Why should the taxpayers be on the hook to pay for other people’s transportation?

The money lines are far down in the story:

The authority projects an annual operating deficit of $240 million beginning next July 1 as the last of its federal pandemic aid is spent, a situation dubbed the “fiscal cliff” that afflicts most transit systems in the United States.

SEPTA and the state’s other public transit agencies are pushing for the legislature to adopt a measure that would give them a greater share of the sales tax to support operations.

In other words, the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has been going ahead on federal deficit spending aid due to the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus — and now CEO Leslie Richards, who has presided over worsening service yet got a $75,000 raise earlier in the year, a plethora of bus and trolley accidents, and train stations littered with the homeless and drug needles, with the transit service plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff: wants more money from the taxpayers to subsidize SEPTA passengers.

And coming up? A SEPTA strike to increase costs!

SEPTA strike looms as both sides prepare for marathon bargaining session

“I don’t want to strike, but we’ll do it if we have to. The clock is ticking,” said the union president.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Thursday, October 19, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Contract talks between SEPTA and its largest union, Local 234 of the Transport Workers, are “going nowhere fast,” said Brian Pollitt, the union’s president, with little progress despite regular meetings since mid-July.

Starting Monday, negotiators for the transit agency and the union will sequester in a hotel conference room for marathon bargaining on a new contract for the operators, mechanics, cashiers and maintenance people who make Philadelphia’s transit run.

Reeally? Monday? If it’s so important, why not today?

The deadline is 11:59 p.m. Oct. 31, when the current contract expires. Local 234 members voted earlier this month to authorize a strike if no agreement is reached by then and union leaders decide it is necessary.

“The members gave me the green light,” Pollitt said. “I don’t want to strike, but we’ll do it if we have to. The clock is ticking.”

This is why I am so bitterly opposed to government unions. In the private sector, unions must, in the end, be partners with their companies; they cannot demand so much that the company can no longer make money, because if they do, the company goes out of business, and the union workers’ pay drops to $0.00.

But that’s not the way things are with the government. If the United Auto Workers demand so much that Ford has to raise its prices to the point at which no one buys Fords, the UAW members become unemployed. One would think that Pennsylvanians, who have seen the steel companies go belly up, would understand that.

But Ford depends on potential customers, customers who have a choice, buying their cars and trucks. When it comes to government unions, the ‘customers’ have no choice, because the government has the taxing power, backed up by the police and courts, to compel taxpayers to pony up, and if tax revenues are insufficient, government has the authority to raise taxes, and guess what, you still have to pay up, unless you want a close up and personal acquaintance with the inside of the penitentiary.

SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said the agency is continuing to bargain in good faith to reach a deal that is “fair to our employees and fiscally responsible.”

“(F)iscally responsible” would be a cut in wages, which we all know will not happen; SEPTA is already hundreds of union workers understaffed, and is having difficulty hiring more people. Why, it’s almost as though people do not want to work for Leslie Richards! But “fiscally responsible” could also involve raising the fares SEPTA riders have to pay, and somehow, some way, that apparently odd notion was never mentioned in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s article. The notion that SEPTA riders should have to pay for SEPTA’s service? Unthinkable! Absurd!

SEPTA is known as one of the most strike-prone large transit systems in the country — unions have walked off the job at least 11 times since 1975. Although ridership has been down since the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people use the transit system daily. A strike would snarl the region’s roads in traffic and could hurt economic activity.

Amusingly enough, on the same day as transportation reporter Thomas Fitzgerald noted that SEPTA’s ridership has been down since the panicdemic, Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas wrote an opinion piece entitled “Remote workers of the world, unite,” calling for those people who have been able to work from home to be allowed to continue to do so. As SEPTA struggles to regain ridership, Miss Ubiñas is advocating a system in which SEPTA would have fewer riders. 🙂 Of course, she speaks of the people who can work from home, not the working-class folks whose presence is physically needed on the job for the job to get done.

The math is simple: 2 + 2 ≠ 5. With SEPTA’s panicdemic money ending, and fewer people using the service, SEPTA cannot continue to operate if expenses, including labor expenses, are increased. The obvious solution is to increase fares, but that’s not what anyone seems to want to do. Rather, everyone apparently wants to force, as in force at the point of the police and jail, the taxpayers to pay for a system that most of them do not use.
__________________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.