or around the city when its looks and smells the way it does espcailly at city hall.

Septa has the highest fare in the country. This is one of the major reason for the recent decline in riderships. Then when you cap the how unreliable the service is you can understand why their has been a delcine.