Capitalism is killing SEPTA. Philadelphia’s transit agency—a victim of decades of neglect—was hit with massive cuts in August. By the end of 2025, SEPTA plans to reduce service by 45% and hike fares by 21%.
This austerity is devastating for the region’s working class. 750,000 people use the system daily. Thousands of transit workers will lose their jobs. Dozens of bus and train routes face elimination, leaving many neighborhoods with no public transit at all. A 9pm “curfew” on subway service will curtail life in the city. An estimated 250,000 additional cars will snarl the region’s roadways.
These cuts are an act of class war by the capitalists and both of their political parties. Most of SEPTA’s operating budget comes from Pennsylvania’s state government, which faces a $4.5 billion budget deficit in the coming year. Fortune 500 monopolies like Comcast and Aramark and elite institutions like University of Pennsylvania are based in Philadelphia. But the capitalist parties will never make these exploiters pay for SEPTA’s crisis. Instead, they are determined to force the working class to foot the bill.
Cynical Democratic maneuvers
The Democrats have been particularly cynical. They pose as “pro-labor” advocates for public transit, but they presided over the last round of transit cuts in 2010, which set the stage for the present crisis.
SEPTA faces a $213 million deficit in 2025. Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro proposed a budget that only directs $165 million to the agency, leaving a gaping gap, which local governments and SEPTA riders are expected to fill.
Even before these cuts, the system was unreliable. Overcrowding was rampant, and scheduled buses, trains, and trolleys often failed to run.
The system was chronically understaffed. SEPTA had over 800 unfilled vacancies in 2023. There has been massive turnover for years, owing to the minimal pay, extreme hours, and dangerous conditions. Because of this, SEPTA can’t hire or retain enough workers to run the system at a basic level. This is a direct consequence of the negligence by both capitalist parties, who have kept underfunded SEPTA for decades.
Now, Shapiro wants workers to foot the bill. His proposal relies on regressive sales taxes to fund public transportation. Democratic State Representative Nikil Saval, a DSA member, recently proposed a “Transit For All PA” bill, which also depends on regressive tax hikes on rental cars, auto leases, and rideshare services. Instead of making the ruling class pay for their own crisis, Saval’s proposal seeks to pit commuters who use public transit against those who don’t.
Republican House Leader Jesse Topper, on the other hand, recently admitted that they ultimately seek to privatize the system. While full privatization might not be imminent, the Republicans’ proposals are practically the same as the Democrats’: raising fares annually to match inflation, looting infrastructure and maintenance funds, and introducing a regressive tax on the glorified slot machines known as “skill games.”
Only class war can win quality public transit!
Politely begging capitalist politicians to properly fund public transit has not gotten us anywhere. These attacks by the ruling class and their politicians must be met with militant class struggle.
Union contract negotiations this summer offered a unique opportunity for the region’s organized workers to wage a united struggle against capitalists’ onslaught. Transport Workers Union Local 234, which organizes 5,000 SEPTA workers, will lose a huge chunk of its membership due to these cuts. 9,000 AFSCME workers went on strike in July, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) was preparing to strike at the end of August over school closures and attacks on wages and conditions.
These unions, which represent some 34,000 workers in total, are all facing the same problem: the capitalists want the working class to pay for the crisis of capitalism by slashing crucial public services. A united strike by these unions could paralyze Philadelphia. In such a struggle, they would count on the support of Philadelphia’s working class, who rely on these services and showed instinctive solidarity with public sector workers during the recent DC 33 strike.
If they’d come together in a militant struggle, these unions could have forced the capitalists to pay. But the labor leaders lacked such a perspective, leaving each union to fight it out alone. The leaderships of AFSCME DC 33 and PFT backed down at the decisive moment, and TWU 234 now faces a catastrophe.
To ensure victory, such a strike would need support from Philadelphia’s working class and labor movement as a whole. This would require conscious preparation and mass organization rooted in a class-war approach, determined to impose the will of the workers on the bosses and fat cats.
To win, transit unions would need to tie the issue of transit to the other pressing needs of the working class: housing, education, and the struggles of other unions in the region. This struggle would be able to unite around a program for social transformation, which would point the way to a workers’ government. The labor movement and the working class must urgently send a clear message to these frontal attacks by the ruling class: “We refuse to pay for the sake of your profits!”