Reducing the Price of SEPTA - Blog #1

By: Teila Allmond

As a teenager who is frequently using public transportation to complete her daily activities, I ride SEPTA quite often. Besides my everyday route to school, I also am always traveling to friend’s houses or sports games. Therefore, I have experienced almost every SEPTA route or kind since I was 14 years old. There are quite a few things that have changed about SEPTA including it’s unreliability and price. These two points of SEPTA are crucial to the success and endearment that the city of Philadelphia want to allot this transportation association. Back in November of 2009, Septa protested because of their disagreement with their current budget. Their contract was quite unfair and not until March of 2010 when they went on strike did they get a compromise for it.

Their compromise included:

• $1,250 signing bonus with a five-year contract
• 11.5 percent wage hike over five years
• 2.5 percent raise in Year 2 and a 3 percent raise in each of the following three years; no increase in the first year
• a gradual increase in employee contribution to their pension fund from 1.5 percent to 3 percent
• no change in employee contributions to the medical plan

I’m definitely not the only one in Philadelphia experiencing some antipathy towards this association. In another blogNow with Septa’s spiking budget and Philadelphia’s debt along with it, SEPTA has sold the rights to the name of Pattison Station to AT&T for 5 million dollars. This is a definite reflection of the amount of debt that they are in because they are willing to sell and sacrifice the dignity of their station name to a company for a resolution of about 3% of their debt.

In a blog by a commuter of SEPTA, NYC and DC’s methods of refilling fares on a type of Metro Card was mentioned. I feel as though with ease and comfort, comes the trust that SEPTA needs so badly from its commuters.