The Philadelphia Inquirer likes to use Twitter to pimp its articles online, but hey, so do all of my blogging friends. Thing is, this article from the Inky is restricted to paid subscribers only. Fortunately, I do subscribe, so you don’t have to! [Update: Saturday, June 10: Robert Stacy McCain linked a free, archived version of the article, so you can read the whole thing.]

‘We lost control of the train cars’

With ridership down and antisocial behavior up, SEPTA is grappling with how to make Philly transit feel safer.

By Thomas Fitzgerald, Ryan W. Briggs, and Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, June 6, 2023

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

One of the stops on the Market-Frankford line is Allegheny Station, at the infamous Kensington and Allegheny Avenues. The fastest way to clean up the Market-Frankford line? Eliminate the stop in Kensington!

Recent high-profile shootings in and around SEPTA stations in Philadelphia reflect an alarming increase in violence following 2022, when crime on the transit system was trending down. In May, two teens were killed on SEPTA in separate shootings.

However, the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter on SEPTA are smoking, turnstile-jumping, public urination, and other unruly acts. SEPTA is struggling to manage the incidents.

I’ve got to ask: is ridership down because of “the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter,” or the fact that people are getting shot and sometimes killed?

SEPTA, the newspaper tells us, “is struggling to manage the incidents,” and, from the way the paragraph is structured, I believe that the “incidents” referred to are “the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter.” That’s actually a good thing, a form of ‘broken windows policing,’ trying to stamp out the less important crimes in the belief that such will lead to the worse crimes dropping.

These are not violent crimes but antisocial behaviors that make many people feel unsafe on the subway and El lines, according to interviews with multiple riders. Some avoid the trains, a potential catastrophe for a transit agency that must grow ridership to financially survive.

“It’s filthier than I’ve ever seen it. More dangerous than I’ve ever seen it,” said David Corliss Jr., 40, as he waited for an El train at 34th Street Station on a recent afternoon. He said his family worries about his safety when he rides public transit.

SEPTA, like all of the other municipal organizations, is understaffed, and yes, that means that cleaning up after the junkies gets delayed.

There’s a lot more, but I want to point out five paragraphs from further down the Inquirer’ article:

While repeat offenders are being caught and banned, the court-diversion part of the program has not been carried out, Transit Police say.

“We were finding that most of our misdemeanor [trespassing] cases were being withdrawn,” Nestel said. “The folks we were putting into the criminal justice system weren’t going to diversionary courts and weren’t getting the help they needed.”

Michael Mellon, a lawyer from the Defenders Association of Philadelphia, attributed that to concern among public defenders that SEPTA was using the ban policy to track and arrest people experiencing homelessness.

“Regardless of what SEPTA claims about the purpose of the [citation] program, in reality it criminalized poverty, homelessness, and mental illness,” Mellon said. “Some of the people they targeted languished in jail because they did not have the means or the traditional support to get released.”

In 2020, the Defenders Association and attorneys from the Homeless Advocacy Project contacted the District Attorney’s Office to express their concerns. Trespassing arrests dwindled soon afterward, Mellon said.

The Defenders Association of Philadelphia is the group which provides legal assistance for indigent defendants. And they got what they wanted:

Arrests by SEPTA police plummeted after the agency downgraded penalties for the most minor offenses, but arrests for other, more serious crime also plummeted as the agency has grappled with officer shortages and other issues. Data from the District Attorney’s Office showed annual arrests by SEPTA police for any offense — including misdemeanor and felony crimes — fell by 85% from 2019 to 2022.

The oh-so-sympathetic claimed that it “criminalized poverty, homelessness, and mental illness,” but regardless of the reason for criminal behavior, it was still criminal behavior. In their zeal to defend the drug addicts poor and downtrodden, they are nevertheless defending the people who have caused a serious downturn in SEPTA ridership.

One picture, it has been said, is worth a thousand words, and this screen capture from the newspaper’s article illustrates it perfectly. SEPTA police officers Kevin Newton, left, Anthony Capaldi, center, and Martin Zitter, the caption tells us, ask a person with whom they are familiar — ever heard the description of a suspect as someone ‘known to the police’? — to not block the entrance to the 13th street El station. A man, very probably an addict, chose to lay down with his food and water bottle in a manner which blocked the station entrance, even though, if he just had to lay down in the sidewalk, there was obvious room just to the right of the stairs, against the metal bars, where he could have settled which did not block the entrance.

The Inquirer has published several articles on the proposed Roosevelt Boulevard subway, a $3+ billion for which SEPTA simply doesn’t have the money. A lot of people believe it would be a great idea, but the obvious question arises: if SEPTA can’t really handle and maintain the system it already has, how does it make any sense to add more system?

The left want to push more and more Americans into public transportation, to reduce CO₂ emissions to fight global warming climate change, and that is something into which Philly’s political leadership has fully bought.

Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.

As the Democrats in a very Democratic city want to push SEPTA ridership, the public have been far less willing to actually use the service; Philadelphians and residents in the collar counties have, in effect, voted with their wallets. Some of it may be attributable to an increase in the number of people able to work from home some days, but when even the transit agency admits that it has lost control of the system, when the stories of serious crime on the buses and trains increase — the lesser crimes are no longer a story — how can anyone seriously contemplate public transportation as a solution to anything?