{"id":137360,"date":"2025-08-11T16:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/137360\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T16:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:21:10","slug":"pa-house-makes-last-ditch-effort-to-stave-off-mass-transit-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/137360\/","title":{"rendered":"Pa. House makes last-ditch effort to stave off mass transit cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

HARRISBURG (AP) \u2014 A last-ditch effort to prevent half of all public transit services from being eliminated in the Philadelphia region<\/a> passed Pennsylvania\u2019s House of Representatives on Monday, as a roughly $1 billion Democratic-backed funding plan advanced toward an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled state Senate.<\/p>\n

The bill \u2014 which includes funding for highways, too \u2014 increases aid for transit agency operations by $292 million, or about 25% more, with the lion\u2019s share of the money going to the Philadelphia-based Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.<\/p>\n

SEPTA has said it cannot keep waiting for more aid and must start making cuts in the coming days, which it says will be more drastic than any undertaken by a major transit agency in the United States.<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s sixth-largest public transit system has warned that it will cut half its services by Jan. 1 and be unable to provide enhanced service for major tourist events next year. Those include FIFA World Cup<\/a> matches in Philadelphia, events surrounding the celebration of the nation\u2019s 250th birthday<\/a>, Major League Baseball\u2019s all-star game, the PGA Championship and NCAA March Madness games.<\/p>\n

The legislation passed in the House by 108-95 over the objection of nearly every Republican in the chamber. It has the support of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, but Republican senators have resisted increasing aid for transit.<\/p>\n

The deadline push comes after two years of stalemate, and as transit agencies nationwide struggle with rising costs and lagging ridership.<\/p>\n

SEPTA has said that on Thursday it will begin a 10-day preparation period for 20% across-the-board service cuts. Those take effect Aug. 24 and include eliminating bus routes with lower ridership and reducing the frequency of bus, trolley and rail services across the region.<\/p>\n

Under the plan, fares will then rise by 21.5% on Sept. 1 and, soon after, the agency will impose a hiring freeze. It will carry out another service cut on Jan. 1 that will mean that it will have eliminated half its current services, it has said.<\/p>\n

Democrats say shoring up public transit agencies around the state is critical to the economy and making sure people can get to work, school and medical appointments.<\/p>\n

Republicans have objected that transit agencies need to become more efficient, highways need more state funding and transit riders should pay higher fares.<\/p>\n

Transit agencies in Pittsburgh and elsewhere around Pennsylvania also say they are making cuts or raising fares, or both.<\/p>\n

Under the bill, an extra 1.75 percentage points of state sales tax revenue \u2014 from 4.4% to 6.15% \u2014 would go toward a public transit fund to help pay for the operations of several dozen transit systems around the state. The increase represents about $292 million.<\/p>\n

Democrats inserted several other provisions into the bill in a bid to pick up Republican votes.<\/p>\n

That includes funding up to $325 million in borrowing authority for highway projects, allocating $275 million for improvements to smaller, rural roads and commissioning the creation of performance standards for the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh transit agencies.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: August 11, 2025 at 12:07 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HARRISBURG (AP) \u2014 A last-ditch effort to prevent half of all public transit services from being eliminated in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":137361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,728,50,1448,2830,15273,1311,80,522,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-137360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-news","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-transportation","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115011052119566727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}