This past Thursday, January 25th, the SEPTA board again postponed a vote on the “Bus Revolution.” While all but one of the riders who testified spoke against making the changes, it may have been the testimony of Philadelphia City Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson that changed the direction of the Board.
Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, while thanking SEPTA for expanding its outreach to neighborhoods, said there was still more to be done. She asked the Board to postpone the decision until the new Mayor, Mayor Parker, the new Council President, and the Council’s newly constituted Committee on Transportation had an opportunity to review the proposed changes and provide input.
There was no mention of the underlying facts by any member of the Board. The City of Philadelphia provides 80% of SEPTA’s local match. Neither City Council nor Mayor Parker has made their appointments to the SEPTA board. SEPTA claims to face a budget shortfall of $240 million, which will lead, according to SEPTA’s General Manager, to drastic service cuts and skyrocketing fares unless additional funding is secured.
Not a single board member questioned the wisdom of spending millions of dollars on bus route redesigns when proposed service cuts will dramatically change bus service, making the “bus revolution” irrelevant.
The shortest part of the meeting was the “consent” vote to award millions of dollars in contracts. $29.1 million to STV Inc for “the provision of project support in connection with the M5 Metro Rail Cars Procurement Project”; $3.69 million to Burns Engineering for “the provision of architectural and engineering design”; $2.947 million to TrasSystems Corp for “the provision of architectural and engineering design for the Chestnut Hill East Line.”
No Board Member asked where the companies were located, if all the workers were paid a living wage, and if the companies met Philadelphia’s contracting criteria and mandated minority participation.
Most of the Board meeting was spent saying goodbye to the Board’s long-term chair, Pat Deon, who is retiring. Elected officials, board members, and SEPTA staff praised his 26-year tenure. Not a single rider rose to applaud the chairman’s work, not even the rider’s Advisory Board. It could be that no one who organized the event thought riders were important enough to be heard.
Mr. Deon was lauded as a “backroom deal maker” who, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “used political clout honed as a major GOP fundraiser and collector of IOUs in Harrisburg to broker deals.”
Mr. Deon, a real estate developer whose business ventures benefit from public transit, left saying SEPTA was on better financial footing than when he became the chairman. He said this after SEPTA’s General Manager announced that SEPTA was facing a large structural deficit and that it contemplated draconian cuts in service and massive fare hikes.
How good was Mr. Deon?
Is the system better now? The last few years have seen a driver shortage, leading to buses being canceled without notice. Riders report feeling unsafe riding the system, urging the Board members to ride the EL and see for themselves. Without public acknowledgment, Mr. Deon approved SEPTA’s staff’s decision to place $500 million in a fare stabilization fund and then claim impending bankruptcy. Signage has remained a problem over the years, making it difficult for occasional riders to understand the system. Mr. Deon’s oversight of the “Key Card,” SEPTA’s electronic fare card was so inadequate that not only was SEPTA one of the last public transit systems in the nation to implement such a program, it cost $238 million, a cost overrun of $122 million. For City riders, one of the most significant decisions Mr. Deon’s Board made was to fund a rail line to King of Prussia that had to be abandoned, rather than the expansion of the Board Street Line to North East Philadelphia.
In Mr. Deon’s farewell address, he pointed to his success at the EB 5 Visa program, a federal program that allows wealthy foreigners to make loans to public agencies. People looking to escape the countries where they had accumulated wealth and did not want to wait for a visa like everyone else could lend SEPTA money, get a return on the loan, and get a visa to live in the United States. Mr. Deon also took credit for selling the naming rights of SEPTA stations, forcing riders to market the names of energy companies and hospital systems when they ride SEPTA.
In evaluating Mr. Deon’s stewardship, Philadelphians might consider how many Republicans Mr. Deon helped elect who have refused to vote for an increase in the minimum wage and a fair funding system for our schools. Most recently, Mr. Deon’s supported candidates and Mr. Deon himself supported disenfranchising city voters by both trying to impeach Philadelphia’s elected official and taking power away from the district attorney’s office, no matter who we elect, and give it to an appointed non-accountable unknown lawyer.
History will tell a fuller story of Mr. Deon’s efforts, victories, conflicts, and missteps. The future will bring new leadership and new challenges. Perhaps even a state-wide alliance of Public Transit systems to fight for adequate state-wide funding. We cannot learn from history if we avoid unpleasant truths.
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