Editor's note: a version of this article originally appeared on Defector and is republished with permission.
SEPTA, the fifth-largest public transit system in the country, recently underwent drastic service cuts that could decimate transportation in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties.
Plagued by a $213 million budget deficit, and with no recurring source of funding, the agency's crisis roadmap includes the elimination of 32 bus routes and reduced service system-wide starting Aug. 24; a hiring freeze and 21.5 percent fare increase in September; and the elimination of 24 more routes (including five Regional Rail lines) and the implementation of a 9 p.m. metro curfew beginning on Jan. 1, 2026. These cuts come a year before the city is scheduled to host six World Cup games and MLB All-Star Week.
The city itself serves as a doomsday counter. Take a walk through Center City, a confluence of bus lines, and alerts for discontinued service are plastered across nearly every stop: "As of AUG. 24, 2025, the following route(s) will no longer serve this stop due to service reductions and or eliminations," followed by your pick of route numbers: 9, 12, 38.
Every transit agency across the United States is flawed in its own ways, and SEPTA's high on that list.
The past years have seen a rebranding of lines and incremental but noticeable improvements to the ridership experience, particularly with the additions of better wayfinding (line diagrams in stations; navigational signage), live metro timings, tap-to-pay, and the dulcet and somewhat bored tones of Dallas Goedert of the Philadelphia Eagles reminding you to stand behind the yellow line.
At the same time, the city's impressive coverage, especially in buses and commuter rail, is undermined by low frequency. The system overall suffers from delays and operator shortages. The app is, at its best, barely functional.
Unfortunately, improvements require money, and SEPTA, like most transit agencies across the U.S., does not have money and has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels of revenue.
In fiscal year 2024, SEPTA was actually the most efficient transit agency in the U.S. when comparing ridership to its operating budget, which, at $1.69 billion, was roughly $1 billion less than MBTA and $3 billion less than WMATA, who serve comparable or smaller numbers of customers. That operating budget included the last of SEPTA's federal COVID-19 relief funding; it was known since the budget was approved in 2023 that SEPTA would have an operating deficit if additional state funding was not forthcoming.
The issue there is that all of Pennsylvania gets to decide SEPTA's funding, not just the part of the state that uses it. Many politicians representing suburban and rural interests actively resent its existence.
While the Democratic-controlled state house has repeatedly passed funding for SEPTA in the past month, filling the deficit with state sales taxes, none of those bills have been able to make it through the state's Republican-controlled Senate. As Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman declared in a speech last week, "Human nature suggests, why should I do anything to help? I don’t ever get any help for my region."
This is materially untrue. The Southeastern Pennsylvania region in SEPTA's name contributes more in taxes to the Commonwealth than it receives in return. The opposite can be said of rural counties in Pennsylvania, including Indiana County, which Pittman represents.
Funding SEPTA would continue to fuel the economic engine of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the one that pays for roads and services throughout the state. Public transit is a service, not a business — should public schools have to turn a profit?
A powerful transit system can benefit everyone, unless one is so petty as to view the ability of human beings to move from place to place as a zero-sum game to be won — and the optimist in me hopes that human nature does not tend toward such smarmy cruelty, especially in matters of policy. The optimist in me has often been wrong in recent years.
It does not require much imagination to envision the consequences of a SEPTA collapse. A percentage of disabled paratransit riders will lose service as route cuts leave them out of coverage range, and the fare for those rides will increase, along with the standard fares. The 30 people on a single bus during rush hour will either instead be on the roads in 30 cars — the laws of geometry are not kind here — or lose their ability to get to and from their workplace. If the metro curfew of 9 p.m. were to kick in, the scenes following night games at the South Philly stadium complex would be nightmarish. The scenes at the World Cup tread close to the unfathomable.
Perhaps the most far-reaching consequence would be the end of Amtrak's Keystone line, which runs from Harrisburg, through Philadelphia, and finally to New York. Amtrak receives $71.1 million for the line annually from SEPTA, which pays to run five of its Regional Rail lines on Amtrak-owned tracks. SEPTA is planning to cut those lines in January. If Amtrak were to no longer receive those funds, the Keystone, the company's fifth-busiest route, would, according to U.S. Representative Brendan Boyle, "cease to exist."
As it turns out, we live in a society of interconnected pieces — and sometimes those pieces are arranged by people committed to making the world a little worse for everyone.
