Port Authority eyes massive service cuts
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Port Authority today will unveil a plan to cut transit service by 35 percent, eliminate 48 routes and raise the one-way fare for some riders to $4 to fill a projected $50 million budget deficit.
The service cuts, deepest in the authority's 54-year history, would take effect Jan. 9 and leave more than 50 communities that currently have transit service with none.
Effective Jan. 2, base fares would rise by 25 cents -- to $2.25 in Zone 1 and to $3 in Zone 2. But Light Rail Transit riders and users of 13 suburban express bus routes would be charged a new "premium" fare of $4. The authority said its cost of providing service on those routes exceeds $4 per passenger.
The service cuts, which the authority is blaming on inadequate state funding, would affect every route in the Port Authority system, spokesman Jim Ritchie said. At least 500 of the authority's 2,700 employees would lose their jobs.
PDF"We have no choice but to do what we're doing," he said. "We have no other options."
Authority officials have warned for months that rising costs of salaries, health care, pensions and fuel, coupled with state aid that has remained flat in the past five years, were building toward a crisis that could devastate the system. The authority provides nearly 230,000 rides on a typical weekday and carried 67 million passengers last year.
The troubles worsened when a key component of the state's Act 44 transportation funding law, tolling Interstate 80, was rejected by the Federal Highway Administration in April. That would have provided the Port Authority with about $27 million.
The toll rejection caused an immediate statewide transportation funding shortage of $472 million, which so far the Legislature has done nothing to address. Gov. Ed Rendell this week said he wants to summon lawmakers back to Harrisburg next month to deal with the problem.
First Published July 21, 2010 12:00 am
