Great communities need great transit. As constituents and taxpayers, we are demanding that our elected officials do their jobs and hold transit funding as an essential component of a competitive, healthy Pennsylvania economy, providing mobility and access to all!
For the third year in a row, the ball might get dropped. The PA legislature – with Governor Josh Shapiro leading negotiations – failed to include more than a one-time surplus allocation to public transportation in the budget passed *weeks past deadline* in July.
This is unacceptable. The failure to pass a transit funding measure as soon as possible will hurt working people and communities all across the Commonwealth. The failure to budget in a timely fashion is already causing SEPTA to raise fares and project service cuts, while systems like Westmoreland Transit Authority and Pittsburgh Regional Transit will make permanent service cuts that have mounted over the past decades due to stagnant funding. Hundreds of thousands of riders in our communities will suffer, with increased cost and time barriers to access quality healthcare, sustainable jobs, and healthy food.
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 legislators to set this right, but it will be soon. 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. We recognize the leadership of Governor Shapiro’s administration in proposing the first public transit funding increase in over a decade, to begin to close the gap between the transit service that we have and the public transit that our communities deserve. If the PA Legislature does not act soon to fund transit, they will have made a choice that harms our seniors, our economies, and all our working people across the Commonwealth.