Shapiro diverts highway funds to SEPTA
PHOTO COURTESY / COMMONWEALTH MEDIA SERVICES
PHILADELPHIA – Over $150 Million in federal highway funding won’t be going to highways this year. Instead, it’ll be going towards public transit in Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Governor Josh Shapiro directed PennDOT to transfer the money to SEPTA to “prevent immediate service cuts and a planned 21% fare hike for the transit authority.
Shapiro’s office claims that the diversion is temporary and reallocates funds from projects not yet underway and claims that it is a standard practice in Pennsylvania and the United States.
“Critically, the Governor’s announcement does not jeopardize or halt any ongoing infrastructure projects already underway across the Commonwealth,” his office said in a press release. “The projects are not yet under construction or have been put out to bid.”
“As Governor, I have a responsibility to serve every region of our Commonwealth — rural, suburban, and urban,” Shapiro said in Friday’s announcement. “Over the past two years, we’ve come together on a bipartisan basis to invest $330.5 million in additional funding for Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges, repairing more poor-condition bridges than any other state and improving more miles of roadway than at any time in the past decade. But while we’ve made great progress on our roadways, we must also address the needs of mass transit riders, particularly those in Southeastern Pennsylvania who rely on SEPTA every day to get to work, school, medical appointments, and more.”
While SEPTA receives the funding intended for highways statewide, many areas of the state, like Shenandoah, are either wholly disconnected or functionally disconnected from mass transit systems.
Residents of Shenandoah have no feasible mass transit option to get to Hazleton or the two industrial parks that employ a majority of residents in the region.
Additionally, PennDOT quietly disconnected Shenandoah and all of northern Schuylkill from the statewide intercity bus system in 2022.
PennDOT subsidizes several bus routes, which are provided by either Fullington Trailways or Greyhound, connecting places like Philadelphia, Easton, Wilkes-Barre, and Williamsport and points in-between.
Two of those routes, between Philadelphia and Williamsport and between New York City and Shamokin, served Shenandoah, Mahanoy City, Ashland, Frackville, Mount Carmel, and Tamaqua. Those were provided by Fullington, and until 2017 by Susquehanna Trailways through those subsidies.
With little notice besides a post on Fullington’s website at the time, PennDOT cut the subsidy for that route in April of 2022, disconnecting the northern Schuylkill region from the larger cross-state bus system.
Currently, the only public transit option in the Shenandoah area is the Schuylkill Transportation System, which provides fixed-route buses between here, Ashland, Mahanoy City, and Pottsville. No direct service is provided to Hazleton.
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