COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC UTILITIES, October 16, 2025

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC UTILITIES Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Thursday, October 16, 2025 2:37 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL, CHAIR COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR., VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR. COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS

250880 - - -

Good afternoon, everyone. I note that the hour has come for the Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities and a very timely topic here in the city of Philadelphia. I want to thank Vice- Chair Jeffrey Jay Young and my esteemed members of the Transportation Committee, who thought that this was an important time to get SEPTA here and on the record on some very important questions that we have. We know it's been a challenging time at SEPTA and we know you need to get back to work and we're going to get you back to work, but we just want to get some things on the record so that we and our constituents and the ridership of SEPTA, you know, can get a little more answers to the questions that's on their mind. As you know, communication is important in organizational leadership and in the jobs that we have. People understand things take time. People understand there's challenges. What we find that they want is to kind of get answers when we have answers to some of their questions. And the purpose of this hearing today is to get some of those answers if they're available. We also understand that some of the questions we may or may not have answers to today. We recognize that upfront. But we appreciate you coming here. It's timely. And before we begin, I'd like to turn it over to Vice-Chair Jeffrey Jay Young.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Chair said, it's very timely. We can't spend capital money on operations, right. That's just what it comes down to. And this issue here just shows us why we have to continue to invest in SEPTA to the level that we need to invest in, right, because we can't be riding in vehicles that are obsolete essentially. That's basically what it is. That is a safety hazard for our citizens, our residents all throughout the Southeastern region. We don't want to put that liability on SEPTA, right. I'm an attorney by trade so I know all about liability. And that's one cost that I don't think this city, our Commonwealth, SEPTA can really afford to maintain, if an unfortunate tragedy were to strike on some of these older vehicles. And so, to the public we want you to know that this body has been on this issue from day one. We're doing everything we can do to ensure that SEPTA remains fully funded, that SEPTA remains safe and we're going to continue to work with our partners to ensure that SEPTA is the premier public transportation system that we know it can be in the country. So thank you, Mr. Chair.

Member Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to put on the record the sentiments and thank my Chair and Vice-Chair and members of the committee for bringing this issue, this timely issue now. We have a big birthday party next year. We want visitors to experience Philadelphia in a positive way, so much so that they come back. We put a donut tire on a vehicle to keep it running, using as Member Young talked about, capital dollars, moving them to operating dollars. What we must understand is that the capital need didn't say, oh, we'll take a break until you figure it out. The rust and the wear and tear on those vehicles still happen. When you have rail cars that are older than most of the members of City Council, you're going to have problems. When you have the inability to do routine maintenance in a way that should be done, replacements of critical equipment in the way that it should be done, you're going to have multiple collapses. This is not on you. This is on government that kind of said, here's what we can do to provide a donut tire so that Ms. Davis can get back and forth on a regular shift at o'clock at night and not have to catch an Uber. So you did what you had to do. We did what we had to do. Now, we got to figure out what must be done to preserve that system. And so, I'm thankful, Mr. Chairman, for you raising this and the members of the Transportation Committee for focusing on this. So we need to figure it out. And communications is key, as the Chairman said. Thank you.

Well, thank you. Before we call the attendance and we begin our public testimony, just on behalf of the Committee we do want to give a shout-out to the hard-working men and women of the SEPTA community. I mean, you folks were the front line during COVID. You know, you were our heroes. You're still our heroes. Today is not about pointing fingers. Today's not about assigning blame. Today's about just communicating so that we can help you communicate better. We have great social media accounts. You know, we have a great network. We're here to just get to the questions, get to the answers and get back to work. So with that, Ms. McDonald, will you please call the roll to take attendance. Members that are in attendance, please indicate you are present when your name is called.

Councilmember Brooks.

Present.

Councilmember Jones.

Present.

Councilmember Phillips. (No response.)

Councilmember Squilla. (No response.)

Vice-Chair Young.

Present.

Chair Driscoll.

Present. Thank you. A quorum of the committee is present and the hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee on Public Transportation and Public Utilities regarding Resolution No. 250880. Ms. McDonald, will you please read the title of the resolution.

Resolution 2 No. 250880, authorizing the Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities to hold hearings to investigate SEPTA's Regional Rails Silverliner IV fleet.

Ms. McDonald, will you please call the first panel we have to testify this afternoon on Resolution No. 11 250880.

Scott Sauer, General Manager of SEPTA and Michael Carroll.

Good morning, Mr. Carroll. Good morning, Mr. Sauer. Please when you speak, state your name for the record and begin your testimony.

Thank you. I'm Scott, S-c-o-t-t, Sauer, S-a-u-e-r, General Manager of SEPTA. Good afternoon, Councilmember and Transportation and Public Utilities Committee Chair Driscoll, Vice-Chair Young and members of Council. My name is Scott Sauer and I'm the General Manager of SEPTA, and I'm pleased to be joined by members of the SEPTA leadership team. Thank you for this opportunity to testify regarding the Silverliner for Regional Rail Fleet and SEPTA's response to the order issued by the Federal Railroad Administration and the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board. Let me first start by saying that nothing is more critical than safety when it comes to our riders and our employees. SEPTA takes these urgent safety directives and recommendations seriously for the safety of the Regional Rail riders and we have responded immediately to implement the required safety improvements to equipment inspections, maintenance and operations. In the months following a fire in February 2025, SEPTA had worked with the FRA and the NTSB to develop a comprehensive set of 40 mitigation measures. SEPTA had made progress on a range of initiatives, from additional notifications and safety checks to audible alarms for fault lights and rail operations has adjusted vehicle usage to reduce the hours of service of these aging cars. The FRA's Emergency Order No. 34 includes more than 15 required actions the SEPTA must take, including operator and mechanical personnel training, installation of new thermal detectors, daily inspection regimens and a comprehensive point- to-point inspection of every Silverliner IV railcar following an aggressive FRA approved schedule. SEPTA has also added the following measures: inperson inspectors on all trains going through Center City stations, performing mid-run inspections of fault indicator lights, in addition to other checks and inspections already in place, live video monitoring that allows railroad directors to look into all trains to check on the same indicator lights. The 225 Silverliner IV railcars are SEPTA's oldest rail cars, dating back to the mid 1970s and are some of the oldest in operation in the country. They actually precede the formation of SEPTA and were not purchased by SEPTA, but were inherited as part of the 1983 Conrail merger mandated by the state legislature, and represent approximately two-thirds of SEPTA's Regional Rail fleet. Due to funding constraints that have prevented their replacement, SEPTA has had to keep these railcars in service long beyond their recommended useful life. Procuring new rail cars is a lengthy and costly process and SEPTA is developing a funding plan to support their replacement. Despite our ongoing funding challenges, SEPTA has a robust maintenance and vehicle overhaul program which has extended the life of these cars. To date, we have done thorough inspections of 52 of those cars using the new criteria prescribed by the FRA. We are being deliberate and methodical with the inspections, as we want to leave no stone unturned. While this is inconvenient, this underscores the heightened priority that this has become for the safety of our riders and employees. I must also acknowledge the cooperation of all our railroad union leadership and members who have worked in partnership with management the entire time. They have been committed to identify the causes of the fault lights and how to resolve the issue. I can't overstate my appreciation for the dedication of these employees during this time. SEPTA is committed to fully complying with the FRA's emergency order and we are confident that full compliance will achieve the goal of the NTSB recommendation without permanently suspending the Silverliner IV fleet. I also recognize that our customers are feeling the strain.

SEPTA has been advising customers of possible Regional Rail trip delays, cancellations and overcrowded conditions during their commutes, as Silverliner IV railcars are rotated from service for enhanced inspections, testing and important safety upgrades. SEPTA is exploring all options in the near term to minimize impacts to our customers, including potentially borrowing and leasing options of additional railcars to supplement service. I want to thank our customers for their patience. Our mechanics, engineers and safety teams are working around the clock to keep service running safely while meeting every new federal requirement, but we also know we must go further. This moment has made clear that we must strengthen how we operate, the way we inspect and communicate and the way we learn from challenges. We're taking a hard look at ourselves to ensure we not only fix what's urgent today, but improve our processes and accountability going forward. I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is still waiting on the legislature to deliver a budget. In early September with no foreseeable resolution to the statewide transit funding crisis, SEPTA took the unprecedented step of requesting one-time permission to use its state capital assistance to close a $213 million annual operating budget deficit for the next two years. This emergency action is not a solution to SEPTA structural budget deficit nor does it provide any new state funding. Therefore, SEPTA is proposing a critical amendment to its FY2026 capital and operating budgets. The amendment requires transferring $394 million in capital funds to support operating costs. And to enable this transfer, SEPTA must defer five capital projects, including the purchase of more than 250 hybrid buses. This is on top of the 44 projects that were already deferred or descoped in SEPTA's originally proposed Fiscal Year 2026 capital budget that was approved in June. That brings us to more than $2 billion in combined capital budget cuts. This will worsen a state-of- good-repair backlog that now surpasses $10 billion and means long-planned accessibility improvements will be deferred indefinitely. Our bus and rail fleets will continue to age, potentially creating new maintenance issues in the future. And the pace at which we move into the future as an organization with new services and technologies will be far slower than we had hoped. Virtually all of our remaining capital funds will be dedicated to financial obligations and safety critical state-of-good-repair projects. SEPTA continues to advocate for a long-term sustainable funding solution. Transferring capital funds to operating with no commitment to replenish them ensures that program capital dollars will not be available to use when they are needed in the future. Sustainable investment in SEPTA remains essential to fulfilling our mission. For decades, chronic underfunding has forced SEPTA to stretch aging infrastructure and vehicles far beyond their intended lifespans. The result is what the region is experiencing today, a system doing its best under the weight of deferred investment. We are grateful for Council's support of our funding efforts, and we ask those here today and all who value SEPTA's critical role in the city's future to continue urging lawmakers to support a long-term transit funding solution to help SEPTA and all Pennsylvania transit agencies. Our riders deserve better and we are committed to doing better while fighting for more funding to build a world-class transit network that is safe and reliable. That is our priority every day, making SEPTA stronger and safer for everyone who depends on us. I have a vision for SEPTA's future, one in which transit can make a defining difference in attracting people, businesses and investment to live and work in the five county SEPTA service region. I look forward to working with you all to make this vision a reality.

Thank you again for inviting me to appear before you today and for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to taking questions.

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Carroll and I'm speaking today as the Mayor's appointee to the SEPTA Board. For the Mayor's part, she stands by her statement that she expects SEPTA to do everything it is able to do to ensure the highest level of safety for passengers traveling throughout the city in the region. One of the Board's main areas of focus is working with SEPTA's leadership and staff to build up a culture of safety and to ensure there is accountability for achieving results. The Board also acknowledges, as councilmembers have themselves, the long-term solution for SEPTA can only be long-term sustainable funding. While there are issues that SEPTA is facing that can be managed and there will be improvement in SEPTA's performance, solving the long-term issues means we must ultimately all work together to provide SEPTA the resources it needs to modernize and sustain the essential services it provides at the quality and level of safety that the public deserves.

Thank you for your testimony. So this October or this October 31st deadline that the federal government has imposed, and I read about it in the newspapers like most of us did and I'm no engineer, I'm no mechanic, but to me it seemed Herculean that given your other responsibilities and day-to- day operating how that was even possible. So I guess my question is -- and I know you're working around the clock to try and adhere to that -- what constitutes full compliance with that order and do you think you can get there by that aggressive time frame?

So it's certainly a daunting task. 225 cars running through a more rigorous process, a process which we just recently developed, as you describe it, Herculean in nature. We are fully committed to making every effort working around the clock to meet that deadline. We realize that there is potential should some condition emerge that we may not, so we are formulating alternate plans for service should we not meet those deadlines. We're working hand-in- hand every day with the FRA to make sure we're moving toward compliance but keeping an eye out for options. The FRA has been a great partner through this. I mean, they are our regulator first and foremost, but they also know what we're up against so they have been working with us every day. So we will keep pushing forward to that deadline. There are three different tasks that are probably the most difficult, the inspection process of all 225 cars, the need to install thermal wiring or thermal detection and all 225 cars. And then there's a separate item where we have to digitize all of our 1970s era manuals and documents which we are working towards. Those are probably the three largest of the or so tasks 5 that we have ahead of us. 6 Like I said, we are 7 working around the clock to try to 8 meet it. Staying in close 9 communication -- you mentioned how 10 important communication is. 11 Staying in close communication with 12 our regulator and exploring 13 alternatives all the way through 14 this process. So while this time I 15 can't certainly commit, my commitment is to make every effort to hit the deadline. Should we not be able to do that, then we would have to talk about alternatives, none of which I have at this moment.

Is there a procedural -- is it something -- let's say it's October 30th and or even a couple days before that and you know you're just not going to make it. Is there an appellate process with the federal government?

There is a process by which we can seek relief from the order, and relief can take many forms. It can be extend the deadline. It could be a compromise on what can run given that we didn't meet the full compliance with every car. We are going to work with our FRA partners to figure out exactly what relief would be needed. But there is a possibility we could seek relief and be granted relief under the order.

I'm glad to hear that. Look, from a public policy standpoint I think it's a horrible idea and I know it wasn't yours. You know, they use capital dollars for operating dollars. It's just bad public policy all around, so I think the state government needs to think about, you know, a better funding mechanism in the short term and long term so that you're not back here every year trying to figure this out. We need you to do what you do best, and that's running this critical mass transit system here in the five county region. Well, let me ask you this: What can the riding public expect in the next three to six months?

Well, certainly in the near term it's been very difficult for our customers. We started this week short -- finished last week and started this week short cars. We've been kind of modifying our process to figure out how to best deliver service to our customers. We took steps this week to cancel trains, kind of hedge our bets a little bit to make sure we could run what we promised to run. We want to make sure that when we tell a customer that a train is going to come at a certain time, that that train does come. So we have been trying to modify our service schedules in the near term while we go through this inspection process. Provided that everything goes well with the inspections and with the order and that come October or so, say, November 1st, we are running our fleet. I would fully expect these new inspections to continue so that we are going to proceed with an abundance of caution on these cars now and into the future, but I would expect that service will improve. We may have to take steps to reduce service a little on Regional Rail to account for higher numbers of cars being shopped for inspections or maintenance, just making sure that we are running the best and safest fleet possible. In the meantime, we are out looking for alternatives. We're looking for cars from across our neighboring transit agencies that may be either not being used presently or they're taking delivery of new vehicles and maybe they're going to offload some of their older fleet. We're exploring every option that we can to bring in replacement cars as quickly as possible, knowing full well we still have to replace the entire fleet with new vehicles. So over the next three to six months, we will build back up to the service that our customers can rely on and expect and then stabilize the fleet so that we can provide the service that we promise to deliver.

I have more questions but I want to defer to Vice-Chair Jeffrey Jay Young at this moment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair --

And let me just welcome for the record Councilmember Anthony Phillips.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This report was pretty honestly damning, right. I mean, some of the language in it essentially said that the maintenance and operating practices of SEPTA represent immediate and unacceptable safety risk. It says that organizational lapses -- there are organizational lapses that block effective risk mitigation. So from July to now, could you tell us what steps SEPTA has taken to kind of mitigate what those risks are that they laid out in this report?

So, yes, and we certainly -- that was alarming to everyone at SEPTA, but we took immediate steps once the order came in. Even prior to the order, we have changed our leadership team that runs our maintenance and operations groups, so we have new leadership. We've also gone through with our labor unions in hand and spoken to each and every one of our employees to convey the importance of what we're trying to accomplish here. We want to make sure that employees and managers are maintaining that level of vigilance and dedication that this moment requires. We want to make sure that no car leaves our yard that isn't safe to run. And what that means is when we're doing our job, when we're maintaining the vehicle in the shops, when we're running the equipment on the line, when we're being notified of defects and indicator lights that are going on inside the vehicle, that we are taking the steps that are appropriate to ensure that that vehicle is maintained or inspected properly. So changing the culture from the inside out is really what we're focused on right now, looking at how to get into the hearts and minds of everyone at SEPTA from the top from me to the entry list of entry-level employees. Making sure that everybody understands safety is our number one priority and we cannot have lapses in operations or maintenance practices that lead to a situation like what we've seen here. So lots to do over the coming months.

Thank you, Scott. How long have you been at the helm of SEPTA?

I've been at SEPTA for over 35 years.

How long have you been the CEO?

June 2nd I was named permanent.

So I have full confidence that you have the ability to turn SEPTA around. I just want the public to know that you've only been on the job a few months, you know. And I just want the public to know that we on City Council have full confidence that you will implement the things that's necessary to make sure that SEPTA is sustainable for the future. So thank you for your leadership.

Chair recognizes Member Phillips.

I just want to briefly say thank you, Scott, for being here today. You are responsive. You do your best. I just literally talked about a city agency that's not doing its work on Council today. You try your best with the limited resources you have. I know there's a lot of bureaucracy even within your organization, but you've been trying to clear it up so it's tough. So I just want to say thank you for the work that you're trying to do to address this. But as a body, we have to come up with thoughts and ideas to address issues of this sort. So thank you.

Thank you.

And maybe you don't know the answers. I don't know. When can we expect the Regional Rail service to go back to a normal schedule and capacity?

So normal as we remember it prior to October 1st could take us a while. And by a while I mean probably through the remainder of this calendar year, as we make sure that we have the safest fleet possible. What I can say is that service will improve as we go along. As we inspect more cars, as we make changes to our processes and practices, that service will improve. What I am unable to commit to at this point is when service will look like it looked prior to this. But understand and for our customers and for yours as well, we are finding every way imaginable to provide the service that we can provide safely but more importantly, to talk to our customers and keep them informed so that they can plan their trips. It's more important for us to deliver 100% of service that we're able to provide. Then just print a schedule and then hope for the best. We want to give the service that the customer can count on so they can find their way around the region. So it could be several months before we talk about what normal is with this fleet.

Vice-Chair Young.

Thank you. So in your testimony you did mention that there were 46 cars inspected out of the possible, was it 225. Can you give us an idea when the rest will be inspected?

That number has changed since our submitted testimony. We're now up to 52, so we had a goal of trying to inspect about cars a day. We are coming 6 up a little short of that goal. 7 We're around 8 or 10 presently, but 8 we are going to try to get through 9 all 225 by the end of October. 10 We'll see how we go as we get -- 11 the process started slow because we 12 are teaching our employees a new process. As they get better at it and get more efficient with it, we will improve our output. But we will be right up against the deadline at the very end.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Member Phillips.

Thank you. I did have a couple of questions. So I just want to ask you a couple things. Is SEPTA looking into exploring public- private partnerships, leasing options basically to accelerate this replacement?

So we are looking at leasing options. We're looking at leasing options from other carriers. We are exploring what are called purchase options. So other carriers buy equipment and they have options to buy more of the same equipment. So we're looking for those options as well, that perhaps we could buy another carrier's options. And then we are our finance department is putting together an application for a federal loan program that we can buy the replacement fleet. But in the near term, we're looking for excess cars from other carriers and options that we can buy into with other carriers have purchased equipment.

Thank you. And forgive me if this question was already answered, I had a couple of conflicts and I showed up a little behind. But what is SEPTA's long-term fleet replacement plan, including the timelines for the Silverliner VI procurement?

So that's a -- I really appreciate that question because that'll give me an opportunity to talk about how we should be planning for our fleet replacement. We really improved our bus fleet or so years ago. 19 We had a very old bus fleet back 20 then and now our bus fleet age has actually about seven or eight years on average, and that's because we have a fleet management plan where we buy about 100 new busses every single year at about 1200 or 1400 or so buses. So that really reduces the age of the vehicles, keeps things rather new and reduces our maintenance costs and our ability to put service out each day. We rarely have a service issue due to bus fleet. But when you're talking about our rail fleet, that's where things kind of don't match up. We have the oldest rail fleet in the country. Our newest railcars are the Silverliner Vs, which arrived somewhere around 2010, 2009, somewhere in that range. Those are about 120 cars. The Market-Frankford fleet, which we have a contract to replace, they're about 30 years old. The street cars, which we have a contract to replace currently, they're about over 40 years old. The Silverliners, as we're discussing, are 50 years old. The Broad street cars are over 40 years old. And we don't have a capital budget to replace the Broad street cars. We had to defer that project. We estimate that's about a $600 million replacement. Railcars are not cheap and they're not fast. So you don't buy a railcar fleet within five years. That's a 6- to 10-year procurement depending on the size of the fleet, so you need to plan these. And what makes SEPTA unique as compared to some of our peers in the industry is each fleet is unique to the mode that it runs on. So Market-Frankford cars can't run on Broad Street. Broad Street can't run on the streetcar lines. The streetcars can't run on Regional Rail. Nothing matches, and that's just because of who SEPTA is. We were brought together as a mix of companies that went bankrupt back in the '60s so everything's different. So when we buy Market-Frankford cars, we got to buy the whole fleet, 220 or so cars. When we buy the Broad street cars, we got to buy the whole fleet, 125 cars, whereas buses we kind of have the luxury of buying a few each year. So our fleet replacement plan, which has really just started on rail -- a couple years ago we were awarded a contract for the street cars, so that's under way. The Market-Frankford cars were awarded last year. That's under way. Silverliner VIs, those are the cars we're trying to put out. We're about to release a request for proposals on Silverliner VIs so we'll advance that, but that'll be completely debt financed, so they'll cost more than they would if we were funded. And the Broad Street cars, as I mentioned, don't have a plan yet because we don't have funding for them. And I didn't even mention the Norristown High Speed Line cars because that's a very small fleet. But we don't have a plan there either. So really we have to shore up our capital program, our capital funding situation, so that we can properly have an asset plan to replace these things as they come up and not wait until we're in crisis.

No, no, this is -- one of the things I think about, and I'm glad this -- thank you, Chairman, for bringing this to our attention. And one of the things I think is just as important is we just don't want to have a massive issue in the city of Philadelphia around that. So whatever we can do to protect our residents on this issue, let's do it, you know. And I think it's very important. I mean, as you know it's beyond important. But if there's a way in which we can help with City Council-wise, whatever that we can do just so you can be more effective so nothing happens to our residents at a large scale level.

Of course.

That's all. Thank you.

Chairman Young.

So how do you prioritize those capital projects, right? I mean, every vehicle fleet you named is older than myself and Councilmember Phillips, right. So how do you prioritize?

So what we've done over the years is we've had different outside consultants come through and give us an estimate on how long these vehicles could conceivably last. The Market-Frankford fleet has had well-documented challenges over the years, and it came in overweight, had cracked components. There were issues with the car, so that car kind of moved to the head of the line because we've dealt with so many issues over the years. They're a safe fleet. They're running. We have enhanced maintenance practices for the Market-Frankford fleet that we've developed over the years, somewhat what we're doing right now with the Silverliners, so that moved to the head of the line. The streetcar fleet was chosen because the entire system is not ADA accessible and this starts with the vehicles. So even if we made the underground stations accessible, the vehicle could not accommodate an accessible travel. So they were at the top of the line. And by the way, they're 40-plus years old as well. The Silverliner IV fleet historically has been a very reliable fleet. Even beyond its 40 year useful life expectancy, it was a very reliable fleet. What we're seeing now very likely is the end of life of what a component would be deemed as good for the extent of the car's life. Now, we're starting to see those components need attention. So where five or six years ago the Silverliner IVs were second or third in the rotation, they are now up to the top because the Market-Frankford fleet is moving and the streetcar fleet is moving. Silverliner IVs go now. Broad Street will have to come next as financing or funding becomes available.

Market-Frankford fleet, that's the 317 million that we were rewarded?

That's correct.

And that's already been let. Is there a time frame for the first arrivals? I know it takes a while.

It does take a while. I think we are no more than 12 to 14 months into that contract. And you generally don't see the first pilot car until year 6, year 5, somewhere in that range. So we are four years away from seeing a pilot car.

Well, another financing question and then I want to get into some communications issues, including anticipatory new cars. So the Silverliner that you're going to replace, is that traditional bond financing; how does that work?

There's a loan program through the U.S. Department of Transportation called TIFIA. It escapes me what it stands for, but it is a low interest loan program that's specifically designed for situations like this that we should expect to qualify for.

That's good to hear. I stated in my opening communication is important, especially for your ridership. I mean, you folks live this every day. You know what's going on, but the anxiety level of the rider, especially now, we have to bring it down. With regard to four years from now when you're getting the new cars, I think at some point maybe your marketing department can design something to let them know that help is on the way. And it's not the end of SEPTA. It's the beginning of the new SEPTA on the Market Line, because people need to hear that good things are happening. So I just suggested for what it's worth in your marketing campaign. And I know the app works when it works and when it doesn't, it doesn't. We've been getting complaints recently that says the train is coming when the train is canceled. And you can imagine, you know, the implications of that. But what proactive measures is SEPTA taking to communicate your changes, the cancellations, the overcrowding issues before it arrives at the station?

Yeah, so the app was a situation that we had heard a lot about. So we released an update to the app just last week. In light of everything that was going on, we accelerated an update that now -- we believe, at least upon first issuance, that it does communicate much better the cancellations. Now, there are always going to be -- and this is something that we have to communicate better to folks. There are always going to be situations where a train is fine until it's not and the engineer discovers a problem, radios it in and is told, okay, we're going to take the train out of service. That could happen at the station right before it's scheduled to pick you up. And now suddenly, that train that you thought was on time is now canceled. That should be rare compared to the scheduled cancellations, which is why we started to go back over the weekend, this past weekend, and we are now canceling trains in advance trying to ensure that whatever we say is coming is coming. But the app was updated. It should be better. Now, for those who are less inclined to use an app or use a technological solution, at all of our station platforms we have our audio visual screens or displays, so we have also improved that information so that if you're standing on the platform, you can see when the next train is scheduled to arrive and whether or not it's on time or late or canceled. So that information, if you happen to be at the station, you can get. We're also trying to communicate as much as possible through the local media, give them all the cancellations and all the updates as we go. So if people are even less inclined and they want to get that information before they leave the house, they can find it there. And our website is always active and up-to-date so for people who can get there. But there's still a lot more we're trying to do on communication, especially in-the- moment communication. When people see a delay, it's happening right there in that moment, trying to get word through our control center, through the crews on the trains or the station attendants and do a better job of talking to customers face-to-face. So there's always room for improvement there and that's a focus of ours. We recently put our customer communications that are housed in our control center, we reorganized them into our customer service department so that they can take that mentality of the customer first out of the control center, that day-to-day operations mentality, and focus squarely on the customer's experience. And we believe that's actually already showing some improvements. But in a crisis like this where there's so much going on, we are trying to figure out how to make sure that that information doesn't get lost on the customer if they're getting too much all at the same time. A lot to do, Councilmember, and we are trying.

And to that point, you are trying and we hear that clearly today. We're also concerned about your employees. The anxiety that the passengers are feeling I'm sure bleeds over to your employees and your operators. I know they need vacations and then you're putting overtime on. Where appropriate can you speak to what we're doing for the employees?

Yeah. So certainly our maintenance employees, at least on the Regional Rail side, today are really, really busting at trying to move this along. They are working seven days a week in some cases, trying to get these inspections done. They are doing a fantastic job. But as we've been getting out and talking to employees, I just -- I was talking to a couple crew members yesterday and asked them that question, how are you guys doing. And generally speaking, they said, look, we understand, we're doing what we can. But what I would implore customers to understand is in their interactions with our crew members and with our employees they are really trying to do the best that they can. And while I appreciate you acknowledging that we inherited some of these problems, they didn't cause these problems either. So I would implore our customers just to try to understand that they're trying and they didn't cause the delay. They're trying to manage the delay, but we are trying to find ways and we will find ways to reward this effort because they are really giving us effort to get us through this crisis. We wouldn't be able to get through without them.

And we acknowledge that and we appreciate that. And when you're speaking to them, let them know that City Council has acknowledged their efforts, not only recently, but over the years. We know how stressful it is. The other thing, just a couple more questions. So when the cars -- some show up, some don't and then it becomes an overcrowding situation. From a safety standpoint, is there a threshold? How do you communicate when it's at capacity, that car? I don't know how all that works and I know it's probably hard to distinguish yourself.

So our conductors, our train crew are taught. They know what capacity is and what it looks like. They will not or they will make every effort to not permit customers to stand in between the cars and the vestibules. That's kind of that space that we don't -- we don't want customers in those areas. Once that train fills to the capacity as the conductor is observing it, he'll radio in to our control center and tell us that they're full. At that point, a decision is made to send that train to its destination without making additional stops. So the conductors will have to inform everybody aboard the train. We're not going to make another stop until we get to Temple or until we get to Penn Medicine or something to that effect, affording people who want to get off before then the opportunity to get off. At the same time, another modification we made in our service is when we know that, we want to get a train into that inner ring of stations to service those people who are going to get passed up, because they're going to get passed up now by a full train. So we try to get an empty train into that zone to pick up the excess that's getting left behind. It's a difficult process because knowing the timing of when these things might occur, we're learning as we go each day where they habitually occur. But knowing where they're going to occur and having trains available to pick up that excess has been a challenge. We're getting better at it as we go. Hopefully we won't have to do it for much longer, but that's kind of the process. The crew will identify the full train. Let the control center know and then they'll be given instructions from that point.

Maybe not quite yet, but we're getting close to the slippery rail season. When the climate weather comes, is that going to exacerbate this problem? I mean, not to put any more burden on you.

So we have our standard slippery rail program. So we have what we refer to as our wash trains. They go out and they spray water on the rail head to clean off the rail heads. They also will lay down a gel. It's got a sand grit in it that creates cohesion for the wheels. So we still have that program. It's actually operational currently because it starts around this time and will extend into about the first or second week in December. So we are out treating the rails still, using our overnight yard crews to do that and we expect that to continue to the extent possible. We don't want to exacerbate the issues that we're experiencing with the shortage of cars by having slippery rail which slows us down as well. Slippery rail will slow us down.

Yeah, let's hope we have a mild season. Are (inaudible) -- yeah. So I think what we want to communicate to you is that we're not the opposition here. We're a resource as well. We take your request serious. You know, we fund you. Wish we could give you more. We give you as much as we can and we want to continue to do that, but it's a two-way street. If you need something from us, you let us know. And then you were very kind to bring your leadership team here today for us. We're going to communicate some of the responses that you've given us to our constituents, our neighbors, your ridership. And I think if we can continue to emphasize this communication that we talked about that I think is so critically important to that passenger, because they're anxious getting up in the morning just having to get kids to school. They know their boss is expecting them into work and then they now have this added layer of anxiety that what was always punctual may not be punctual anymore. And I know we're not there yet and I know you have this aggressive time frame, so we wish you well. Are there any questions from other members? Member Jones.

So I think our Chairman and this Committee have expressed to you that we view you as critical partners in the maintenance and operations of the city. We demonstrated that when we traveled to Harrisburg and met with not just Democrats but Republicans on the issue of mass transit in this region. Many of your staff bore witness of us pleading your case, pleading the city's case. So I want you to know, view us as your strategic partners. And as the Chairman said, communication is key. If we don't know, we can't help. And so, these kinds of conversations, these kinds of hearings that allow us, that arm us with information to be able to be helpful to you. So thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Member Jones. And hearing no 4 further -- Vice-Chair Young -- Councilmember Phillips first.

Oh, just a quick comment. Again, I think you have the numbers of how much it's going to cost for this. I mean, this is for us I think a very serious public safety issue. If that's something that we can do to transfer whatever to help with some of the fleets, I think that's important. We need to know that information and I'd rather for you to figure out how to lobby us for that, because I think it's just important that we get this because before it becomes out of control. If you can get us a timeline, Scott, on how we can get this done because we just don't want a massive issue in Philadelphia knowing that we knew this is a problem and we didn't fix it. And so, that just can't be. It's not going to sit right with any one of us. Thank you.

Well, good. We have no further questions so we want to thank you for your testimony today.

Thank you so much, Chairman.

And we will transition to our public comment session on Resolution No. 250880. Ms. McDonald, will you please call the first person making public comment we have to testify this afternoon on the resolution 21 before the committee today.

Connor Descheemaker, Nicole Brunet, Alan Fisher. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

I'm going to clarify for the record that we have another panel here before we go into public comment. So please state your name for the record and begin with your testimony.

Hi, Council. My name is Alan Fisher. I'm a freelance advocate, but I specialize in urban planning transit and just railroads-related things in general. I guess today I'm going to give you a small history lesson for those that might not know a bit about the railcars or kind of how SEPTA has gotten to this point. April 28, 1985, do you know why that's an important date for Philadelphia? 40 years ago the SEPTA Regional Rail lines, the airport opened, which marked the last major project that SEPTA has ever completed and the last time that SEPTA has ever received a significant amount of money from the state or federal government for a large capital project. years before that, 9 the Silverliners IVs were 10 introduced on Regional Rail. Their shells were built by the Bud Company at the Red Lion plant and at the Northeast Philly Airport, before being shipped to GE and Erie, PA to be completed 50 years later. These trains are still in service. For the last 40 years, SEPTA has essentially been operated on one of the most mediocre and stifled budgets of any transit agency in the country, let alone for one of the largest cities in the country. Throughout the '90s, we saw cutbacks from various trolley routes in North Philly, like the 5056 and 23. But as much as people want to blame the agency for not keeping them running, we also never funded SEPTA to properly fix their infrastructure. The Silverliner IVs and their fires are just symptoms of the continuous, systemic underfunding and self-consuming capital expense backlog. This is like trying to heat your house in the winter with a fire, but instead of buying more fuel to burn, you're slowly cannibalizing the house itself to keep the fire lit. SEPTA has essentially been using infrastructure that's on borrowed time. And when something goes wrong or breaks, everyone acts surprised and immediately blames the agency for malpractice. Also know for the lawyers out there suing an agency that has a negative net income stream of money does not magically make a pot of money appear. But SEPTA is still dealing with the same problems that it's always faced, systemic underinvestment, leading to failure of critical systems, which then leads to lower ridership, which then causes lower fare box recovery. This creates a vicious cycle of continuous bad press and negative views toward the agency, which then finally the average person has zero faith in our transit agency. And this is where the blame game starts. There's a history of this. Who is really at fault for the system's failure to deliver world class transit, especially a system that already has infrastructure that many cities would kill for, like our Center City commuter rail tunnel, not even New York City has something like that. Everyone loves to blame the state, which for the most part I can agree that the state of Pennsylvania has been shamefully inept for decades and decades at providing any meaningful amount of money towards transit versus PennDOT Highway expansion, and it's not like they're stopping. Instead of investing in the Broad Street line improvements, PennDOT is widening I-95 in South Philly again, despite the outcry of residents nearby. PennDOT is also widening the Northeast Extension between King of Prussia and Allentown, money that can instead be used for building a rail line between Allentown and Philly via land sale. Continuing our who's to blame session, as much as I praise SEPTA, there has been some bad decisions in the past. But majority of those bad decisions stem from their board structure and how every county gets two people versus the city only gets three. So the SEPTA board will always be tilted in favor of the suburbs viewpoints versus the more populous and higher ridership parts of the city. SEPTA's board throughout the '90s and 2000s chased the idea of creating what would be called the Schuylkill Valley Metro or essentially a commuter line that would extend all the way from Philly to Pottstown and Reading.

This project had been scaled back multiple times, changed form multiple times and finally ended up being whittled down to a project that was just an extension of the Norristown High Speed Line to King of Prussia. Outside of the failed King of Prussia extension, there are very few things that I can point to that are legitimate problems with the agency that aren't just symptoms when it comes of historic underfunding. Lastly, I do think that the people of the Philadelphia city government do not take SEPTA and transportation besides cars very seriously sometimes. Some of you grew up in Philadelphia take SEPTA for granted. Many of you view the service as something you use as a kid, but once you have the means to buy a car you never use it again. And now you're surprised that there's many activists like myself telling you that SEPTA is very important for everyone and that you should care about it. I cannot stress enough that Philadelphia is already leagues better than other cities and metro areas in the country when it comes to transit access. People and businesses move here because of that access. And for the most part, we failed using the advantage of that opportunity to make Philadelphia a better city for its residents and businesses, because some of our leaders do not see SEPTA as an asset worth investing in. Meanwhile, cities like Seattle have passed sales taxes towards building out their transit system with a brand new rail line opening next year. Yet here we are with 50-year-old trains that are lighting on fire. And instead of asking the question of how did we get here or why did we not invest in transit, we're instead grilling the head of the transit agency over railcars that were built at the same time he was born. The fact of the matter is if you want better, safer, more reliable transit, you need to invest in it. The suburbs need to invest in it. The state needs to invest in it. And if you want it to work properly, you need to actually believe it's important. We need to continue to make Philadelphia a world class city, and starving our transit system for cash every single year is not the way to go with that. I just want to mention that ideas for funding back when the Broad Street Line was originally built, the city still owns the Broad Street Line. And part of the reason for that is because we originally used city bonds to construct the Broad Street Line completely and that's why the seal of the city is still on the Broad Street Line cars. So using bonds of some sort for capital projects is not unheard of. And if we wanted to lessen the load on SEPTA, it might be a good idea to maybe help them with smaller capital projects, maybe like the installation of new fare gates at Market-Frankford stations so that they can focus on their money on other more important capital projects that they can do and/or with the bond order or something like that, if we wanted to do something where the city owns the cars. Again, GM Sauer was talking about earlier how a faster way of ordering railcars is to kind of tack on to the option of another agency that's ordering railcars. So I assume something like NJ Transit, they're getting new trains soon or LIRR is getting new trains soon. You would tack onto those orders and then you could get maybe part of the fleet replaced or at least the worst parts of the fleet replaced. And so, bonds might be a decent way to do that anyway. Thank you for listening.

Thanks. Before we get to the questions, I think we're going go to Nicole. And then we'll go to Alan. And then we'll get to member questions; is that okay?

Good afternoon, Councilmembers, Chairman Driscoll. My name is Nicole Brunet And I'm representing Transit Forward Philadelphia today. We are a coalition of 37 organizations across Philadelphia representing riders with disabilities, seniors, neighborhood groups and organizations providing vital services for Philadelphians. This year our coalition members and hundreds of volunteers have talked with thousands of SEPTA riders on every Regional Rail line, urging them to contact their state- elected officials to advocate for SEPTA funding. In these conversations, we met riders from different backgrounds, communities and political beliefs, but shared one thing in common, the desire for a safe, accessible and affordable ride to work, school or wherever they were headed. The Regional Rail chaos that Philadelphia SEPTA riders have been experiencing this month is unacceptable and it is a direct result of decades of disinvestment in our transit system on a local, state and federal level. Last month Governor Shapiro directed SEPTA to flex their own capital dollars to keep service running. A bill proposed by the PA Senate similarly depleted critical funds to make SEPTA safer. These are not solutions. Little did we know that the consequences of undermining our capital funding would arrive so imminently. We applaud Mayor Parker for speaking out and standing up for Philadelphia transit riders shortly after the National Transportation Safety Bureau Board report was released. In a statement she said, we cannot gamble by diverting capital, critical capital dollars away from infrastructure, maintenance and safety with the state budget. More than 100 days late, urgent action must be taken now. The legislature must get back to work so everyone in Philly can get to work. We must pass longterm sustainable funding to keep our transit safe and in service on the Regional Rail and across the state. The City of Philadelphia also has a responsibility to help solve this crisis. We need to work proactively to find additional local revenue for SEPTA so that we can invest in ourselves and build a world class transit system that the city deserves. That starts with preserving the currently underfunded Zero Fare program. This program has been called by riders a lifechanger. In its first year, over 4.3 million trips were taken by 25,000 low-income Philadelphians traveling to work, school and across our city. Transit lines are lifelines. Without the zero fare program, tens of thousands of Philadelphians will have the freedom to travel across our city to jobs and opportunities diminished and less affordable. The City Council must act urgently to save and expand this critical anti-poverty and pro-mobility program in Philadelphia. Similarly, the City of Philadelphia can continue to lead the way on providing transit benefits for city employees, speeding up SEPTA buses with new bus lanes, like the one coming to Walnut Street, and supporting infrastructure improvements that make public transit the preferred mode of travel in Philadelphia. I echo my fellow speakers today in saying Philadelphians deserve to get to work, school and travel across the region without their trains catching on fire. However, this is the floor, not the ceiling. The state of Pennsylvania has urgent work to do to fund SEPTA and give them the support they need to make our transit system safe and reliable. Similarly, our city and this Council must step up as a leader in this fight to support our most vulnerable neighbors and fund transit for all. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Thank you so much my fellow speakers. My name is Connor Descheemaker. I am the statewide campaign manager for Transit For All PA. We are a rider- and worker-led movement for fully-funded public transportation in all 67 counties in Pennsylvania. I want to thank particularly Councilman Driscoll, the Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Philadelphia City Council for inviting me to participate in this timely hearing. There's a transit crisis in all 67 of those counties in Pennsylvania. There's an expiration of American Rescue Plan funding. There's flat state investment for all of our systems. There's the expiration of Act 89, which I'll get into later. There's changes in our post-COVID ridership patterns and rampant inflation that we're all experiencing, and those all affect our trans agencies as well as for SEPTA in Philadelphia and in the collar counties. As Scott Sauer illuminated earlier, that comes on top of decades of under investment in our systems capital and operations, leading directly to today's crisis. My goal is to contextualize that crisis and give this body the tools to direct its power appropriately and give Philadelphians safe, frequent, reliable and accessible public transportation that we need to thrive. As a reminder, SEPTA was formed by the state government from the carcass of a failed private industries, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company. Over 50 years later, SEPTA is operating less service over less miles than at the time of its founding. Its vehicles across modes, as we've heard today, are over 40 years old, far beyond their designed life. Why is it like this? Alongside Philadelphia's well- documented struggles with fiscal health that have thankfully stabilized in recent years, our state government actively preempts our local governments from helping themselves for transit. That means we are preempted from raising local taxes or fees to directly support transit operations or capital expenses, except for the already overextended property tax. This means not only that we have less money locally, but that we can neither run the kinds of popular transit funding campaigns that we hear about in communities from Indianapolis to Columbus to Denver to Phoenix to Seattle, communities in red and blue states, nor does it allow us to even access large federal capital grants, which hold strict local matching requirements. So it takes time to save up for these large capital improvements because we can't raise that money from dedicated taxes or fees. Most starkly, despite population stabilization locally and growth in the region, there's been zero system expansion over 40 years, as Alan mentioned. SEPTA has been making presentations about this funding crisis since 2023 about a state funding mechanism that we knew was going to expire in 2022. As everybody knows in this room, it's late 2025 now so we are far beyond what we were told was going to happen in 2013. We are years behind the ball in 11 Pennsylvania. As stated previously 12 again, this is a culmination of interlocking crises that are solvable by our state legislature. The expiration of Act 89 in 2022, this was the last comprehensive funding package for transportation, which includes mass transit and highways, roads and bridges. The expiration of the American Rescue Plan funds which sort of filled that gap from 2022 to 2024. And then at the state level, we have flat funding and shifted ridership patterns. SEPTA was attempting to address that with projects like the Bus Revolution or New Bus Network, which have faced continuous delays in implementation. This year SEPTA, alongside those transit agencies across our Commonwealth, have made clear over months of campaigning and education that the fiscal cliff has arrived.

New operations funding was needed and that we also need that local enabling legislation to raise dedicated capital funds that this body could then implement at city and regional levels to reach those federal management requirements and invest in things like trolley modernization, accessibility improvements, which are already decades late, vehicle replacement, reimagining regional rail and much, much more. As far as our movement, we see that the public cares about this in every community in Pennsylvania. We have hosted dozens of events in every corner of our state, virtually and in person, culminating in a rally of 350 riders and workers on the steps of our state capital, bringing together people from nearly a dozen counties, proving that transit moves us regardless of where we live. Our ranks have tripled to over 30,000 people representing all 253 legislative districts who have sent over 250,000 letters to our state legislature just since March of this year. And yet with all of this movement, our legislature failed to take action, and Governor Shapiro forced SEPTA in PRT's hands to flex from their own capital funds, worsening SEPTA's at this time $5 billion state of good repair. That was a new number to me today. Hearing Scott Sauer mention that it's now $10 billion state of good repair deficit. In the last week, SEPTA itself revealed that revised capital budget talking about delayed or deferred or canceled entirely capital improvement projects, and our fleets continue to be decades' old and this is an institution that has been starved since birth. To fix and save SEPTA, this body can absolutely appropriate more General Fund money to support -- it can also support transit-oriented development. It can make permanent and expand the popular but threatened low-income Zero Fare program. It can expand student fares and set a key advantage, but it cannot solve the scale of problems SEPTA and trans agencies across PA are facing. So this body must put unprecedented pressure on Governor Shapiro to live up to his national ambitions and broker the kind of transformational deal that will make our infrastructure not disintegrate before our very eyes. It can stand up to Senate Republican leadership and urge those legislators whose districts are served by SEPTA to break from their party and do the right thing for constituents. This was a bipartisan issue in Pennsylvania up until this year. This was a bipartisan act, Act 89, was passed by Republicans that were in control of both the House and the Senate. So this is not a red blue issue. And I can say that for this body in City Council, there is the ability to put pressure on a Senator who represents Philadelphia, Senator Joe Picozzi in Northeastern Philadelphia, who championed the flex measure for capital money that wasn't needed. His words, not mine. Our transit must remain safe and in service. The crisis facing our Regional Rail is neither new nor unexpected, but it can be a turning point. And I urge you as our representatives on City Council to do everything in your power to push our state legislature to do the right thing while preserving transit access via low-income and student affairs and expand the pool of transit riders that have ready, walkable access through transit- oriented development. Thank you so much for inviting me to participate in today's hearing and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Connor. And you're right. It's not a red or blue issue. It's a people issue. We got that. And Member Jones will speak to you in a moment here. We went to Harrisburg. We communicated that issue to the General Assembly. We went to all the Senators, you know, both. We went to more Republicans than we went to Democrats, and explained to them that we're the economic engine of the Commonwealth, the five county area. We said, you know, you want to split the money evenly up. We keep what we send up and send it back. You know that fell on deaf ears, as you can imagine. But your perspectives are heard today. Nicole, yours are. Alan, yours are. Member Jones.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your testimony. What I've learned in my time here is that it's easier to be eloquent articulators of the problem than architects of solutions. So the stenographer has everything you said we didn't do, should do, must do, can do, pressure. I got all of that. Now, I'm going to put you on the spot. I want one solution that we can do and you already gave one. And I took a mental note of the bonds that we create. I really like that. And if we use SEPTA fares as a way to pay them down, that might be a way to do this as a long-term solution. But what I want you to focus your answers on is the fact that when we met with Pittman, he was a nice guy, but we weren't moving him off of what his constituents in that part of the state need. So when you craft your solutions, they must be not Republican or Democrat, not rural or urban, but somehow everybody benefits. So he talked about -- and I'll never forget this. He said, in his county he has to -- in order to go to the next county for health care issues for women, do you remember that?

Yep.

He has to go all the way to Pittsburgh, transfer there and go all the way back to right next door because there's no direct routes. How do we appeal to that man's constituents so that they see our urban interests as somehow they benefit. Help me to do that.

This is an excellent question, Councilmember, and you're in luck because we have that legislation and it's actually in the House and the Senate as we speak. So at the beginning of this year, we started with a service goal as Transit For All PA and that was we want to restore service because what we're experiencing in Philadelphia and in every county across Pennsylvania is that service is worse than it was in 2019. Everyone has lost service. So we wanted to say that we want service restored and because for Senator Pittman's district, that status quo in 2019 was also pretty crappy. And so, we wanted to add 10% of service on top of those 2019 service levels for every community that's not the SEPTA or PRT regions, because they're tired of hearing from us, right. Despite the truth of the matter that you articulated, Councilmember Driscoll, around that we're the economic engines, there is the fact that we still need to provide equitably for everybody. So we started with that service goal that I just mentioned. Then we identified how much does it cost to do that. Then we looked at the Transportation Revenue Options Commission. Back in 2021 under Governor Wolf and led by Representative Martina White, a Republican, there were an array of solutions that were put out for our transportation funding crisis. I use that word very carefully because it means roads, bridges, highways and transit. And we developed from the projections in that Republican-led commission a series of solutions that we vetted with a group of folks from all across Pennsylvania in a series of statewide meetings, riders, workers and advocates. And that is, we put together, you know, those sort of three funding measures that would work really effectively for that at the state level. I won't go into the weeds on that right here, but it would raise enough revenue to reach that service goal and fund it entirely. And to our great pleasure, that was adopted word for word in our state House and in our state Senate. So there's a pair of House bills and a pair of Senate bills that each have a number of co-sponsors from geographically diverse areas, and those again are just active bills in our legislature that can achieve that service restoration growth, because as you experience as representatives of the people, it's hard to tell people, well, you got to fight really hard for the same thing that you experience now. That's kind of sucks. We want to be fighting for something better. We believe there's enough resources if we think critically about where there is excess and bring it to where there is need. And I know that that's something that the City of Philadelphia takes very seriously. And I'm happy to share with your offices that legislation.

Can you provide that to the Chair?

Yeah. Could you provide that to us?

Yeah, absolutely. I can't right this second but I can tonight.

So State Representative Martina White introduced that in which session?

She was the one that led the Transportation Revenue Options Commission back in 2021, so we pulled all of our solutions from that report that TROC produced. So she is not currently a co-sponsor of that legislation, but I can say that she has voted five times for SEPTA funding in the state House. When the State House has repeatedly passed funding to at least maintain the status quo as a first step, you know, towards that transit abundance vision that I was articulating, she has voted in favor of it. And so, that is a starting place, right, because there needs to be an openness to talk about solutions. And I can say that we have met with Senator Pittman, we've met with Senator Dush. We've met with a variety of Republican legislators with their own constituents in Harrisburg to say, hey, you say that transit is either not an issue in your community or it's not under threat and we can show you a constituent that is directly affected and that will really benefit from this legislative package.

I'm just curious, you know, because in 2021 Representative White was in the Majority in the state House. And I'm just curious why it didn't get through the House then or maybe it did. I don't know.

I don't know if it was introduced in 2021. I mean, I think that we're in this place in 2025 because we have to wait until something is an ultimate crisis before we can make decisions. Connor and I have been working on this campaign since 2022 trying to raise the alarm before we got to the cliff itself. And we're constantly told that this wasn't a priority, it's not an issue yet, not an issue yet. The solutions in the TROC report are where the Governor's proposal came from in the beginning. And he actually decreased what that Republican-led report laid out. There's another proposal that would allow municipalities to create their own taxes, like you said, and fees to be able to raise revenue to support transportation projects, which could include roads, bridges, airports and public transit and trails, but we don't have the power to do that right now. We can't even have that conversation because we're still trying to convince legislators that the people in their district and the way they get around matters.

Okay. Well, that'd be helpful. If you could provide that to us, we'll be eager to read that.

Yeah, that's a great -- and the only thing I'll add on to what you were saying is that it's like a lot of commissions unfortunately, whereas a lot of people that gather together they gather a lot of research and then it gets added to a pile. And so, it was really unfortunate that in 2021 that TROC report didn't go anywhere. And what we were told actively was, well, it's not a crisis yet. That crisis won't hit until 2024, somewhere in the future. And that's what we were told by legislators.

Proactive is the way to go.

Yes, absolutely. And we're really grateful that your offices are interested in reaching that point.

If I could --

Alan.

If I'd just speak briefly about that sort of political landscape, because I've been able to personally call some of the Republicans to talk about their sort of situation. I don't think the state should be relied on until something changes with the state government. The Republicans in the political landscape of what exists currently in the state is very different from what it was five, six years ago. Currently within the Republicans there is infighting, and it's part of the reason why something hasn't come forward yet. And because of that, I think that any plans going forward until there is a major change in the state government you probably shouldn't rely on the state or you should be looking at more local municipal options for some of these things. Possibly in 2026 the Democrats will be able to take the State Senate. And at that point, then we can be looking forward to possibly putting out larger pieces of legislation that will be for funding for transit. But until then, I would not rely too much on the state government for these things as just a very cautionary thing to do for the next two years, as I guess the capital funding got moved over. Otherwise there are many small local things that could possibly be done, but the large problem, like they have mentioned, is that there is no way to raise a certain amount of taxes for transit because there is a limit set by the state. So it would have to be done through other more creative means I think until that gets changed. But that's my input.

I don't disagree with that. I just want to caution that a municipal government like ours very much relies on the state government. And quite frankly, no matter who's in power in Washington they need to take public transit more seriously because they have the dollars that can change our government so that we can use the money on other things. And it's just a matter of political will.

Yeah. What I've sort of encountered is that there is a decent amount of the Republicans that have sort of been in office for a long time to understand that and there is a new wave of Republican Senators that don't understand that. And because of that, there's the infighting I was talking about and it's part of the reason why nothing has passed at all and the whole state is being affected at the moment.

We can't thank you enough for your testimony today. We have some public comment so we want to move on to that. But thank you very much for being here and please get us that information. Thank you.

Can I say one thing? I just want to thank Philadelphia for increasing how much money it's providing to SEPTA. I want to acknowledge that Philadelphia has gone above and beyond. We're waiting for the counties to step up next to --

Wait a minute, Nicole. Nobody ever comes here to thank us. You want to correct that for the record.

You think she got it?

Thank you. We'll take it.

I would like to add you guys have been very positive about this stuff so I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you.

Appreciate that. So we'll now transition to our public comment session on Resolution 250880. Ms. McDonald, will you please call the first person making public comment we have to testify this afternoon on the resolution 9 before this committee today.

Bob Previdi, Jerrett Johnson, Morgan Allgrove- Hodges. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and begin your testimony.

Good afternoon. My name is Bob Previdi. I am the Policy Director for the Save The Train Campaign. We represent over 8000 members, primarily in Northwest Philadelphia, who are deeply concerned about the potential loss of the Chestnut Hill West Line as part of the ongoing budget crisis in Harrisburg. This line is more than just a train. It's the backbone of our neighborhoods in Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, and many residents rely on it to get to school, work, doctor's appointments, et cetera. We've watched with alarm the ridership trends. They've fallen from 132,000 a day in 2016 to 108,000 a day in 2019 and today it's 84,000. This is an alarming trend and it's headed in the wrong direction and I won't get on to -- so much was repeated earlier. I actually want to just quickly say that for years I worked at New York City Transit during the rebuilding years. And I know that when you invest in public transit the ridership can grow. When I started at New York City Transit, the subway had a low of 3.3 million riders a day and we hired a guy from Philadelphia by the name of David Gunn who took over New York. I worked for him. And we went from 3.3 million subway riders to 5.5 million subway riders. So I had the great pleasure of watching the agency turn around. And I know that when you invest in capital budget and you have good leadership, and I do think at SEPTA right now you have good leadership. The key is that we have goals that are clear and that we keep going to Harrisburg. And you were asking, Councilman Jones, what could we do. I think one of the things that I'm going to be focusing on is working with the Keystone Funding Transportation Coalition and meeting with other people across the state to encourage the leadership on both sides of the aisle to fund transportation. I think we have to make an argument that, as Connor was saying earlier, it's not just about transit. It's about roads, bridges and highways as well. And I think the Chamber recently had a meeting with Pittman and discussed that issue and they made SEPTA its top priority. I think the statewide Chamber, we should approach them. And I think if Council and the Mayor just, you know, and certainly the Mayor knows this, she's done this plenty of times in the past. We've got to I think if we start doing our legwork now and building those bridges, so to speak, across the state, that's the only way we're going to be able to get through this impasse because I don't think it's going to change otherwise.

Good afternoon, Chairman Driscoll, Chairman Young and members of the Committee. My name is Jerrett Johnson, lead transit organizer for 5th Square Advocacy. We are a nonprofit focused on grassroots advocacy for more affordable, safe, accessible, equitable and sustainable Philadelphia. As a daily SEPTA rider, I'm here to speak about Regional Rail because it is a lifeline to our region, as is 70% of the people here in Philadelphia. About 70% of those people do not have cars and rely on public transit, rely on SEPTA, especially Regional Rail. This past summer me and over 100 transit advocates around Philadelphia, we were 100 deep, 300 in the state of Pennsylvania alone, went to Harrisburg twice this year to speak to legislators about the need for public transit, especially the Silverliner IVs. Now, it has almost been four months since the past due date with no resolution in sight from Senate Republicans because they did not want to put their act together. We as SEPTA Regional Rail riders and bus riders have dealt with delayed trains that are crowded, five different train fires or canceled trains due to lack of investment in transit. This is not the reason why us advocates like myself went to Harrisburg for. This is not what me and all the other advocates from Transit for Philadelphia canvass and put posters on store windows and bus shelters over the summer for only to have the existing trains and trolley cars erode later in life. We cannot kick the can down the road. Waiting two years until the funds run out for capital budget will not solve the problem long term. As is the case, public transit systems in Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Charlotte, Miami, Seattle and San Francisco all have train systems that are in the progress of being delivered or already running every year. They always have a plan every year from their state legislators. Meanwhile us in Philadelphia with the Silverliner IVs that are more than 50 years old are having problems with this. This has got to stop. We're better than this. Philadelphia is better than this. The citizens of Philadelphia deserve to get to work, school, appointment, shopping, leisure activities and travel across the region without having to worry about if their trains will catch fire or if their trains will be delayed or even canceled. For that reason, I commend SEPTA and City Council for joining us in the fight and we urge you guys to continue to tell these legislators to invest in transit as we continue to fight for public transit. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers. My name is Morgan Allgrove-Hodges, and I'm the Transit Committee Co-chair for 5th Square advocacy. What's happening with SEPTA's Silverliner IV fleet is no surprise. It is a direct result of decades of neglect and attacks from Harrisburg. For years, our state's leaders have failed to provide recurring, reliable transit funding, forcing SEPTA to patch holes with short-term fixes and capital raids. Now, that neglect has literally caught fire with five Regional Rail cars having burned earlier this year. There are more than 80,000 weekday trips on the Regional Rail network alone. What would our city streets look like with that many more car commuters? What would the air filled with exhaust from vehicles stuck in traffic be like for our children and most vulnerable neighbors? Even for those who don't ride SEPTA, the system impacts and benefits everyone across the region. SEPTA's leadership has been forced to triage the system instead of planning for its future. The rating of $394 million in capital funds just to keep operations afloat was a desperate move and one that leaves no room for needed reinvestment in a century old system. The state budget is now months overdue and there is no 5 movement on creating a sustained funding mechanism that SEPTA absolutely requires for its future. Riders are being punished for the legislature's failure to act. Replacing the Silverliner IVs will cost roughly $2 billion as we heard earlier today and take a decade to complete an unacceptable horizon for a city that is world class. We call on City Council to act now to take every possible local step to support SEPTA and its rioters, while demanding sustained, long-term action from Harrisburg. This includes fully funding the city Zero Fare program, ensuring that city employees and other major employers participate in the SEPTA Key Advantage program, expanding student past benefits, adding more dedicated bus lanes, installing high quality bus shelters and legalizing automated bus cameras to enforce parking violations, blocking transit citywide. This crisis on our rails is the bill for years of inaction. The question before us is whether we will pay it now with courage and investment or let riders continue to pay in fear, frustration and their time. Thank you very much.

Well, Bob, you and I have had these conversations. I continue to thank you for your advocacy, and both of you, thank you for being here and thank you for what you do. We're going to continue the fight from our end and please continue to do what you do. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. McDonald, please call the next panel.

Susan Kennery, Stephen Larkamp, Chris Bryan. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Please state your name for the record and begin with your testimony.

Good afternoon. My name is Susan Kennery. I live and work in Philadelphia and have been riding SEPTA for nearly my entire life. I do not own a vehicle. And while I primarily utilize SEPTA buses to get around town, I regularly rely on the Regional Rail to visit family on the Glenside combined and Paoli Thorndale lines as well as to access other connecting forms of transportation, such as the New Jersey Transit. The inspection-related service disruptions have made it more difficult to plan these visits. For example, on a recent trip to Narberth our returning train was canceled with little prior notice, as the Paoli Thorndale Line only runs hourly. We faced waiting at least two hours for the next train, while my partner and I were ultimately able to take the Route 44 bus. Instead this option may not have been feasible for passengers with mobility issues or time limitations. My mother-in-law in Narberth also does not have a car and relies on the Paoli Thorndale line to come into the city for her job, grocery shopping and doctor's appointments. Fearing she can no 2 longer depend on the published schedule, she has been leaving home hours earlier than would normally be necessary so as to not arrive late at her destination, visiting family, getting to work, accessing food and medical care. These are not luxuries. Citizens of the Philadelphia region deserve a public transit system they can depend on. While appropriate state funding requires action in Harrisburg, I urge City Council to act now to support SEPTA riders in any way it can. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Stephen Larkham. I live in Media in Delaware County, a suburb of the city that has its icon, no less, in the center of its emblem as a trolley car that shows just how important public transport is to that town, and by extension how important it is, not just to the City of Philadelphia, but also its suburban counties and the Regional Rail is the epitome of that. I myself make videos on the internet discussing the history and what the future could look like for public transportation, both in Philadelphia and nationally. And when I look at Philadelphia, I've ridden pretty much the entirety of the Regional Rail network. And it always shows its glorious history, the struggles that it goes through today and what its future could be on its sleeve. And it's only been epitomized in recent months and years, even by the funding crisis that has been approaching for a while, is hitting us now and has been most clearly shown in the four recent incidents involving the Silverliner IV fleet and the requirement by the Federal Railroad Administration for those cars being inspected so that they're good for service. And from hearing everything today, both testimony from General Manager Scott Sauer and every advocate who has been up here earlier and from yourselves here on the Council, it is relieving to see that it is being taken more seriously than I think a lot of people would expect. So that is certainly relieving on that front but has been demonstrated there are certainly tools in the toolbox that the City Council can use both to perhaps hold things off in terms of capital funding in the short term, things such as bond issues, for instance, to cover certain infrastructure issues so SEPTA can focus their efforts elsewhere. And on top of that but more than anything else, it's still just a band-aid for a situation that requires a tourniquet. We've seen that there is a renewed fire to get SEPTA and transit agencies across the state the funding that they need to continue to serve the people. And as a point of comparison here when I walked in here during the City Council session, I heard at the very end testimony from Councilmember Phillips regarding his issues with bureaucratic inefficiency of the Philadelphia Water Department. And that is the kind of righteous indignation that I would love to see from every advocate that has been up here to testify so far, from every member of City Council, from the Mayor's office, and everyone in every suburban community. I'm seeing that with the Borough Council of my home Borough of Media, for instance, as well as towns such as West Chester and Swarthmore. Philadelphia is not alone in demanding that SEPTA reach what it knows it can be. SEPTA has good visions out there for what Regional Rail, what buses, what trolleys and the heavy rail, rapid transit, what they can all be for the city in the coming years and decades, SEPTA has those visions. It's just been constrained with implementing them. And what I want to see more than anything else is that sort of passion I saw from Councilman Phillips about the Water Department and from every advocate I've seen here, to take to Harrisburg and to also build those bridges to get everyone on the same page, to say that public transport is of importance to Philadelphia, to all 67 counties of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Thank you very much.

My name is Chris Bryan, and I want to thank you all for devoting the time to this important issue. I just wanted to share our experience as a family who relies on public transit. Councilman Jones, we live in your district basically adjacent to the Overbrook Train Station and we're able to get by as a family of four with one car because of the services that SEPTA provides us. My wife works at Temple. And she takes the train there every day to work and to teach classes. So it causes problems for our life. When we see the trains are being canceled, she has to call an Uber. It really is like kind of -- it feels bit, you know, that we're not being respected, but we don't have dignity as transit riders when you know we're out there to wait for a train that we expect to be there and it's not there. SEPTA played a big role in our decision to be in Philly. We love the city and SEPTA is kind of like the gateway to it for us. I mean, getting another car would be a burden and I'm excited raising our girls, that they'll have access to SEPTA and transit, and that'll be a gateway to the city for them before they can drive, which is kind of a something that makes a city special. I think in a lot of parts of the country, you know, kids essentially rely on their parents to just take them around everywhere. And I just want to say I'm, you know -- we do have a responsibility as a city and a state to care for and respect what's been handed down to us and we've been given this system that's so important for the city and living a good life in the city and we really do have a responsibility to make the decision to keep it and make it better. Thank you.

Well, thank you for that and no 12 need to thank us. You going out of your way to come here and share these thoughts so we can't thank you enough. Ms. McDonald, can you please call the next public comment.

Lance Haver, Mitch Chanin and Chuck Bode. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Good afternoon. My name is Lance Haver. Earlier today speaking directly to Councilman Jones' question about what can be done, you heard the General Manager of SEPTA say there is a federal program that allows them to borrow money to buy new railcars. But nobody asked him, why haven't they done that. Nobody said to him, if this was a 50-year problem, a 40-year problem, a 30-year problem, a 20-year problem, why didn't SEPTA borrow the money to buy new railcars. Why did it wait for them to catch on fire and then come and say something? Second, I will ask you to take note that not a single member of TWU 234 showed up today. Not a single member came here to support the General Manager's position. I find that curious. I don't speak for them. I can't tell you why, but I can tell you in my personal experience every time I have organized around public funding for SEPTA, TWU has been sitting next to me, standing next to me and working next to me. As you think about this complex issue, I suggest you ask the following questions: SEPTA intended to eliminate 45% of its service. Why then would it have worried about 100% of its railcars? Why did SEPTA choose to spend hundreds of millions of dollars replacing key cards, something that is safe, and while it's not perfect, can be used, instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new railcars? Why did SEPTA spend money on nonessential things like the Bus Revolution? Again, it may make it better but we don't need it. Instead of essential things like new railcars, why does the City of Philadelphia supply 80% of the local match and have only 13% of the vote on the SEPTA board? I heard earlier someone say the city has three representatives on the SEPTA board. News to me. Only two as far as I know. I don't know where your city got the third one from. Why is SEPTA ignoring State Senator Hughes? Democrats control the Finance Committee. Ignoring State Senator Hughes' request that it roll back the fare hike now that SEPTA has enough money for the next two years, the fare hikes starting from last year and this year, 30% fare hikes, and you didn't hear the General Manager talk about how many fewer riders SEPTA has as a result of those fare hikes. And the fewer riders, of course, the lower the revenues. And at some point it hits the death spiral. Why doesn't SEPTA use its borrowing power that it told you it has, like the Philadelphia Water Department does when it wants new water mains, like the Philadelphia Gas Works does when it needs new gas or what the School District does when it wants to build new schools? Why didn't SEPTA borrow the money from the federal program at a low interest rate to be able to buy the new cars? There is no 15 question that SEPTA will need a dependable source of funding in the next two years. No question that it needs more money, but many questions as to how it responds to its challenges. Like we saw in the first round of service cuts, SEPTA makes decisions that harm the riders to make political points. I'd like to underlie this: The service cuts were the first day of school. Now, either you believe the General Manager of SEPTA is completely ignorant and has no idea when school starts or you have to accept the fact that he chose the first day of school to cut the buses in the city of Philadelphia to create havoc, to create mess and to create anger, and then he blamed the Republicans. Unfortunately, allowing the railcars to fall into disrepair so that SEPTA can make its point that it needs more money is once again creating suffering for SEPTA riders so that SEPTA can make a political point. The only just way for SEPTA to make its point to secure its funding is to form a statewide coalition with other transit companies throughout the state to draw a line in the sand and say SEPTA will not cut any service or raise any fares and SEPTA will defend the service the riders need and deserve. Please don't let SEPTA take the easy way out.

Don't let them harm the riders, primarily working class people of color to make a cheap political point. City Council should join forces with Senator Hughes in demanding a fare rollback and require SEPTA to do the hard work of building a coalition of transit agencies across the Commonwealth. There was recently a press conference at JFK at LOVE Park. Great press conference. But can't we have the next press conference in Allentown or in Scranton or Erie or York? Having still another press conference in Philadelphia and threatening Philadelphians will not change the votes of any rural legislators. Those legislators all too often get elected by running against the city of Philadelphia. Yes, SEPTA does need more money but how it gets that money matters, and I'm urging you to stand with the riders to protect the riders interest and not to let SEPTA use the riders as pawns. They should have bought new cars 12 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years 13 ago. The program's there. They 14 chose not to use it. Instead they 15 bought a new key card system. 16 Instead they paid for a bus 17 revolution. The very fact that 18 they cut the buses on the first day 19 of school should tell you 20 everything there is to need to know. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Committee. My name is Chuck Bode. I've been a resident of Philadelphia and a SEPTA rider since 1968 and I apologize I'm not terribly prepared. As I read this hearing notice, I thought it was a notice to hold the hearing so I don't have a written statement, but I've been involved in trying to save SEPTA for 40 years, 40 years of SEPTA hearings, board meetings, being in organizations and 40 years of SEPTA financial crises, so I understand SEPTA's current dilemma. I understand why they're not borrowing. They used to borrow money that required paying interest. There's a fixed amount of money from all the different governments. If we spend it on interest, we don't spend it on providing drivers and so forth. However, passengers should be the reason for SEPTA. And I think the most significant thing SEPTA did today was when the riders were ready to testify, the whole SEPTA entourage packed up and left. They didn't stay to listen to the riders. That's a serious problem. This issue is not new and SEPTA should know about it, because years ago in another 9 crisis I prepared a 1500-page, 10 that's three reams of paper, report 11 analyzing SEPTA's performance and 12 making suggestions. I turned that 13 report into all three hearing 14 examiners, the operating the 15 capital and the service standards. 16 Not one examiner even mentioned 17 that he'd gotten a 1500-page report 18 with suggestions. That says a lot. 19 What we need to do here 20 is understand deceptive focuses on 21 cost. Everything costs something. 22 We can't run a business focusing on 23 cost. We need to think about 24 revenue. We need to find revenue. And that's not part of the plan. I go to board meeting after board meeting and the treasurer or his representative -- oh, and we had so much money this month and we go on, there's no details. We go to the board meeting and they bicker over a $40,000 contract. They worry about every penny spent. It'd be nice if they worried about every penny coming in. There might be more I analyzed for the data I could get, which was like years 14 with the data, then every SEPTA 15 route, every mode on what had happened, without fail, over the 15 years from like '19, the revenue went down, the ridership went down, the data. The oldest data I got SEPTA had routes which made money, more money went into the fare box than it cost to run the route. It was approximately 2000. There were no routes that did that. The top one was like 90%, but SEPTA worried about the bottom. They set up a service standards plan, all this stuff to do away with the routes at the bottom of the pile. Anybody that understands English would understand that if we keep knocking the routes out at the bottom, and they measure cost recovery to fares in versus expense, the average for the whole system would go up, but it kept going down instead of going up. What was happening, first, of course riders transferred one route to another so they're gone. And second, it's a whole negative opinion. Everybody understands SEPTA is in bad shape. They're going downhill. At the time years, 23 SEPTA had an average cost. They 24 got like 50% which was require -now, it's like 20%. I submitted a series of suggestions for increasing revenue. Not one of them even got mentioned by a hearing examiner. We need to start by having people accept accountable for money. Somebody there should be a manager for every route, for every district, for every mode who is responsible for finding riders and getting more riders on this thing, except this should be its biggest cheerleader, not its biggest problem. And I would like to suggest it is possible -- and it's possible to get the public in Europe. Many years ago they built these high speed train systems. Probably heard about, and it's really fast. You can whiz around 300 miles in a couple hours. And they all focused on each country. So in France you can go from Paris out or -- so people, the business people, live in their home.

They go into Paris for the meeting, go back home for the day. That's great. Problem is if you need to go farther, they did away with all the overnight trains. They said, well, nobody's riding. We'll get rid of all that stuff. Everybody riding airplanes. Well, airplanes are a big environmental problem and they put the pollution up there. It makes it even worse. So maybe five years ago, the environmental community, what are you going to call -- activists started a program or campaign, if you will, called Flight Shaming. They started making a big deal about people flying in airplanes because of all the pollution things. Guess what? A couple years ago they started putting on the overnight trains and then they discovered they couldn't find enough of the old cars, so today they are building sleeping cars in Europe to put on more overnight trains so people can be environmentally friendly. And I would suggest that if SEPTA got its tailing gear and became its biggest cheerleader instead of its biggest excuse- maker, we might have something like that in Philadelphia where people want to ride. As somebody said here earlier, people get a job and they buy a car and leave SEPTA. SEPTA needs to make people want to ride. My suggestion for City Council is I believe two city- appointed Board members on SEPTA, that they should hold SEPTA accountable for being positive, for wanting people to want to ride and increasing ridership and revenue, and then there might be a whole contingent of people going out to Harrisburg instead of a half dozen advocates up here wondering where everybody is. SEPTA needs to do something to increase revenue to be positive and I thank you for your time.

Can you share that information with us? You're talking about that report.

I'm sorry? Would you like a copy of that report?

Yes.

It'll take me a while to get it. It's three reams of paper just to copy it.

If we can assist with that, we can get the original back. But if you could get that, that would be helpful.

Okay. Thank you. Who do I get it to?

My office. I'll give you my card.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak today. I did not prepare. I decided at the last minute, but I'll try to be really brief. My name is Mitch Chanin. I live in Northeast Philly. I'm in the 10th District. I'm a nearly lifelong SEPTA rider. I've been using buses, the El and the Regional Rail for about 40 years. I use the West Trenton line, which is about a 10-minute walk from my house. I just want to make a couple points. So, yeah, it's been terrible. Never knowing if your train is going to show up or not is extremely disruptive. This is the kind of thing that just drives riders absolutely crazy. People are furious, never knowing if their train is going to come or not. You cannot plan your life this way. I get up in the morning and I do not know if I will be able to take the train so I either have to leave an hour earlier and take a train that comes one hour before I need to get somewhere or I have to take the bus and the El which is okay, but it takes twice as long to get to Center City. It would be great to know when I walk to the station if there will be a train there or not so I don't have to run all over the place or when I'm trying to go home, I go to the station, I do not know if the train will be there. There's information on the counter -- on the clock. You don't really know if it's true or not whether or not the train will be there. I could take the bus and the El home if I knew the train wasn't coming. I don't know what SEPTA needs to do operationally to make that work better, but it would just be great to know for real. I mean, I heard the general manager saying, well, you know, we don't want to put out a schedule that isn't real. But in my opinion that is what is in fact happening here. So it's not great. I spent a lot of time over the summer talking to riders. I do advocacy work with 215 People's Alliance, with Transit Forward Philly, Transit For All PA. I spent a lot of time talking to SEPTA riders at Frankford Terminal, mostly talking with folks whose routes were about to get canceled, the 19, the 88, the 50 bus and others. And I think it did drive home the dynamic that I heard here today and at least in this last panel, which is we really do need to do two things. We need -- SEPTA is grossly underfunded. It's been catastrophically underfunded for decades and we need to hold SEPTA managers accountable at the same time. And that is a thing that came up in many conversations with Northeast Philly residents who use the buses and also the Regional Rail. People are mad at SEPTA managers and the system is underfunded. And so, the conversation that I would have with people over and over again is two things can be true. SEPTA managers are not making all the right calls and the state is not doing what it needs to do. So I guess maybe what I can add to the mix is that I am a constituent of Senator Picozzi, who's our only Republican senator. I call him constantly. Sometimes I get to talk to him directly. I am not of the party that he is part of. However, he is my senator for the next three years so I am constantly bugging him and so are many of us in the district. I may be addressing you in particular, Councilmember Driscoll. We're both in Senator Picozzi District, at least I think you're -- the 6th District overlaps with Picozzi's district. I'm in O'Neill's district. But, you know, he says he wants SEPTA to be funded. He says that it's grossly underfunded. He says he has a vision for dramatically improving Regional Rail. He likes the reimagining Regional Rail project. He agrees that the capital budget needs more funding and he says that what just happened is okay, that transferring money out of the capital to operating funds is okay. I don't agree with that and I argue with him about it all the time. If we're going to get to a solution, I think it involves probably some leadership, some movement from our Republican Senator.

And I hope that we can all work together, those of us in the Northeast, to try to move him on. What needs to happen here, I would be very happy to talk more with you and your staff about that, as would others I think, who I organize with in Northeast. I think we do need a bigger vision than just our trains not being on fire. I don't want to be on fire. But how do we get to every half hour service on Regional Rail, for example. I would like to really talk about a serious vision for improving public transit in Philly, not just maintaining the inadequate status quo. And then we've heard a lot of ideas today about city bonding, about city funding for the Zero Fare program, which I agree is critical, about local options. I want to make sure that some actual conversation happens about that. These are ideas that I hear frequently, but, you know, maybe we need another hearing where we really talk for real. If the city was going to kick in money through local funding options, what would that look like? How do we build a coalition to actually get the state to allow that after talking about it for years with no movement, can we have hearings with the Mont Co. commissioners and others about increasing the local funding from Montgomery County, et cetera. We really need real, serious leadership from City Council both to move our local both to move senators like Picozzi but also to really build those alliances with the suburban counties and actually figure out how to get the local match, the local funding that we need. And I would push you to please hold SEPTA accountable at the same time. I can't believe that this is the best we can do. Like, I will get up every morning and have no idea whether or not my train is coming. This is not how you build and maintain ridership. This is what drives people away and want to do anything other than take SEPTA. So I'll leave it there. I'm sorry to go on so long and I appreciate your listening.

That's quite all right. That's why we're here today. Member Jones.

I just want to thank you for your comments. I listen for a living. I really lean in and try to decipher things that we can take away and actually use as a verb once we've done this. And so, I appreciate it. So I'm leaning on Lance for a minute. I want to thank you for the decades of advocacy that you've done and I want to ask you, are you the incredible Benjamin Button aging backwards? You look the same way 30, 40 years ago. How -- I don't know. I guess it's in the work. But you don't have to answer that one. But thank you. I'm just letting you know I noticed.

Thank you, but I will tell you my wife mentions that she married a young man.

I guess that's --

If I could just hammer the point a little bit, the fare increased 30%. You care so much about what happens to poor and working people in the city. SEPTA doesn't need that money. It's going to -- at the next board meeting, which is coming up this Thursday and I know you're all busy and I know you all have too much to pay attention to, but if you could send one of your staffers there to just simply listen to how much the ridership is down because of the fare increases and because of what Mitch was talking about.

Yes, we will make a note to do that. But a couple of things while I have questions. So this came up when we were looking at the stadium down on Market Street. And one of the big concerns was they needed to get ridership on SEPTA up to 41% in order for it to make sense to build it there.

The arena?

Yeah, the arena.

Okay.

And I said, well, you know, how are you going to convince somebody from media to get on that system. And so, there is safety in numbers. We talked about increasing ridership. Give me one way that we can do that. I remember during the height of the pandemic when it was like a ghost town and those who rode it were there because they needed shelter. And so, how do we move from that to a point where we become -- I've been to Denver. I see how they did their light rail and what they did there. And you're right, somebody commented that our system is better than theirs, like the bones. The structure on how to get to and from is better than Denver's, and Denver's is nationally acclaimed as being a light rail town. So the question on the floor is how do we increase ridership so that we don't have to increase fares?

The city of Erie has every Saturday a free Center City loop. They don't call it Center City. They call it a cultural loop. What they're doing is they've gotten their Center City businesses to kick in to make the loop free so that people ride the system, find out it's not nearly as bad as what they're told it is, get used to it. Find out how much more convenient it is. The professor at University of Pennsylvania, (inaudible) Yushkevich and I think he's retired because he seemed older when I was younger. He used to talk about deep discounted. One of the things that the electronic fares do is give us some tremendous opportunity to say, not only are we going to eliminate the parking meter fees during Christmas shopping season, but we're going to let people come to Center City on SEPTA for free to learn how valuable it is. Again, I don't want to talk for Mitch, but if you have to ride the train and it doesn't come and then you have to ride a bus to the El to do your shopping, to take the El to a bus, you're just not going to do it, unless there's no 8 other choice. So we know what Erie is doing. We know what is possible. But what that does though is put pressure on SEPTA to be innovative and to not run the transit system for the transit system, but to run the transit system for the riders, which I think is what Mitch was saying. But I don't want to put words in his mouth.

Very quickly because -- does anybody have anything to add to that on increasing ridership? (No response.)

So let me -- if not, then I want to bounce one other thing. How do you increase reverse commute? If we're creating a bustling suburb up there in King of Prussia, how do I get more kids from North Philly to King of Prussia to a job opportunity? Is there enough of a market for that to do?

So the best example of that's out of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project and I would encourage you to reach out to them. They run a reverse commute program to get inner city residents out to better paying jobs using shared rides. The density doesn't lend itself to what you're suggesting. And without specifically talking about where you're hoping to get people, it's very hard. If you're talking about one particular place, the density may be there. The King of Prussia Mall, the density is there. But most of the better-paying jobs in the suburbs, right, are spread out and the density just doesn't exist. And it doesn't even make sense for Uber. Uber can't even make a living doing that. The Philadelphia Unemployment Project runs this reverse commute program, same job in the city that pays 12 bucks pays 20 in the suburbs, but it's been a long day for you so I'm going to be quiet.

I'm done.

Thank each of you very much. And I really want to thank the leadership of SEPTA. Some folks thought SEPTA left. SEPTA has been here the whole time. I know the other ones are watching on the TV. If they haven't heard all the messages, I'm sure these two fine ladies are going to make sure they heard and we thank them for that. We thank all the witnesses today for joining us. And so, this concludes the business before this Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities today and thank you all for your attendance. (Committee on Streets and Services concluded at 4:48 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. _________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL