Railroad Forums 

  • Almost 40 SEPTA projects on halt due to Pa. Turnpike Lawsuit

  • Discussion relating to Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Philadelphia Metro Area). Official web site can be found here: www.septa.com. Also including discussion related to the PATCO Speedline rapid transit operated by Delaware River Port Authority. Official web site can be found here: http://www.ridepatco.org/.
Discussion relating to Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Philadelphia Metro Area). Official web site can be found here: www.septa.com. Also including discussion related to the PATCO Speedline rapid transit operated by Delaware River Port Authority. Official web site can be found here: http://www.ridepatco.org/.

Moderator: AlexC

 #1504389  by rcthompson04
 
ExCon90 wrote:... but it provides jobs for countless officials and functionaries who are disinclined to change a system that works for them.
I grew up in Greene County. There aren’t that many jobs associated with this excess. It is even more absurd and is based on “pride”. In places like Millborne on the other hand it is often jobs.
 #1504392  by JeffK
 
ExCon90 wrote:... but it provides jobs for countless officials and functionaries who are disinclined to change a system that works for them.
From what I've seen it's deeper than simple greed. There's intense opposition to giving up control in favor of what local officials see as "regionalism" - the old "My kingdom may be small, but I am its only king" mindset. When I lived in Chesco the county was working on coordination among various towns and boroughs; at one meeting a guy stood up, shook his fist, and with a red face screamed that "this is communism, communism, do you hear me!??"

Attitudes like that are huge speed bumps in the way of making SEPTA - and is funding - truly regional. I dunno, maybe it'll take the crisis that could result from this lawsuit to shake people out of their bubbles.
 #1504885  by JeffersonLeeEng
 
Suggested solution(s) to SEPTA's funding crisis?
https://www.philly.com/transportation/p ... 90402.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Transit in Pennsylvania is speeding toward a funding chasm, but a group of government and business leaders have fixes in mind.

Increase income or sales taxes. Impose congestion pricing. Add fees for Uber and Lyft. Or give counties the ability to raise funds for transportation directly. Some of these alone or several combined could generate the $350 million to $450 million a year public transit needs.
 #1504891  by rcthompson04
 
JeffersonLeeEng wrote:Suggested solution(s) to SEPTA's funding crisis?
https://www.philly.com/transportation/p ... 90402.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Transit in Pennsylvania is speeding toward a funding chasm, but a group of government and business leaders have fixes in mind.

Increase income or sales taxes. Impose congestion pricing. Add fees for Uber and Lyft. Or give counties the ability to raise funds for transportation directly. Some of these alone or several combined could generate the $350 million to $450 million a year public transit needs.
These are nice sounding options, but the SEPTA service region just needs to admit that relying on state funding so much is the problem. Push for lower taxes in Harrisburg and raise taxes locally. If you lowered the state Personal Income Tax by 20% and raised a SEPTA income tax equal to that amount you would more than plug the SEPTA portion of the funding problem.
 #1504898  by JeffK
 
rcthompson04 wrote:If you lowered the state Personal Income Tax by 20% and raised a SEPTA income tax equal to that amount you would more than plug the SEPTA portion of the funding problem.
That assumes the amount of state income taxes collected locally equals the amount the state sends to SEPTA. Such a diversion would certainly fill SEPTA's funding holes but might also take away from funding elsewhere.

Regardless, some form of tax swap could still be a kind of "karma solution". It's already well-known that SE PA sends more to Harrisburg than it gets back. Short-circuiting the path through H'burg could be a surprise for those parts of the state that moan endlessly about how much they "lose" to Philadelphia & environs.
 #1504927  by rcthompson04
 
JeffK wrote:
rcthompson04 wrote:If you lowered the state Personal Income Tax by 20% and raised a SEPTA income tax equal to that amount you would more than plug the SEPTA portion of the funding problem.
That assumes the amount of state income taxes collected locally equals the amount the state sends to SEPTA. Such a diversion would certainly fill SEPTA's funding holes but might also take away from funding elsewhere.

Regardless, some form of tax swap could still be a kind of "karma solution". It's already well-known that SE PA sends more to Harrisburg than it gets back. Short-circuiting the path through H'burg could be a surprise for those parts of the state that moan endlessly about how much they "lose" to Philadelphia & environs.
I was only looking at the Capital Funding component. I ran the numbers this evening based on the 2016 Personal Income Tax numbers by county. The SEPTA counties could cover the Capital Budget plus approximately $150 million extra with the equivalent of a 10% in the state income tax being shifted to the SEPTA counties (approximately $430 million in revenue). The state would lose approximately $1.1 billion revenue.

If you wanted to eliminate the whole SEPTA operating and capital state subsidy, you would need to get around a 22% cut in state Personal Income Taxes.

I would give the option to any county who wanted to fund public transit to use this option of an optional personal income tax. The revenue would almost certainly help cover the PAT in Allegheny County along with the smaller players.
 #1504939  by JeffK
 
rcthompson04 wrote:I would give the option to any county who wanted to fund public transit to use this option of an optional personal income tax. The revenue would almost certainly help cover the PAT in Allegheny County along with the smaller players.
Given that those smaller systems have even more funding uncertainties than SEPTA, I'd agree it could be an attractive option for some of them.
 #1504946  by rugbychix
 
Without going too far off topic, what's being proposed is only useful if we can fully fund the existing "state of good repair" backlog. The idea that the current residents and users should make up the difference between what should have been paid into the system since the 80s and what was actually paid into the system is not reasonable. The people/businesses who should have paid those taxes left the areas where they lived, like locusts, to find other jurisdictions to devour. Given the reality, only a systematic reinvestment at the federal level represents an equitable and reasonable approach to getting through the initial "state of good repair" backlog. Almost all the states in the Northeast are in the same position. The MTA's congestion pricing bandaid falls into this category: the correct idea to fund the agency if they weren't already so far behind.
 #1504995  by rcthompson04
 
JeffK wrote:
rcthompson04 wrote:I would give the option to any county who wanted to fund public transit to use this option of an optional personal income tax. The revenue would almost certainly help cover the PAT in Allegheny County along with the smaller players.
Given that those smaller systems have even more funding uncertainties than SEPTA, I'd agree it could be an attractive option for some of them.
BARTA is a great example of an agency that could probably start supporting some basic level of rail service (diesel shuttle to Norristown at least) if such a scheme occurred because the revenue obtained from the tax shift would be double of their state subsidy.