On April 13, 1967, round 1:30 p.m., Lt. Joseph Larkin of the Philadelphia Police Division’s subway unit visited the Philadelphia Prime College for Women to interview the college’s librarian, 61-year-old Miriam S. Axelrod.
Axelrod had written a letter to Mayor James H.J. Tate about deficient prerequisites on Philadelphia’s Huge Boulevard Line subway. In her letter, she said that the escalators within the subway concourse of the Walnut-Locust station have been out of operation for a number of weeks and asked that they “be put in running order.”
Axelrod additionally requested that “something be done” about other folks the use of the subway stairs “as a latrine.”
As a historian of post-1968 Philadelphia, a proud alumna of Women’ Prime and a rider of Philadelphia’s mass transit, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority – extra recurrently referred to as SEPTA – I used to be overjoyed to search out Axelrod’s tale amongst Sixties administrative reviews to the police commissioner within the town archives.
Axelrod’s tale reminds us that for just about a century, Philadelphia’s mass transit has been plagued by way of deficient prerequisites and risky investment. Commuters’ court cases have continuously satisfied govt officers to behave. Alternatively, no efficient plan has ever been applied to definitively remedy town’s transit crises.
SEPTA’s present turmoil
On Sept. 15, 2025, SEPTA absolutely restored its carrier, by way of courtroom order, after imposing 20% carrier discounts and a 21.5% fare building up because of a US$213 million funds deficit.
Carrier cuts started on Aug. 24, simply someday earlier than public college scholars returned to study rooms. This left youngsters, seniors and other folks from nonwhite, working-class communities with few other ways. Riders confronted long shuttle instances or have been even stranded on their day-to-day travel.
Passengers at Olney Transportation Middle in North Philadelphia board a SEPTA bus on Aug. 25, 2025, an afternoon after primary carrier cuts went into impact.
AP Photograph/Matt Rourke
Over 600,000 other folks shuttle on SEPTA’s 172 routes every day. For weeks, state legislators may just now not agree on learn how to fund SEPTA inside the state funds. Town officers, transit executives and tourism mavens advocated for a bailout as a result of Pennsylvania will reap tax earnings when Philly hosts thousands and thousands of holiday makers in 2026 for The us’s 250th birthday, the FIFA Global Cup and the Primary League Baseball All-Famous person Sport.
In the long run, Gov. Josh Shapiro licensed the usage of the Pennsylvania Division of Transportation’s capital finances to finance SEPTA’s operations via June 2027.
Some lawmakers have argued that SEPTA is to blame of mismanaging finances, because the company already gained over $1 billion in state subsidies closing yr for running help and asset growth.
Public delivery within the Nineteen Twenties
As an established Philadelphian who lived in Middle Town, Miriam Axelrod was once accustomed to the strengths and shortcomings of public transportation.
On the age of four, her circle of relatives emigrated from Russia to Carmel, New Jersey. By means of 1920, they made Philadelphia their house simply as town’s Russian group changed into the biggest immigrant crew because of Jewish other folks escaping pogroms in Europe. Axelrod grew up dwelling in South and North Philadelphia.
At the moment, dozens of personal transit firms operated in Philly.
Southern Penn operated town buses. Crimson Arrow supplied suburban trolley carrier. Pennsylvania and Studying railroads introduced high-speed rail traces. The Philadelphia Speedy Transit Co. on my own brokered offers with 64 underlying firms to every year hire their products and services underneath 999-year rentals. Fiscal duty for high quality transportation was once difficult and continuously depending on public investment.
Throughout PRT’s early years, it paid town $15,000 every year for snow removing. In go back, town spent $2 million for boulevard paving and bridge maintenance.
By means of 1922, the PRT and town had constructed and unified two increased teach routes – with the aid of the Union Traction Co. and the Marketplace Boulevard Increased Passenger Railway Co. – to create the Marketplace-Frankford Increased Teach Line.
Classmates at William Penn remembered Miriam Axelrod’s ‘remarkable capacity for starting arguments.’
Ancestry.com, U.S. College Yearbooks, 1900-2016
That was once the similar yr Axelrod graduated from William Penn Prime College for Women. Her classmates keenly famous of their yearbook that she had a “remarkable capacity for starting arguments” during which “any debatable subject will do.”
Six years later, the primary section of the Huge Boulevard Subway touring from Olney Station in North Philadelphia to Town Corridor opened to the general public. Not like the bus, trolley and railways methods, town owned the El, brief for increased, line and subway. The town leased each methods to PRT and made the transit corporate accountable for their upkeep.
Buses and trolley vehicles force down Marketplace Boulevard in Philadelphia within the Nineteen Thirties.
Charles Phelps Cushing/ClassicStock by way of Getty Pictures
The Despair years
Philadelphia first witnessed underfunded mass transit right through the Nice Despair.
In 1934, PRT confronted the cheap deficit when it was once not able to pay the $7.1 million annual leases to the underliers. PRT later went to courtroom to request a consolidation plan. To make issues worse, PRT had spent roughly $230 million from 1902 via 1939, however that didn’t come with spending to modernize outdated transit apparatus.
On Jan. 1, 1940, the Philadelphia Transportation Co., a personal corporate with a 21-member board of administrators that integrated 5 town representatives together with the mayor, Robert E. Lamberton, merged the transit firms and took over PRT’s operations. PTC changed into accountable for 10,000 workers and offering transportation for two million passengers an afternoon.
PTC additionally got intensive monetary obligations. Payroll bills value $327,000 each and every week. The yearly charge for leasing the subway and El was once kind of $3 million. PTC had to supply its 25,000 bondholders an annual source of revenue of a minimum of $959,207 whilst additionally enjoyable its promise to provide fashionable transit automobiles.
Overcrowding and widespread fare will increase
Throughout the Forties throughout the Sixties, Axelrod took public transportation to her activity as a librarian at Central Prime College and later Frankford Prime College.
In the meantime, PTC made just right on its promise to supply higher transit carrier. In its first 8 years of operation, PTC spent $22.8 million to buy 1,506 new streetcars, buses and trackless trolleys whilst additionally bettering terminal and plant amenities. The corporate even bought ads in The Philadelphia Inquirer to spotlight its achievements. PTC prolonged 38 current routes and created 18 new routes that serviced outdated residential and commercial spaces, at the side of newly evolved neighborhoods.
By means of 1949, on the other hand, lots of PTC’s 3.2 million day-to-day riders have been complaining about overcrowded subways, the top of loose exchanges between common routes and widespread fare will increase.
Passengers experience a subway automotive in Philadelphia on Feb. 15, 1946.
AP Photograph
Each PTC and town confronted scrutiny for those problems, despite the fact that each and every birthday party had distinct transit responsibilities defined of their joint contract. PTC had to supply “safe and adequate service” that integrated spending on upkeep and substitute of transit apparatus. The town was once accountable for police and hearth products and services on mass transit at the side of auditing PTC’s data. Each events needed to agree on fare adjustments underneath the state Public Software Fee’s supervision.
Nonetheless, when problems on mass transit took place, town may just convince PTC to make stronger prerequisites, however the town was once best required to provide emergency products and services to commuters.
When Larkin individually addressed Axelrod’s 1967 grievance concerning the subway, he knowledgeable her that the United Elevator Co. was once repairing the escalators. He additionally confident her that the subway unit arrested 45 to 50 intoxicated other folks each and every month as a result of they have been susceptible to falling onto the subway tracks. In “isolated cases,” Larkin defined, police arrested other folks for public urination and defecation.
Larkin reassured Axelrod that PTC may just stay subway prerequisites blank and underneath keep an eye on. If truth be told, PTC was once underwater in obligations and debt.
On Sept. 30, 1968, SEPTA, a state company shaped 5 years previous, took over PTC and controlled transportation for town and its surrounding spaces. SEPTA purchased PTC for about $47.9 million, settling the corporate’s debt, accepting its pension legal responsibility and purchasing out the establishment’s kind of 1.7 million shareholders. Now federal and state investment slightly than fare earnings in large part made up our minds the standard of town’s public transit.
Many years of unpredictable investment
Because the Sixties, annual govt investment to SEPTA has been unpredictable. White flight, deindustrialization and activity flight have contributed to depopulation, a declining tax base and govt defunding of social methods in Philadelphia. Those socioeconomic shifts proceed to have an effect on Philadelphia’s funds for schooling, public housing and sport in addition to SEPTA’s $2.743 billion funds as a public transit company.
5 counties in Better Philadelphia give a contribution subsidies to SEPTA in trade for transit carrier. Philadelphia on my own contributes $110 million. State subsidies additionally assist finance SEPTA’s $1.74 billion running funds, whilst federal subsidies reinforce SEPTA’s $1 billion capital funds to pay for primary maintenance and new apparatus. State politicians every year vote on investment for SEPTA, however there has now not been a concrete option to the investment disaster.
For years, politicians have proposed the use of county gross sales and fuel taxes at the side of industry licensing charges to fund mass transit, with out good fortune. Moreover, since 2008 emerging charges of auto possession have additionally ended in fewer commuters and diminished fare revenues for SEPTA.
Alternatively, Philadelphians by no means ceased to call for higher transit carrier. Throughout the Nineteen Eighties, the Pennsylvania Public Hobby Coalition established the Transit Riders Motion Marketing campaign, sometimes called TRAC, which advocated that SEPTA have higher protection, investment, responsibility, carrier and solid fares. The Shipping Staff Union Native 234 recommended TRAC, whilst a number of organizations partnered with them: the Motion Alliance of Senior Voters, the Blank Air Council, Disabled in Motion and the Delaware Valley Interfaith Coalition.
Even these days, native teams akin to Save the Teach with outspoken commuters – like Axelrod was once in her day – have introduced campaigns to halt carrier cutbacks and inspire citizens to put in writing and phone legislators who can vote to fund SEPTA. Citizens have constantly united to recommend for high quality mass transit. All that is still is an settlement amongst lawmakers to make it conceivable.
