At a news conference held on Friday, SEPTA officials talked about what commuters could expect with service cuts are implemented on Sunday and classes begin in the School District of Philadelphia on Monday.
By Denise Clay-Murray
Editor’s note: SEPTA Rider Guide information charts are included with this column.
As the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ends its second month without a budget, one of the services impacted by that delay, SEPTA, held a news conference on Friday to detail how the impact of the budget’s lateness will trickle down.
Scott Sauer, the general manager for the beleaguered mass transit system, reaffirmed what everyone in Philadelphia had hoped could be avoided: SEPTA will be cutting 20% of its service starting on Sunday.
While the cuts are something SEPTA wanted to avoid, the system has to make do, Sauer said.
“Our job now is to operate the best service possible with the resources that we have,” Sauer said. “This starts with reinforcing our efforts to ensure that our customers have access to safe and secure transit service. Safety and security is always our top priority, but it takes on extra meaning next week at the start of school.”
To avoid the cuts, SEPTA had given a deadline of Aug. 14 to have a source of funding to close the transit authority’s $213 million deficit.
When that day came and went, Sauer and the SEPTA board felt they had no choice, he said.
The cuts that will be implemented on Sunday include the elimination of 32 bus routes, the shortening 16 others, reduced service on 88 bus routes and Regional Rail lines, and the end of special service lines like the Sports Express. Fans attending the Philadelphia Phillies/Washington Nationals game at Citizens Bank Park were met with fewer Broad Street line trains to take them back downtown.
While he’s still optimistic that the transit authority will get the money it needs before it has to make even more drastic cuts in January, restoring service to pre-Aug. 24 levels will take some doing, he said.
“We had passed our deadline to do this in a way that would be easy for customers,” Sauer said. “If a deal were to happen over the next 48 hours, we will do everything in our power to try to put as much service back on the street as we can, but it will be very difficult for us to restore service in a manner that the customers would be used to. So, while I won’t rule out that the possibility exists to go back to some semblance of normalcy by Monday or Sunday, as the clock ticks forward, it gets more and more difficult to do that.”
In addition to sports fans, 50,000 middle and high school students from the School District of Philadelphia will also find getting to their final destinations challenging when they head to class on Monday. The school year is one of SEPTA’s busiest times, and the agency always puts together a safety plan to get students where they need to be, said Charles Lawson, SEPTA’s Transit Police Chief.
But while the plan isn’t changing much, there are some changes that are directly connected to the budget reductions, Lawson said.
“This year is a little bit different,” Lawson admitted. “So, I do have a few changes to our school safety plan. We’re going to increase our staffing during student travel. We do that through a number of ways. Every single personnel that works in the department is out in the field during student travel, on every shift and on the particularly critical dismissal period in the afternoons, we overlap those shifts, so we are virtually doubling our available staffing when the bulk of our students are out traveling on the system, we assign video patrols to locations where we don’t have active police presence, and we assign extra staffing at sort of the convergence points where we know student traffic is much higher. This year, we are placing a higher focus on bus service, bus routes and surface trolley routes.”
As the week goes on, SEPTA will also be accessing where there may be a need to change how resources are deployed, and make those changes, Lawson said.
In addition to the cuts that begin on Sunday, SEPTA fares will go up to $2.90 beginning Sept. 1. If the Commonwealth hasn’t decided it’s budget by Jan. 1, 2026, there will be additional cuts including the end of the Broad/Ridge spur, five regional rail routes, and several trolley routes. All service will be suspended by 9pm.
The demand for SEPTA’s services had increased to 800,000 trips a day, and the combination of the beginning of the school year and fall sporting events was expected to increase that demand, Sauer said.
Until the funding situation is solved, however, the only advice Sauer had for SEPTA users was to pack your patience when using the system.
“One thing we cannot stress enough, all riders should allow for extra time as they get used to the changes next week,” he said. Buses, trains and trolleys are going to be crowded. There’s likely to be more pass ups than normal, due to vehicles at capacity, and with 20% less service, the system is going to move slower. We’re going to closely monitor all travel next week. We’ll look to see where we can make minor adjustments to improve the customer experience, although we expect conditions will continue to be challenging. We’re going to do our best to accommodate as many of those riders as possible. We’re going to continue our work with lawmakers in Harrisburg and Governor [Josh] Shapiro to secure new funding for transit so that we can fully deliver the service that our customers deserve.”
For more information on how SEPTA’s cuts will impact your commuter experience, or to plan your route to work, school or appointments, visit: SEPTA.org or call SEPTA customer service at: 215-580-7800. You can also get more information on the SEPTA app.
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