I watch a rat run along the train tracks as I lean against the tile wall at City Hall transit station. An announcement blares over the loudspeaker: “Due to operator unavailability, trains will be delayed by up to 10 minutes in both directions.” I stand and wait along with the other students, checking to see if I will make it to school on time or not. Today, I might not make it on time.
According to the School District of Philadelphia, 52,000 students in the city rely on SEPTA, but most students I talk to have some kind of issue with the public transit system, whether it be the constant delays, dirty platforms and trains, or the people struggling with homelessness and drug addiction having to seek refuge on the transit system. When I first started taking SEPTA, I remember countless mornings where I would see people sleeping on the ground of the trolley platforms. Almost every morning, police would enter the station and yell at them to get up, acting as if they were just any people who happened to be sleeping on the floor for no reason. Sometimes I would see people collapsing their cardboard walls. Sometimes I would see couples asleep in tattered clothes, leaning against the tile wall. I felt guilty. One morning, as I walked past a man lying on the ground, this guilt gripped me and turned me around. I fumbled in my backpack for any food and gave him a granola bar. He thanked me.
For a moment, I felt that I had done something that would make a change. Then that feeling slowly faded as I thought about every single person experiencing homelessness. My hope changed back into despair.
Whenever I saw other students walk past these people without even glancing, noticing their presence, I didn't understand it. I felt like a sensitive person in a sea of insensitive people. But as I got older and taking SEPTA became routine, I started to ignore the people who were homeless as well, breezing past the suffering people on my way to the Broad Street Line.
This isn’t the only thing I’ve had to get used to while taking SEPTA. The frequent train and bus delays make it hard to know when the vehicles will come, and I have gotten used to sitting down at city hall to wait for trolleys for over 40 minutes. Sometimes, my trolley will come, but it’ll be so packed that I can’t get on. It's not just me, as many other students experience similar problems. We’re forced to get used to them; we don’t have any other way to get to school.
Rafael Torok, a senior at Science Leadership Academy, said: “I've learned to make time for a train or a bus to be a half an hour late, because especially with buses, sometimes they just don't show up and you have to wait for the next one. Probably the biggest takeaway I've gotten from riding SEPTA: Don't expect SEPTA to be on time.”
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Madison George, another student at SLA, has had similar issues with SEPTA: “The express just stops running. With all the cuts and stuff, they will just cancel them, just cause. So I'm consistently late for school because then the local line takes twice as long.”
Besides the surface level issues with reliability, the environment for commuters can be challenging. Public transit is often a place of refuge for people experiencing homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, or combinations of those things, and this situation can create complex problems with how young students are exposed to these issues.
Torok said: “If I'm directly asked for money, I don't really think about it any more. I just say, sorry, I don't have any money. I feel guilty about it later… I feel it's definitely ramped up for me over the years because people are less likely to ask a 12-year-old for money than a 16-year-old. I wouldn't say I've gotten used to it… As for how I rationalize it, I make donations to Philabundance and I’m always reminding myself that a dollar to Philabundance is going to do much more good than a dollar to whoever is asking on the train.”
Being asked for money on the train is a common experience for students, and so is witnessing people experiencing drug addiction, mental illness, or homelessness on SEPTA vehicles. I have had many experiences where someone will break out in a loud rant, screaming disturbing threats on the train, due to what seemed like schizophrenia. Many students have had similar experiences.
“Once I was going into the station and I saw a drug user injecting, and it's not the only direct experience I’ve had with the drugs on SEPTA,” Torok relates. These experiences have the power to shock people, but they also have the power to ignite curiosity and a drive to address the systemic issues that impact these people.
“On a larger scale, I think more safe shelters need to be opened, because a lot of them are just super packed and overcrowded,” says Ellie Hurst, another student from SLA. “People experiencing homelessness have never been a first priority, and because there's so little money in the system right now, people are making other things a priority.”
Organizations like Project HOME have run programs in the past where people experiencing homelessness on Philadelphia subways can find refuge and care in a designated space, but these small groups can only do so much to help people in need. “We need to set up systems that are like okay, you can't go on the subway, but you can go here. It's so hard, but it has to come from the city and the government,” George believes.
Fully addressing these issues head-on benefits everyone involved. Not only would the commuters and the people experiencing homelessness benefit, but addressing SEPTA’s environment would benefit the employees who work there as well.
“Our members' working conditions are the riding public's riding conditions,” said Sam Schwartz, the general counsel for the Transport Workers Union, Local 234. “You want a bus driver who is happy to be there, and you want the people maintaining and cleaning the system to be happy to be there, and feel their work is being valued and to be giving 100% effort all the time. I think that the riders and the SEPTA employees' interests are really very aligned in terms of these things.”
In order to make employees and riders alike happy with their conditions, larger systemic issues need to be addressed, such as lack of affordable housing and lack of effective aid programs for people experiencing homelessness, degraded SEPTA infrastructure, and a sometimeshostile environment for employees. However, SEPTA can’t begin to fix any of these issues without one very important asset: funding.
The recent funding cuts to SEPTA, that were made and then reversed, were not a sudden issue that popped up, but the culmination of decades of funding issues. From the founding of SEPTA, it has always lacked a strong capital fund, a fund designated for spending on major projects, such as rail maintenance and vehicle repairs. This lack of a capital fund is continuing after these recent funding cuts, because SEPTA took 394 million dollars out of its capital fund to reverse the cuts. This means even less money for the large-scale repairs SEPTA needs in order to provide a safe and fast system. All of these changes are happening because SEPTA did not have adequate funding in the first place.
“The Union and SEPTA were 100% on the same side about getting full funding… we were right there with them advocating in Harrisburg with all of our elected officials, and the Democrats in the House passed bills that would have fully funded SEPTA on four or five separate occasions, and it never even came up for a vote in the Republican controlled Senate. It just wasn't a priority for them,” says Schwartz.
Public transportation is something that students and working class people depend on in order to get to school and work; According to Schwartz, when transit systems lose funding, it’s these people that pay the cost: “When it's not getting as much tax revenue as it needs and it has to rely on revenue from the fare box, those are mostly poorer people who are paying that, and that's a very regressive way to fund a public transit system on the backs of its poor riders.”
Working class people with the least disposable income should not be the people who have to pay morefor a service that they rely on the most. “There has to be a better way to see these issues at the root and solve it there instead of just putting Band-ids on the problem that doesn't actually fix it.” Said Madison George.
There is a better way, and that is through tax revenue. The cuts have been reversed, but the use of the capital fund isn’t a sustainable solution: SEPTA doesn't have enough money to continue operating fully unless they’re able to get a consistent source of funding.
Pennsylvania Senators have recently reached a budget deal that has increased funding for many programs such as medicare and school funding, but the decision on funding for SEPTA has been postponed for another two years. SEPTA is once again being told to use its capital fund, even though this would prevent SEPTA from addressing larger issues with vehicles and track repairs. Republicans won’t agree to roll out a budget where there is a recurring stream of tax revenue going to SEPTA this year, which places the transit system in a financial crisis that is more urgent than ever. As citizens of a city that runs on SEPTA, we need to pressure our senators to support funding that will improve the essential service our city needs.
Here is what you can do:
Swipe Your Student Fare Card
The Department of Education pays SEPTA for your student fare card. SEPTA only gets paid if the card gets used at least once a month. If they don't get used at least once a month, it's considered to not be an active card, and SEPTA doesn't get paid.
Pressure Joe Picozzi to form a SEPTA Funding Deal with Republican Senators
Joe Picozzi is a Republican member of the Senate who is interested in funding SEPTA. If he brings a deal to fund SEPTA back to the senate, then Democrats in the Senate could pass their funding package that would improve funding of the SEPTA system. Write to this email address about how as a student you would benefit from greater funding for SEPTA and why he should bring a SEPTA deal back to the senate not in two years but NOW:jpicozzi@pasen.gov
Support Transit Forward Philly
Transit Forward Philly is an organization that is focused on advocating for a better public transit system for riders in Philadelphia. You can look at future events, donate, and sign up for their newsletter in order to receive up to date information about SEPTA.
Donate or Volunteer with Project HOME
Doing volunteer work on the ground to help people experiencing homelessness is a good way of improving other’s lives and doing direct work. Donating to support organizations like Project HOME can strengthen their ability to help people being impacted by systemic racism, lack of affordable housing, and inequality. Doing advocacy with these groups allows you to give people a voice and to speak up for their well being. All of this work makes it so that less people have to sleep or live on SEPTA stations and platforms, and that they get access to life saving resources.
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