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A Toll to Save SEPTA? By Tedd Importico Stephen Miskin, spokesman for House Majority Leader Sam Smith, R-Punxsutawney, said that "tolling the Schuylkill" Expressway is an idea being thrown around to raise revenue for SEPTA. He projected that a toll would raise over $200 million for the gluttonous Philadelphia area transportation authority already obese with state subsidies and a monopoly on the market. SEPTA itself has predicted massive deficits over the next five years, assuming that existing state subsidies remain at their current level. The net losses, according to their own budget office, will approach $300 million a year by 2010. “This is the worst crisis to face SEPTA in its 36 year history,” said SEPTA Chairman Pasquale T. Deon. Sr. SEPTA, however, is no stranger to crisis. “In one hand, I held a report written by a Big Six accounting firm, which essentially assured us that SEPTA was managed soundly,” wrote Wally Nunn, a managing director at Salomon Smith Barney in Philadelphia and an appointed member of SEPTA’s board of directors. “In my other hand, I held a report from SEPTA’s management itself, <who> was confronting a shortfall in its budget. <I learned> that SEPTA’s ridership had declined nearly 11 percent in the past decade while its work force had expanded by 20 percent and its unit labor costs had jumped by 121 percent.” In a 1997 report on SEPTA, commissioned by Nunn, Phoenix Management Services published over 300 pages of accounting irregularities, massive wasteful spending, inefficient and over employment, and a potential $150 million in savings. While Nunn and other like-minded associates were able to implement some parts of this plan state money of over $400 million a year continued to roll in, forestalling any overwhelming desire for reform. Muddling through the bureaucratic, political and union opposition, Nunn got SEPTA operating with a modest budget surplus by 1998. As early as 2004 SEPTA was back to its old tricks again. Now legislators want to indirectly tax Pennsylvania residents and especially Philadelphia commuters with a toll to help pay for a corrupt, inefficient, and bloated transportation system whose costs continue to rise exponentially while quality and service continues to plummet. The short-term fix of a toll to subsidize this Soviet-esque system is not a solution but a Band-Aid on an ever-growing tumor. It is time to take SEPTA off of state subsidized life support and encourage some competition in the public transportation market. Competition would keep fair prices low, quality high and would lift one of the many burdens bludgeoning the Philadelphia taxpayer. SEPTA is in its death throws. For 36 years Philadelphians have struggled with rising fares, pathetic service, and socialist-level taxes to keep it alive. It’s about time for some euthanasia. It’s time to let it go. SEPTA is welcome to survive in a competitive environment of supply and demand. If it can, that is. |