Great communities need great transit. Pennsylvania’s legislature broke its promise & failed to deliver funding for transit. Now, only Governor Shapiro has the power to stop imminent fare increases and service cuts. Take action today!
Can you take your advocacy a step further?
Transit funding is essential to a competitive, healthy Pennsylvania economy, providing mobility and access to all!
Transit isn’t a charity service – it’s a public good for all. Transit access wins Pennsylvania major events like the NFL Draft, WrestleMania, FIFA World Cup, and MLB All-Star Game. It attracts and retains major employers: from WaWa in southeastern Pennsylvania, to distribution warehouses in Erie, to manufacturers in Scranton. And it allows youth, elders, and people with disabilities to access jobs, healthcare, and culture in every county in the commonwealth.
SEPTA serves more daily users than I-95. After I-95 collapsed in 2023, Governor Shapiro and officials across geography and politics rallied to restore it immediately – all for 160,000 daily drivers. SEPTA alone served over 791,000 riders per day in September 2024, while well over 1million Pennsylvanians use transit every day. Public transportation plays a foundational role in our commonwealth.
SEPTA Falls First. Due to lack of funding support, SEPTA is proposing a further fare increase of nearly 30% in January, producing what the agency itself terms “basically have unusable service on weekends.”
Governor Shapiro can solve this. PennDOT can be directed to identify funding from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and “flex” it to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to fund transit. In 2005, Governor Ed Rendell took this action to avert crisis. Rendell threatened to do it again in 2010, which successfully compelled the legislature to pass a ten-year dedicated transit funding bill, Act 89. We have a clear template to avoid deep service cuts and fare increases on nearly a million Philly-area transit riders beginning January 1st.
These harms will affect all of us: SEPTA’s budget shortfall alone will result in $254.7 million in state and local tax revenue losses – affecting suppliers, too, in over a dozen counties across PA. That’s money that funds education, social services, economic development and infrastructure all across the Commonwealth. Further delays will lead to similar losses in transit systems throughout the state.
It’s not too late for Governor Shapiro, but it will be soon. Learn more and take action today.
Transit riders and transit workers, as well as business and community leaders across the Commonwealth are calling on our Pennsylvania elected leaders to do their job and pass funding for public transportation operations that allow for adaptation and growth.
Whether you live in Harrisburg or Pittsburgh, Wilkes Barre or Erie, rural towns or Philadelphia, all Pennsylvanians deserve safe, reliable, dignified access to the places they need to go and public transportation funding is critical to making that happen.