As Philadelphia navigated cuts to SEPTA lines across the city, many Penn students who rely on public transportation faced disruptions to their daily commutes, potentially affecting access to internships and off-campus opportunities.
The SEPTA service cuts came months after an announcement by SEPTA officials that stated financial difficulties had led to limited service. Some of these changes went into effect on Aug. 24, including cutting off access to Regional Rail lines after 9 p.m., permanently turning trolley routes into bus routes, and eliminating over 30 service lines. SEPTA announced that service will be restored and the cuts will be reversed on Sept. 14.
While Penn has a two-year housing requirement for undergraduate students, many students — including upperclassmen and graduate students — choose to live off-campus, making it common for the Penn community residents to rely on SEPTA as a form of transportation.
Wharton sophomore Una Liu noted that she had already seen slower SEPTA services in the weeks leading up to the service cuts.
“Even as I’ve been working this entire summer — although the cuts haven’t happened — you can see it on a day-to-day basis this summer that there pretty much have been impacts of the SEPTA funding being cut. Every single time I ride the Market-Frankford line, there’s a delay, there’s equipment issues, [and] the buses are slower,” she said.
As the fall semester begins, Liu added that she expected to use SEPTA services less.
“After they have the cuts, I don’t think I’m likely going to ride SEPTA … If this is what’s going on already, I can’t imagine what will happen after they actually implement the cuts,” she said. “I personally think they already have and are just trying to phase us into that scenario … it’s just very irritating.”
While Liu was frustrated with SEPTA’s issues and cuts, she did not see them affecting her life at Penn significantly.
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“As of right now, it's impacting my life, but, thankfully, once I move back onto campus, I don’t think I’ll have to rely on SEPTA as much,” Liu said.
College sophomore Zinnia Zheng shared similar thoughts.
“I don’t use SEPTA that often. I don’t have SEPTA in the West where I am from, so I don’t really care,” Zheng said.
Penn Medicine CEO Kevin Mahoney, who uses Regional Rail to commute to Penn, offered a different perspective, telling WHYY that the cuts could affect the hospital system’s patients and employees if the transit agency moves forward with significant service cuts.
Up to 9,000 University of Pennsylvania Health System employees use SEPTA to get to work during an average week.
“This ranks in the top two or three things that keep me up at night,” Mahoney said. “Just the sheer number of our employees that use the Regional [Rail], trolley and bus.”
