(The Center Square) – House Democrats met in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia to urge Senate Republicans to return to Harrisburg to pass funding for the state’s mass transit systems, a sticking point in the state’s budget negotiations.
Without dedicated funding, SEPTA is poised to cut services on the Aug. 24, an act that will impact more than 10,000 students who rely on transit to get to and from school every day, which begins the following day.
“Time’s up,” said Rep. Morgan Cephas, D-Philadelphia. “It’s okay for you to be an advocate of SEPTA, but where the rubber meets the road is when you demand to your leadership that there is a vote that needs to happen on the plan that house Democrats sent over in June.”
Senate Republicans have argued that the system needs to bear more accountability for its financial shortcomings. Though public transit is used in all 67 counties across the state, its funding has become the backdrop for a perceived opposition between rural roads and bridges and urban commutes, and, more broadly, between red and blue swaths of the state.
The Democrats chose Lincoln to host the press conference because it’s within Sen. Joe Picozzi’s district, the only Republican with a district in Philadelphia. While Picozzi himself recently proposed a bill that would require reporting and performance measures from SEPTA, it did not include funding.
“To say that they moved a bill and introduced it so that they could do something about SEPTA is an empty thought when you don’t have any funding mechanism because that’s the important thing that we need to be doing so that we do not have these drastic cuts around the state,” said Rep. Mary Isaacson, D-Philadelphia. “It’s not just here in Philadelphia. It’s everywhere.”
Senate President Pro Tem, Sen. Kim Ward, R-Greensburg, took to X to defend her colleague, saying Picozzi was fighting for SEPTA in the Senate.
“I know he is an easy target for the Democrats because he’s the only Republican in Philadelphia, but shame on them because they know he is working to get the SEPtA funding resolved. Gaslighters!” wrote Ward.
House Democrats have passed four different pieces of legislation that would fund transit going back to October of 2023. The most recent uses Gov. Shapiro’s plan to increase the amount of sales tax proceeds dedicated to transit by 1.75% without raising sales tax itself. It’s currently awaiting consideration by the Senate Transportation committee.
Rep. Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said that if the funding doesn’t pass, Pittsburgh Regional Transit may be the next to drastically reduce its services. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recently been working to carve a name for Pittsburgh as a global technology hub, centering AI and energy discussions there.
“You cannot be pro-business and not be pro-mass transit,” said Harris. “What we know is that many of the folks who are going back and forth to work in Philadelphia in the southeast, but also in the western part of the state, many of those folks are taking mass transit.”
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia combined make up the vast majority of the state’s economic output as well as its tourism. The NFL season, for which both the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers attract tens of thousands of fans on Sundays, begins in just one month. Baseball season is ongoing, and events like the MLB All Star Game, FIFA World Cup, NFL Draft, and America250 are all expected to draw major crowds in 2026, adding strain to the cities’ transportation infrastructures.
