DV Journal

How much should Pennsylvania taxpayers be asked to pay to subsidize bus seats and rides on commuter rail?

For advocates of SEPTA on Tuesday, the answer was “more.”

The Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority claims it’s in a budget crisis and is threatening to cut service by 45 percent and raise fares by more than 20 percent unless it gets more state funding. One scenario includes shutting down five Regional Rail lines, including the Paoli/Thorndale line.

Montgomery County Commissioners held a press conference at the Bryn Mawr train station to urge the state to add to the $1 billion budgeted for fiscal year 2026. Add in federal funds and payments from local municipalities, and the system gets more $1.3 billion in subsidies each year.

When the DVJournal asked the amount of additional state money the county commissioners want for SEPTA, Commissioners Chairman Neil Makhija (D), who also serves on the SEPTA board, said the full increase that Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has in his 2025 budget is $186 million.

Conner Descheemaker, coalition manager with Transit for All PA!, interjected, “$292 million is the investment the governor proposed.”

Makhija jokingly asked Descheemaker if he wanted to take the question.

“There’s a gap that remains,” said Makhija. “The hole is closer to the number Connor mentioned. If we fund the governor’s proposal, SEPTA can be creative. We’ve already found $30 million in savings across the board.”

But Makhija said the state should “dream bigger” when it comes to SEPTA spending, with the goal of providing a train each station every 15 minutes.

“If we had $100 million beyond that, that’s where we get to 15-minute service (and) we bring the regional rail to a place where we’re really planning for the future and building on that.”

Montgomery County Commissioners Jamila Winder (D) and Tom DiBello (R) also lent their voices to support SEPTA, as did the commissioners from Lower Merion.

SEPTA’s 2024 ridership was just over 256 million, which means taxpayers chipped in more than $5 per ride to help cover costs. The proposals offered on Tuesday would increase that even more.

Last year, Shapiro took $153 million in federal funds earmarked for roads and gave that as a bailout for SEPTA. The collar counties also gave SEPTA $22.95 million more. Then, on April 18, SEPTA announced a $213 million deficit and possible cuts in services and fare increases.

Asked if they supported Republican House minority Leader Jesse Topper’s bill calling for a private entity to take over SEPTA’s buses, Makhija shot it down.

“The formation of SEPTA began because seven different agencies went bankrupt that were private,” he said.

He also rejected the idea that riders should pay the cost of the services they use.

“As is the case around the country, public transit has to be public because there are so many beneficiaries, not just the people who are swiping the card to get on the train. The people who work at all the businesses those riders are getting to also benefit,” Makhija said.

“We can’t operate from a place that it’s the riders who pay their way. That’s not the case anywhere in the country for transit systems. We need a state investment on the order and magnitude we’re talking about.”

Bryn Mawr College President Wendy Cadge said an average of 1,000 Bryn Mawr students use their college-funded SEPTA pass each month, out of 1,750 students. Faculty and staff also use SEPTA to get to work and other places.

“I can safely say that Bryn Mawr College loves SEPTA,” she said. Students get to jobs and internships, she said. If the Bryn Mawr station closes, it will “make it much harder for our students and community partners to work together.”

Montgomery County Community College President Victoria Bastecki-Perez said the college trains the area’s workforce, including nurses and first responders, who are “essential to the vitality and well-being of our community.”

She said many students rely on trains and buses to get to their campuses in Pottstown and Blue Bell.

“For many of our students, SEPTA is more than just a transit system. It’s a lifeline,” she said. “It connects them to  classes, their jobs, childcare, internships, and essential services, and ultimately the better life they are working so hard to build.”

“SEPTA just doesn’t move people,” Basticki-Perez added, “It moves dreams forward.”

Critics say the system is a money pit and that the steady call for more spending is a band-aid.

“SEPTA’s predictability is only outdone by its mismanagement and dreadful performance,” Nate Benefield and Andrew Holman of the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free market think tank, wrote in a recent editorial.

Olivia Loudon, a Bryn Mawr student, said SEPTA is “part of the reason I chose Bryn Mawr.”

“There’s a stereotype about the regional rail and the Main Line, that we’re a bunch of yuppies who only take SEPTA because we can’t be bothered to gas up the Lexus. But that’s not true. We’re students. We’re teachers. We’re nurses, doctors, we’re business owners. We’re local people who want access to the city that we love and depend on so much.”

Descheemaker noted that in 2026, many events “of global import” will be held in Philadelphia and the region to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, and the area will need its public transit system more than ever.

“There’s going to be hotel rooms booked in freakin’ Delaware for the FIFA World Cup!” he said.

The show will go on.

Bowing to pressure from Students for Justice Palestine and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges,  The Bryn Mawr Film Institute canceled an Israeli film Monday to be shown Tuesday as part of the annual Israeli Film Festival.

Lawyers Jerome Marcus and Lori Lowenthal Marcus with the Deborah Project then sought an emergency injunction to prevent the cancelation of “The Child Within Me.”

Montgomery County Judge Richard Haaz granted the emergency injunction late Tuesday afternoon. The film will be presented as scheduled.

“It was a terrible, horrible experience for the Israeli Film Festival, which spent the last year lining up the appropriate movies to screen and venues to show them in. And then the day before a screening, they were notified it was canceled,” said Lowenthal Marcus.

Lowenthal Marcus said there had been a contract that the Bryn Mawr Film Institute breached.

“That’s the legal part of it,” said Lowenthal Marcus. “The other side of it is there was tremendous pressure of violent protests.”

“And they celebrated their victory (when BMFI canceled),” she said. “The relief we sought was extraordinary relief. It’s a very high standard. We were able to prove in court that the film festival would be irreparably harmed if the screening was canceled at the last minute when people had known about the festival for weeks, had purchased their tickets, had arranged their schedules, and frankly, it would have been a terrible blow to the Jewish community because the bad guys because they threatened violence, would have prevailed. However, the law still matters in America.”

The BMFI had issued a statement announcing the cancelation but did not respond to DVJournal’s request for further comment.

“Bryn Mawr Film Institute is not a political organization. We don’t endorse or oppose any causes. In past years, we have not regarded hosting a screening from the Israeli Film Festival as a political partnership or taking a stance on any issues. This was our feeling when we arranged the 2024 screening many months ago. However, as the situation in Israel and Gaza has developed, it has become clear that our showing this movie is being widely taken among individuals and institutions in our community as an endorsement of Israel’s recent and ongoing actions. This is not a statement we intended or wish to make. For this reason, BMFI is canceling the sole screening of the music documentary “The Child Within Me.”

“BMFI is a safe place for civil and nuanced conversations about diverse stories. For the well-being and safety of all patrons, BMFI will not be a location for anger and violence. For those who wish to partake in an IFF screening, there are upcoming screenings at other venues.”

The court order overrode this decision.

Jason Holtzman, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council with the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, welcomed the court order.

“The court injunction was granted (so) the film is going to be screened tonight, which we’re really happy about,” he said.

But the cancelation of the Israeli film “is something that never should have happened,” said Holtzman. The film festival “should never have been forced to spend their time on this. But I am pleased they were successful, and the film will be shown tonight.”

Asked about the possibility of protestors, Holtzman said he has every confidence in the Lower Merion police to keep everyone safe.

But other events have been canceled due to fears of violence from pro-Palestinain protesters.

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, posted on social media Tuesday, “I got invited to participate in a debate on the Hamas-Israel war to take place in Washington. It just got canceled for security reasons. In other words, it’s not safe to debate this issue in the nation’s capital. That’s where we are in 2024.”

Other recent cancelations included a concert by Jewish singer Matisyahu in Chicago, which was canceled in March, a meeting of a Republican group with an Israeli official in Houston, and an expo about Israeli real estate was canceled in Brooklyn.