A Simple Solution To Save SEPTA

All you need to do is crack down on fare evasion

SEPTA is the subway, rail, and bus service in Philadelphia, where I live. It’s the worst train system I’ve ever had the displeasure of riding. It’s dirty as fuck. It’s filled with crackheads. It smells like piss. And it never comes on time. Nobody in their right mind takes it at night; women really have to be on their P’s and Q’s on every ride, and it’s just an overall God-awful experience.

Unsurprisingly, SEPTA has a huge $213M budget deficit. And if it doesn’t get filled, SEPTA will cut 5 regional rail lines, 50 bus routes, 60 stations, and end all service at 9pm each day. Overall, it will be a 45% reduction in service and a 21.5% increase in fares.

There is no other way to put this: that level of service cuts will kill Philadelphia. Driving in the city is already as fun as a night with Jigsaw, it will be absolutely hellish if SEPTA is cut in half and 275,000 vehicles are added to the roads. One of the regional rail lines being cut is the Paoli/Thorndale line, which connects Philly to the suburbs. Working in the city will become insanely difficult. Visiting it will no longer be worth the effort. Philadelphia, already the nation’s poorest big city with 23% of the population below the poverty line and somehow still in a rough decline, would be fully put out to pasture. Plus, I’d have to move, and even though I think the city is a shithole, it’s my shithole and I don’t want to leave yet.

The city’s preferred way to solve this would be for a state bailout. The Democrats were willing to do it. The Republicans have so far not. So, we’re at an impasse, and the fate of the city lies in the hands of the political process.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a very easy solution to at least get closer to plugging the hole. All you need to do is stop fare evading.

SEPTA has 746,000 riders a day. SEPTA officials estimate that 1 in 4 riders skip the fare. Go spend a day at a train station or ask anyone in Philly, the actual rate is almost certainly higher. I’ve seen entire trains skip the fare. And, at a certain level, why wouldn’t you? SEPTA basically made fare evasion legal in 2019, as they dropped the fine to $25 and got rid of criminal charges. That fine might as well have been zero, as stations often have nobody even watching the gates. It’s a literal free-for-all.

But let’s be generous and assume that the 25% number is correct. That means 186,500 people skip the fare each day. That’s 1,305,500 a week. 5,222,000 a month. And 62,664,000 a year. At the $2.50 fare price, that’s $156,660,000 in lost revenue each year. If you hike fares to $3, that’s $187,992,000 extra dollars. That doesn’t fill the hole, but it makes a state bailout much more tolerable for the Republicans.

Thankfully, they’ve begun cracking down again, raising the fines to up to $300. And, surprise surprise, people have started paying again. After parking a cop at a station in Kensington, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philly, sales at that station are up 200%.

That is literally all you need to do. Just park a cop at each station. It would make people feel safer, make people actually pay to use the train, and ultimately would save the city. Magic.

Possible Objections

1. This targets poor people.

No, it doesn’t; it targets everyone. If you’re a fare evader, you should be stopped. Nobody is forcing you to take public transportation. If you want a free ride, walk or bike. But, if you want public transportation, we need people to pay for it.

2. This will decrease ridership.

No it doesn’t. The people who are fare evading don’t count as riders anyway. If anything, they are even worse than non-riders, as they are still using and wearing down the trains, buses, and stations. We’re better off making them pay or going without them.

And, as an added bonus, if we stop fare evading, we’ll keep the crackheads out of the station who piss, shit, jack off, harass, and just generally make the train a nightmare. That alone will attract more people who (rightfully) think the SEPTA isn’t worth stepping into a hellhole.

3. There are bigger fish to fry.

Philly is very poor, has lots of homeless people, is filled with trash, and has tons of crime. But poverty, homelessness, and crime won’t improve if we lose our public transportation and become markedly poorer. It’ll just make things worse.

Beyond that, putting a cop at each SEPTA station wouldn’t hamper tackling these issues. If anything, it’ll help, as it’ll make public transportation safer, keep people from littering, and, most importantly, keep SEPTA alive, which will keep the city alive.

Conclusion

I’m in London right now, and it infuriates me how much better the subway is here. It’s clean, it runs on time, and there isn’t a crackhead in sight. Coincidentally, I also haven’t seen a single person skip the fare. I’m sure that having gates that are hard to jump and a culture of enforcement definitely helps here, but I think the real difference is that the norm is to pay. Social shame is a huge motivator. I didn’t even consider skipping the fare out of fear of it.

Similarly, the streets are extremely clean even though it’s surprisingly hard to find a garbage bin. Again, I think the city’s culture is to credit. You don’t see other people littering, so you don’t litter.

This kind of stuff seems silly and insignificant, but it matters, and it doesn’t just happen. You have to set the standard from the top down. London enforces their laws, so nobody breaks them, and suddenly you have an orderly society. Philly needs to follow that playbook and start cracking down on small transgressions like fare evading. Only then can the city become what it should be.