Marc Stier

Democrat for State Representative

Working Together to Build Strong Communities

Better Public Transportation

A growing economy needs a balanced and effective system of transportation. Workers need to get to their jobs. And goods need to be transported from one area to another.

All transportation is public transportation—cars require as much public investment as do trains, trolleys, and buses. We need to spend more to repair our roads and bridges. But we also need to spend much more on mass transit, which has been starved of funds for the years.

We need operating subsidies for mass transit in the Delaware Valley Region and elsewhere in the state that are provided by dedicated and reliable funding sources. I support the proposals recently made in the General Assembly to provide these funds by increases in the tire tax and rental car tax and by lifting the cap on the portion of the sales tax that can go to mass transit. I also favor increasing capital expenditures that devise ways to use our mass transit system to support economic development.

I have been fighting for nine months to protect the R8 train and C bus and for a restoration of half-hour service on the R8. As your State Representative I will be in a much better position to achieve that goal. The Philadelphia delegation to the General Assembly will have to put SEPTA on notice: Increased state funding for SEPTA must be made contingent on SEPTA providing adequate levels of service in Philadelphia. Our goal should be to increase service on all trains initially to every half hour and eventually to every twenty minutes.

Increasing Ridership on the R8

To make more frequent service economically feasible, we will need to increase ridership on the R8 and other train lines. We need creative ways to accomplish this task. Here are a few:

  • More and more commuter use their handheld or laptop computers on the train. It is now technologically feasible to give train riders high-speed access to the internet at very low cost. This would give people a good reason to leave their cars and take the train.
  • We also need to make it easier for people to get to the train. Many of us can walk. But some of us live a bit too far from the station to do so. We should look into the possibility of using small buses or jitney’s to bring people from their homes to the train stations.
  • As I describe in another part of this website, there are opportunities for economic development in the old, abandoned warehouses on the R8 line.
  • We need to finally recognize that people in Philadelphia stay later in Center City they did when our train schedules were devised. It is time to provide late night service from Center City to Northwest Philadelphia. Trains should run frequently at night and the last train should leave Center City no later than 1:30 am.
  • To make mid-day service more efficient, we should adopt new technologies that make it possible to run single cars on the commuter rail lines.

23 Bus / Trolley

There are also ways to make the 23 route a more effective form of transportation and bigger contributor to economic development in Northwest Philadelphia

  • SEPTA needs to create a new fare that would give riders on the 23 bus a day pass that enables them to get on and off the line as many times as they want. Shopping is difficult in our commercial districts because they are mostly strung out along Germantown Avenue instead being laid out in convenient squares. More people would be able to shop on the Avenue if they could take the bus up and down as many times as we want for the same fare.
  • We also need many new parking lots along Germantown Avenue so that people who cannot walk to the trolley are more likely to take advantage of it.
  • It is time to bring back a new, air conditioned 23 trolley with computerized controls that regulate traffic lights and speed the cars up and down the Avenue. Advanced trolleys are faster than buses, more comfortable, and less polluting.
  • A new trolley would be a tourist attraction that would bring more people to the important historic sites on Germantown Avenue. To enhance its impact on the community, we should build a Trolley Museum / Historic Site Welcome Center on Germantown Avenue.

Reforming SEPTA

If SEPTA does not change direction than it will have to be dramatically reformed. As currently structured, Philadelphia has too little control over SEPTA. If it is not possible to restructure the board of SEPTA, then I would favor making SEPTA a state agency directly under the control of the Governor and General Assembly

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