A lot of you are misunderstanding the situation in which we find ourselves.

SEPTA has raised fares in accord with a proposal that the PTC, DVARP, other transit activists and the City of Philadelphia believe to be grossly unfair to the poor and working people and counter-productive to our goal of increasing transit ridership.

A court has blocked the most objectionable part of the fare increase, the elimination of transfers. We have no guarantee that higher courts will not overturn Judge DiVito’s injunction. There are a lot of complicated legal issues in this case. While Mark Zecca skillfully introduced some new grounds for court action, the legal standard under which courts are allowed to block SEPTA’s action have, in previous case law, be highly restrictive. More importantly, SEPTA’s political influence over the judiciary is likely to be greater the higher up the court system we move.

So some of us have been urging the City to settle with SEPTA and agree to block the elimination of transfers and, to make up for lost revenues—how much we will see when SEPTA opens its books—and instead raise tokens and cash fares a small amount. This is totally in keeping with what we have been saying all along, that our objection has not been to a fare increase but to a fare increase that is grossly unfair to the poor, African Americans, and residents of the city. Mayor Street said at a SEPTA Board meeting a few months ago, and reiterated at a press conference yesterday that he does not object to a fair, 11% across the board fare increase and that the city has never sought to block any fare increase at all.

So it is not as if we are saying just telling SEPTA to raise fares. We are trying to create a fare structure with some semblance of fairness. If the City and SEPTA do not settle along the lines I have suggested, we might well wind up with no tranfers. And that would be really bad for reasons I think we all know by now.

Now that is the crux of the issue, which I thought people here understood. The other points I have been making have been in explanation of why we have not been opposing fare increase at all.

I frankly don’t understand why someone is surprised that transit activists would not oppose a fare increase. Indeed, I find the idea that we should always oppose fare increase bizarre.

Not two weeks ago progressives here and elsewhere were bemoaning our lack of spending on roads and bridges and our failure to properly fund the public sector. So how come, when it comes to SEPTA, people here think the answer is, in DEII’s words, “not to reward bad behavior.” Why not accept the same principle when it comes to roads and bridges? We know, for example, that agencies in most states have favored new building instead of maintenance. So why don’t we tell those agencies that we won’t reward bad behavior by giving them new funding or allowing them to toll roads until they have fixed all the roads and bridges? The reasons are that, first, they need the money to make repairs and second, do need to keep building at least some new roads and bridges.

I know it is easy to hate SEPTA. I have a lot more experience in dealing with the agency than most of you, as both a rider and an activist. There are a lot of good people at SEPTA but the culture of the agency is horrible and its ability to work with riders and activists is almost nil. But it is not the case the SEPTA is grossly inefficient—numerous audits over the last few years have shown that. But it does have a serious deferred maintenance problem. And while SEPTA needs dramatic reforms, those will be much easier to make if it is not hurting for money.

So why don’t we just demand more public funding and oppose all fare increases? Mostly because we are not in a position to get more than we already got, at least right now, and because the public funding we got required some fare increases (and Ray, you are not stupid so you know that this requirement is not part of the legislation.) But also because most of us think that the costs of running a transit system should be shared by those who ride and by the public. There is a long story about why that is so but it basically comes down to three things: equity between transit users and those who use other modes of transportation; efficiency in the use of transit resources; and insuring that the system is funded enough to provide the public benefits of transit.

So while most transit activists would want to increase the share of public funding even further and we would oppose a totally out of proportion fare increase—and have been working against an unfair one—few of us think that opposing an 11% across the board increase after six years of no increases is out of proportion especially when one recognizes that it comes along with a major and almost incredible achievement, the most dramatic infusion of state funds into public transit in at least twenty-five years.

And if you all check the facts you would see that even if the token went up to $1.40 SEPTA would no longer be overpriced compared to its competitors and that with the new state funding SEPTA will be in about the middle of the pack when it comes to the percentage of operating costs that come from the fare box. I don't have the detailed numbers yet but when the full funding kicks in, we will have dramatically increased the share of funding that is subsidized by taxes. In other words, in teh last few months we have made major steps towards attaining the goal Ray like everyone else thinks should be our prime objective.

I suppose that some people think that defending riders means always opposing fare increases and that supporting consumers always means opposing all price increases. That seems to me to be misguided. A cheap transit system that breaks down all the time or that is too small for the region it serves is no bargain. And consumer activists have continually called for legislation that raises the price consumers pay, such as consumer protection legislation, health and safety regulations for workers, and restraints on the development of big box stores. The price of goods, and especially public goods like transit, is only one among other important concerns. Transit advocates should, much of the time, lean against fare increases if only to keep the pressure on for more public funding. But if we want to be effective we also have to pay attention to the economic and political circumstances in which we are working.

Ray wrote:

“we pay more than almost anyone else on the nation for a transit system of our size.”

Looking at the cheapest single fare you can get, which in some cases requires using a electronic fare card not cash: New York’s base fare is $2.00. Chicago’s base fare is $1.75. Atlanta’s base fare is $1.75. Boston’s base fare is $1.70. In Seattle it is $1.50 during peak periods and $1.25 off-peak. San Francisco’s Muni is $1.50 In Charlotte it is $1.30. LA’s is $1.25 In Dallas the base fare is $1.25.

Our token price is $1.30. An increase to $1.40 would keep us below all of them except Charlotte, LA and Dallas. There are plans to raise fares in LA this year and most likely the other cities will go up as well in the next year or two.