Philadelphia Daily News (PA)   January 24, 2005 Section: LOCAL Edition: 4STAR Page: 10 Memo:RETHINKING PHILADELPIHA   FIX MASS TRANSIT ... DAMMIT  Postcards from Route 124 SEPTA is far from the service it used to be MYUNG OAK KIM kimm @phillynews.com   IT'S 8:30 ON A Monday morning and the 124 bus rumbles toward the King of Prussia Mall, almost every seat occupied by commuting workers from Philadelphia.   Nobody's talking. Terry McGirth, now two hours into his workday commute from Tacony, sits in the back, frowning. He takes the El and two buses to his job at a Valley Forge fuel-supply company. Today, because his usual bus didn't show up, he'll have to walk the final 10 minutes. Like many SEPTA riders, he gripes about the transit agency with little prompting. About twice a week, he says, the afternoon bus from his office leaves early or doesn't come at all. Bus drivers regularly take off when they see someone running toward the door. And the $2 cash fare - already one of the nation's highest and about to jump another dollar without a state transit bailout - adds insult to injury.   "The only reason I'm taking SEPTA is because I have to, not because I want to," said McGirth, 41, who pays almost $8 a day to commute. "If there was another choice, I'm sure we would take it. We have no other choice."   The bus to King of Prussia offers many clues about why crisis has never been far from the Philadelphia transit system's past:   _ Socio-economic shifts. SEPTA presides over the nation's fifth-largest rail and bus system - a system designed over the last century to haul vast numbers of workers downtown. But SEPTA now finds itself serving a shrinking population and new kinds of commuters, including those like McGirth who live in the city and work in the suburbs.   _ Politically weak constituents. Passengers on the 124 bus, like on most buses and subways, are mostly working-class African-Americans from Philadelphia. They're mostly invisible in Harrisburg, where most politicians answer to rural, automobile-driving constituents.   _ The inefficiency of government- run transit.   Although the bus traveling to King of Prussia is almost full, the bus returning to Center City is almost empty. Because of the socialization of formerly privately run transit companies, SEPTA must run a steady schedule, regardless of whether fare collections meet operating costs. And without competition, the agency has little incentive to improve operations.   _ Battered image. Endless rider complaints about poor service, high fares, disrespectful workers and wasteful management have left an indelible stain on SEPTA's reputation. Politicians know about the complaints, yet do little to change anything.   Exacerbating these challenges is a continual funding shortfall that makes it impossible for SEPTA to make meaningful improvement.   The modern history of mass transit in Philadelphia has no glory day or Prince Charming - just misfortune and a transit agency few can pity.   But Philadelphia is not alone in its struggles.   Mass transit has evolved into an industry that can't survive without huge subsidies, and can't compete with the better-funded highway and automobile system.   "They are fundamentally in a losing position to start with," said Anthony Downs, a transportation expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a policy think-tank in Washington, D.C.   Transit agencies can't charge riders the true cost of operating the system because then people wouldn't use the system, he said. The only way to come close to meeting costs is to have a constant stream of riders, which happens only in densely populated cities like New York and Hong Kong. That puts the burden of financing on taxpayers.   "All transit systems throughout the world are in financial straits," Downs said. "I think struggling is inherent in their existence."   SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said the transit agency should be credited for reducing its work force by 1,200 full-time positions to 8,861 workers and cutting operating expenses by $420 million since 1997, without cutting service.   He also cites capital improvements that include new buses, rebuilding the Market/Frankford El and the new Frankford Transportation Center.   "The cruel irony right now is that the system is virtually brand-new," Maloney said.   Rider complaints, say SEPTA officials, are overblown.   "I think SEPTA is the agency that people love to hate," said Richard Burnfield, SEPTA's budget director. "You can take SEPTA 100 days. Ninety-nine days the trip is on time, and you will only remember the one day the train or the bus broke down."   He added: "With the stranglehold that we've been in . . . a lot of the things we would like to do to improve service, it's difficult to do that when you're barely making ends meet."   Before the automobile, the region was primed for an extensive public-transit system.   The first form of public transportation was the horse-drawn stagecoach, introduced in 1831. By the early-1900s, trolleys and trains had become the dominant transportation force, and the driver of the region's growth.   The powerhouse Reading and Pennsylvania Railroad companies built rail lines throughout the city and neighboring counties. Communities were built along train lines.   To this day, Philadelphia's rail system is the envy of other cities trying to expand rail transit lines.   The trolley-car system was considered top-notch, still attracting enthusiasts from around the world.   After WWII, however, Philadelphia's rail empire began to crumble. "White flight" to the suburbs began. The automobile lobby launched an assault on trolley systems, buying up trolley companies and dismantling the lines.   And the Eisenhower era pushed interstate-highway building as the nation's top transportation priority. Since then, highway construction has been more highly subsidized than mass transit.   It was during that decline of the rail era that SEPTA was born. Created through state legislation in 1964 after the failure of the Philadelphia Transportation Co., SEPTA began operating in 1968, gradually taking over the region's subway, trolley, bus and train systems. As trolley lines fell into disrepair, SEPTA abandoned them and replaced them with buses.   Over the last four decades, the Legislature passed a series of bills to provide funding for SEPTA. But other forces worked against mass transit.   SEPTA has lost almost 25 percent of its riders since 1972. Since 1960, the Philadelphia population has shrunk 20 percent. The five-county region's population has grown almost 4 percent in the same period.   A commuter tunnel built during the Rizzo era linked the Reading and Pennsylvania rail lines and helped make SEPTA more efficient and user-friendly.   But the long-planned Roosevelt Boulevard subway extension never materialized. And current capital projects, like the renovation of the Market/Frankford El in West Philly and the Route 15 trolley line on Girard Avenue, have been mired by delays, neighborhood disputes and cost overruns.   Changes in federal funding formulas, reducing the federal contribution for capital projects from 80 percent to a proposed 50 percent, make it even more difficult to get projects moving. The bureaucracy and cost of expanding mass transit is huge. And federal money originally earmarked for transportation projects often gets diverted to new priorities.   As population and economic shifts left Philadelphia struggling to find its future, the structure of the SEPTA board of directors worsened the agency's problems.   SEPTA was conceived as a regional agency. Each of the region's five counties had two representatives on the board, along with a representative of the governor. From the start, the 11 board members were political appointees with limited knowledge of transit issues. Most didn't regularly ride mass transit.   Agendas clashed, with city interests competing against suburban interests. The agency's growing budget - more than $1 billion in operating and capital spending - created a strong lure for politically connected companies looking for huge contracts.   The SEPTA board swelled to 15 members in 1991, adding appointees from the Legislature. That meant Philadelphia's transit priorities fell further down the list, because of traditional animosity toward the city from rural parts of the state. Even though more than 80 percent of SEPTA's riders are from Philadelphia, the city gets no more votes than a suburban county. There is no rider representative on the SEPTA board.   At the same time, SEPTA's operating costs, especially in the last decade, have soared.   Demand for paratransit, the service for people with disabilities, almost doubled between 1992 and 2003, and costs have increased more than $8 million since 1998, Burnfield said.   Since 1998, employee health- care costs have more than doubled to $118.3 million, Burnfield said.   Today, with almost 9,000 workers, SEPTA has a $920 million operating budget and $427 million capital budget.   The seeds for the current funding crisis were sown in the 1991 state legislation that, due to unforseen changes in revenue sources, failed to produce adequate funding, with shortfalls increasing each year.   The current deficit is $70 million and projected to climb to $131 million in two years.   Part of the problem is the perception that SEPTA is a bloated bureaucracy that wastes money. Over the years, no powerful entity has truly challenged the agency's operational spending, which has doubled in the last decade. The only two reviews of SEPTA spending in recent history have lacked detail and credibility.   State Rep. Dwight Evans, who is pushing a proposal for increased state funding for SEPTA, said SEPTA must trim spending and become more customer-friendly. But first, he said, SEPTA needs to be healthy enough to be taken off life support.   "Unfortunately it's taken some people a little while to realize that you're not going to do this on the cheap," he said.   George Thompson, a janitor from Logan, has ridden SEPTA all his life. He tries to focus on the positive. He said the bus drivers are nice and the service is fairly reliable. But on holidays, he said, service suffers significantly.   On July 4, which fell on a Sunday last year, the 50-year-old grandfather of five left his house around 8 p.m., rode the Broad Street Subway to City Hall, then walked to 15th and JFK to catch the bus to King of Prussia Mall, where he works overnight cleaning at Nordstrom.   The 9 p.m. bus never showed. There was no other bus on the schedule.   He called SEPTA to find out why and someone in the office told him the driver was watching the fireworks. He asked the agency for a letter he could give to his boss. It refused. "I was really upset," Thompson said.   Marc Stier, president of West Mount Airy Neighbors and member of the Philadelphia Transit Campaign, said SEPTA faces a litany of legitimate complaints about antiquated fare collection, filthy stations, poor signs and lack of independent oversight.   "SEPTA's vision is to keep running the system along the lines it's always run," Stier said.   Lance Haver, a longtime consumer advocate now working in the mayor's office, said SEPTA needs to do a much better job of showing respect to riders. And he insists that SEPTA must be saved.   "The truth is hospitals can't function, buildings can't be cleaned, kids can't get to school, and you might as well close the Gallery Mall on the weekends" if SEPTA's crisis deepens, Haver said.   "There will be a fix. The question is how much pain and suffering will the people who rely on SEPTA have to suffer until the fix is made." *   Illustration:PHOTO Once upon a time, SEPTA trolleys used to line Market Street (top) and Germantown Avenue. They've since been abandoned for subways & buses.   One rider uses his cell phone to pass time on his long commute.   George Thompson has reason to complain, but focuses on good.