SEPTA’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year

Scott Sauer would like nothing better than to make SEPTA an afterthought.

He doesn’t mean that the Philadelphia region’s mass transit agency should be neglected, but rather that it will come to do its job so seamlessly that its nearly 800,000 daily customers can rely on the service without worrying about breakdowns, delays and disruptions.

Given the cascading crises that hit SEPTA in 2025, many people wondered if the place was hexed.

“I hope not, because I don’t know how to get the curse off me,” Sauer said in a recent interview. “But listen, truth be told, there were days when I scratched my head and thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, what is going on?’”

It was the year that a long-forecast fiscal cliff arrived in the form of a $213 million structural deficit in SEPTA’s operating budget. And it was a year of politics that failed to secure new money and a stable funding source for increased state mass transit subsidies. As usual.

Service was slashed, but then a Philadelphia court, ruling in a consumer activists’ lawsuit, ordered the cuts reversed. Later, federal regulators cracked down on simmering safety issues. SEPTA had to inspect and fix all 223 of its 50-year-old Silverliner IV railcars after five Regional Rail train fires. The trolley tunnel was shut down and remains so.

“We just couldn’t seem to get more than a day or two of relief before something else was causing a headache,” said Sauer.

In the end, help from above and a new labor contract bought SEPTA at least two years to recover from its annus horribilis and stabilize operations.

When the Pennsylvania legislature couldn’t get a transit funding deal done, Gov. Josh Shapiro shifted $394 million in state-allocated funds for infrastructure projects to use for operations — the third temporary solution in as many years. The administration also later sent $220 million in emergency money in November for the Regional Rail fleet and the trolley tunnel.

And, early in December SEPTA reached agreement on a new two-year contract with its largest bargaining unit, Transport Workers Union Local 234.

Sauer compared SEPTA’s position to football refs. When they are doing their jobs right, fans don’t have to think about them when watching the game. And when things are going well on the transit system, it becomes part of the background.

“Let’s make sure we do the basics, and we do them really well, because at the end of the day, people want SEPTA to move them from one place to the other, right?” he said.

The test of the focus on fundamentals comes soon, with millions of visitors expected to the region for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, World Cup soccer and other big events.

In December of 2024, Sauer became interim general manager of SEPTA, replacing former CEO Leslie S. Richards. He was new in the top job, but not a rookie.

Sauer, 54, began his career as a trolley operator more than 30 years ago. He had no political experience, though, and would quickly be thrown head-first into those murky waters to swim with sharks.

Storm clouds were already rolling in. Weeks before Sauer took the reins, Shapiro had flexed $153 million in state highway funds for SEPTA operations after a broader deal failed amid Senate GOP opposition.

It’s a legal move, but often controversial and Shapiro’s opponents were furious.

Richards and her leadership team had been warning of a looming fiscal “doomsday scenario” for months. Officials were drafting a budget with service cuts and fare increases.

On Feb. 6, a Wilmington-bound Regional Rail train caught fire as it was leaving Crum Lynne Station in Delaware County. It was worrisome, but at the time nobody knew it would get worse.

SEPTA successfully moved more than 400,000 people to the parade celebrating the Eagles’ Super Bowl LVII championship on Valentine’s Day, a high point. “We pulled off the parade near flawlessly,” Sauer said. With the flexed money, “It was exciting at first.”

Then the state budget cycle started up again.

Familiar battle lines were drawn. Senate Republicans, in the majority in the chamber, opposed Shapiro’s proposal to generate $1.5 billion for transit operations over five years by increasing its share of state sales tax income.

They preferred a brand-new source of income for the state’s transit aid and said that SEPTA was mismanaged, pointing to high-profile crimes, rampant fare evasion and lax enforcement.

On a mid-August night, the Senate GOP came up with a proposal that would take money from the Public Transportation Trust Fund, a source for transit capital projects, and split it evenly between transit operations subsidies and rural state highway repairs.

Sauer, who was in the state Capitol that day, wound up opposing the idea, then said it was worth considering and then walked that back on a chaotic legislative night.

“It was kind of quiet … and then we got alerted that a proposal was coming within minutes. And so everybody was scrambling to try to read through it,” Sauer said.

In a quick news conference with Shapiro, Sauer opposed the idea of taking capital dollars for transit operations, as did the governor. Then he spoke with Senate Republicans and told reporters it could be worth considering but he had questions. And by the end of the night, he walked that back and opposed the measure.

“I guess if there was a lesson to be learned for me in August, it was I should have taken some [more] time reading through that proposal,” he said.

There was not much time to reflect on what happened, though, because the hits kept on coming as the federal government ordered SEPTA to inspect all 223 Regional Rail cars.

SEPTA’s Regional Rail fleet is the oldest operating commuter fleet in the country and the fires highlighted the difficulty of keeping them maintained while needing to stretch limited capital funds to address multiple problems.

The Market-Frankford El cars, though younger than the Silverliner IVs, have been beat up and unreliable. SEPTA is moving forward with replacing them, as well as the Kawasaki trolleys that are more than 40 years old.

SEPTA had ordered new Regional Rail coaches from a Chinese-government related manufacturer, but canceled the contract after the first few models, built during the pandemic, showed flaws. Now the agency is advertising for bids on a new fleet of Regional Rail workhorses — but it has to make them sturdier to last for at least seven more years before new cars would be on the way.

Officials plan to use $220 million received from the state on that effort.

Some of the money, about $48 million, is slated to help fix the trolley-tunnel issue. SEPTA is contending with glitches in the connection between the overhead catenary wires and the pole that conducts electricity to the vehicle.

SEPTA has made some progress on some of its persistent issues, officials say, though the accomplishments perhaps understandably have been largely overlooked amid the urgent, existential crises of 2025.

For instance, serious crimes on the SEPTA system dropped 10% through Sept. 30 compared to the same period in 2024, according to Transit Police metrics.

And there had already been a sharp improvement. Serious crimes in 2024 dropped 33% compared to 2023 — from 1,063 to 711, year over year.

“If you think back to where we were in 2021 and 2022, the perception was bad things were happening on SEPTA and you should steer clear of them,” Sauer said.

The Transit Police have been hiring new officers, including a recently graduated academy class of nine, and has about 250 officers.

SEPTA also installed 42 full-length gates designed to thwart fare evasion on seven platforms in five stations during 2025, spokesperson Andrew Busch said. Another 48 gates are coming in the first quarter of the year.

Police are also issuing citations with an enhanced penalty of up to $300 for fare evasion.

And yet, in 2027, it will be time again to start the old SEPTA-funding dance once again, as transit agencies advocates and supportive lawmakers work at getting a stable state funding stream for transit operations.

State Democrats have said the transit issue could help them take control of the Senate from Republicans — a longtime goal but a difficult one to achieve. One wild card is whether President Donald Trump’s slumping popularity will cause GOP congressional candidates to get swamped in the 2026 midterms, and whether that translates to voters’ local senators.

It likely would have to be a huge wave, and it’s a closely divided state.

By 2027, Shapiro is expected to be running for president (if he is reelected next year) and it’s anyone’s guess how that could affect budget politics.

“Not everybody wants to see us. I didn’t make a lot of friends,” Sauer joked after the TWU settlement.

“We have more advocacy to do,” he said.