The
World Has Been Made Safe for Transfers
We Win In Commonwealth Court
The Commonwealth Court ruled today against SEPTA in its
appeal of Judge DiVito’s injunction against SEPTA’s decision to eliminate
transfers. And, as I will explain below, it was not just the great legal
work of Mark Zecca and Stella Tsai but also the opposition of citizens to
the elimination of transfers that made the difference.
You may recall that Judge DiVito had ruled that SEPTA’s decision to
eliminate transfers was “capricious”. In the words of Judge Doris Smith-Ribner,
who wrote today’s decision, Judge DiVito held that “ the evidence
demonstrated that SEPTA's Board voted to eliminate paper transfers to
mollify the legislature in hopes of ensuring funding, without any study of
the impact on those who would be most adversely affected, without any
semblance of a "modernization plan" ready and with no agreement with the
Philadelphia School District in place, when they could have designed a plan
with an equitable impact on all riders. In view of the real potential for
harm to those who most heavily rely upon SEPTA, the trial court concluded
that the decision was "capricious" and was a manifest and flagrant abuse of
the Board's discretion.”
The Decision Today
The Court today did not reconsider Judge DiVito’s
decision. Instead it held that the whole issues was now moot, mainly because
on September 27 the SEPTA Board adopted a new fare proposal, one that
instead of eliminating transfers, raised the price of tokens and transfers
by 15 cents. At that time, SEPTA Board explicitly rejected a proposal to
eliminate transfers and rescind the fare increases if the Commonwealth Court
ruled in its favor and overturned Judge DiVito’s injunction. Instead, the
SEPTA Board decided that if it were to win in Commonwealth Court, it would
revisit the transfer issue. In the Commonwealth Court’s view, by taking that
step SEPTA adopted a new fare structure, one which did not include the
elimination of transfers. As a result, any further decision by SEPTA to
eliminate transfers would create a whole new legal issue and set of facts
which would have to be argued from the beginning.
Having decided that that case was moot, the Court did
not have to rule on the substance of Judge DiVito’s decision.
So why did we win?
For two reasons.
The first is that the city’s legal team cleverly
recognized that the SEPTA Board’s decision to adopt a new fare structure had
legal implications that SEPTA had not expected. So let’s thank Mark
Zecca and Stella Tsai for recognizing this and for making a powerful
argument in their briefs and in court. And thank Mayor Street, too, for
directing the city to oppose the elimination of transfers in Court.
But the legal strategy only worked because SEPTA
partly backed down on transfers. And they did that because of you. The
SEPTA Board room was packed on September 27th by citizens and
activists who opposed the elimination of transfers. Every speaker that day
was on our side, from Lance Haver to Irv Ackelsberg to the representative of
DVARP (I don’t remember who spoke for them that day.) And those who were not
in the room had made their voices clear by signing the petitions circulated
in person and on-line by the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition. SEPTA was, for
once, bowing, if only a little to public pressure. So you can all thank
yourselves for this result.
Will SEPTA now go back and try to eliminate transfers
again? I hope not. The revised transit fare plan is working and few have
objected to a small fare increase. There is no need for SEPTA and the city
to waste more money on legal fees in defense of an indefensible proposal to
eliminate transfers.
Time to Focus On Improving Public Transit
It is nice to win and nice to see SEPTA
back down in the face of public pressure, if only a little. But we shouldn’t
gloat about this whole unfortunate episode. What we really need to improve
transit in our city is not confrontation but collaboration, between the city
and SEPTA, between the city and the counties that pay for SEPTA, between the
city, SEPTA and the state that is providing new dedicated funding, and
between SEPTA and its riders. We need to be working together to forge a
vision of a twenty first century transit system in our region.
We are about to inaugurate a new Mayor who will, I
expect, lead us to a 21st century transit system. I hope that the
transfer issue comes to an end today so we can start working together with
him to attain that goal.