Other Pa. transit systems are dealing with the fiscal crunch that hit SEPTA last year

The bus system serving 11,000 daily riders in Lehigh and Northampton Counties cut its service 5% last week, a result of the continuing uncertainty around state funding for mass transit.

LANTA did not eliminate any routes but has reduced the number of trips on 13 bus lines.

“If there’s no solution coming, we’ll have to make deeper cuts,” Owen O’Neil, executive director of LANTA, said in an interview.

Gov. Josh Shapiro last fall used executive authority to flex long-term funding for capital projects to cover daily operations at SEPTA and Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) for two years, following an impasse with lawmakers.

Most of the state’s 33 smaller public transit systems did not get that big an assist and now are facing unpleasant belt-tightening choices amid rising costs and years of underfunding from Harrisburg.

LANTA is planning to raise fares in March.

But the agency was able to make smaller cuts than the 20% it had budgeted because the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation granted it $13 million to stabilize service over two years, O’Neil said.

With federal COVID-19 relief funds, LANTA was able to expand service to 11 popular new worksites in the fast-growing Lehigh Valley. It’s the third-largest system in Pennsylvania.

» READ MORE: Not just SEPTA: Public transit is in trouble all across Pennsylvania, including in GOP districts.

In the state budget unveiled Tuesday, Shapiro proposed increasing the share of sales tax revenue reserved for SEPTA and its fellow mass transit agencies, raising a projected $319 million a year.

If the idea is enacted, however, new money would not begin flowing until July 1, 2027 — the start of the 2028 fiscal year. The tax rate itself would stay the same but transit would get 6.1% of the revenue, up from 4.4%.

O’Neil said LANTA likely could wait that long if needed. But “we don’t have the stable source of funding,” he added. It would be difficult to continue to operate the expanded routes without one, O’Neil said.

“Our governor is not meeting the moment,” said Connor Descheemaker, statewide campaign manager of Transit for All PA!, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“Adjusting the sales tax allocation does not meet the structural deficit facing a single one of Pennsylvania’s public transportation systems,” they said.

Postponing a change for 18 months gives lawmakers and the governor a longer runway to reach agreement on a stable, recurring source of money for transit — either via Shapiro’s proposal or through a new revenue stream.

State funding for transit operations has declined steeply since the 2013 passage of Act 89, which used toll revenue from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to raise $450 million a year through 2022.

SEPTA, which got $394 million from the state-sanctioned flex of capital dollars last year, has said it is not considering major service cuts or fare increases this year.

» READ MORE: Explaining the Public Transportation Trust Fund

Executives figure that SEPTA can provide current levels of service until summer 2027.

The transit agency estimates that it would get $183 million in the first year if the governor’s Tuesday proposal is enacted, said Erik Johanson, SEPTA’s chief financial officer.

With a local match of $27 million, “the difference between what the governor is proposing and how much we need is getting closer and closer to being sufficient,” Johanson said.

Yet there has been no proposal to replace the capital money that the transit agency and PRT essentially borrowed against.

“Those dollars are gone, and they have to be replenished,” he said.

Descheemaker’s group estimates that seven smaller transit systems, including in the State College area, will have to cut service or raise fares if no solution is in the offing.

“It’s disappointing that we continue to hear about transit as if it is something that only affects Philadelphia and a little bit of Pittsburgh,” Descheemaker said.