Transportation Policy in Pennsylvania is a Tangled Mess

In the grand tradition of the film Groundhog Day, just like the public education establishment and welfare advocates, public transportation agencies pop out of their holes every Spring demanding hefty increases in state subsidies while threatening dire consequences if legislators fail to grant their wishes.

Transportation policy in Pennsylvania is incoherent. Funding for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is a patchwork quilt of unrelated revenue streams. Toll dollars are looted from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to fund PennDOT and mass transportation. Public transit systems themselves are rife with labor union excess and inefficiency.

Budget season is well underway in Harrisburg and the state’s two largest public transportation systems, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) in Allegheny County are both applying the pressure for more funding.

It is a favorite – and highly effective — tactic of bureaucratic agencies to make or threaten cuts that will inflict the highest level of pain possible on those they are supposed to serve. Often called the Washington monument strategy, the tactic is so named because anytime congress fails to pass a budget or continuing resolution on time the first places closed are the national parks. They are high visibility assets thereby creating the highest level of pressure on lawmakers.

It has come to pass that both SEPTA and PRT are once again demanding a massive increase in state funding while threatening to cut service if their demands are not met.

The PRT board claims to have a $100 million budget deficit in Fiscal Year 2025-26 and is threatening service reductions and fare increases that would affect both fixed route and paratransit services. The Allegheny Institute in Pittsburgh has for years pointed out that PRT’s bus expenses are among the highest in the nation and has released detailed policy briefs on the subject.

Meanwhile, SEPTA did not even make it through the current fiscal year without a budget crisis. Back in November Governor Josh Shapiro raided a pot of federal funding that was supposed to pay for major road and bridge improvement in rural counties around the state flexing $153 million to SEPTA. SEPTA, of course, is back at the trough demanding millions more or – you guessed it – they will cut routes and increase fares.

The transit agencies are presenting a false scenario to Harrisburg policymakers. They posit the only choices are to give them more state taxpayer dollars or there will be steep cuts in routes coupled with fare increases. It is possible, even likely, that demographic changes have made some routes unnecessary. And, it is fair to ask the users of the systems to shoulder more of the cost associated with the services they utilize.

However, the agencies refuse to implement operating reforms that would reduce overhead costs. For example, the Allegheny Institute found the average hourly wage for a PRT driver was nearly twice that of the hourly wage for a driver working for any of the smaller transit authorities in the five-county southwestern Pennsylvania area. Labor unions have elected officials — hence transit management – in a chokehold preventing the implementation of needed wage, benefit and work rule reforms.

Legislators in Harrisburg keep shoveling money out the door without ever demanding reform and accountability. Until they do so Pennsylvanians who never set foot on a SEPTA train or a PRT bus will continue subsidizing the services.

The same scenario continues to play out with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Fare hikes on the Pennsylvania Turnpike are as frequent as losing seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Since 2007, when the legislature passed Act 44 hundreds of millions of toll dollars have been siphoned from the turnpike to PennDOT and to subsidize mass transit.

Those dollars were to have been backfilled by revenue generated from tolling Interstate 80. However, the federal government refused to allow tolling of the interstate so the projected revenue stream never materialized – but the requirement to flex dollars to PennDOT and mass transit agencies remained.

The result has been a massive increase in turnpike commission debt along with substantial annual fare increases. Although payments to PennDOT have decreased, the flexing of money continues as does the need for the turnpike commission to pay off debt accumulated because of the scheme.

All of this is to say Pennsylvania transportation policy is a tangled mess. Over the years funding streams were pieced together with fiscal duct tape to address whatever funding crisis has arisen. And there remains no plan for holding SEPTA, PRT, and PennDOT accountable. The only certainty is we the taxpayers and turnpike travellers will continue to shovel ever increasing subsidies into a broken system.

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is [email protected].)

Permission to reprint is granted provided author and affiliation are cited.