PA budget gridlock poses looming threat to NJ commuters

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority is facing a devastating budget shortfall that will lead to major service cuts if nothing is done, including the elimination of an entire train line in New Jersey, making it far more difficult to get to Philadelphia without a car.

The transit agency, crucial to Philadelphia-area commuters, had a $213 million budget deficit as of the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

It faced a similar shortfall last year, and Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro ultimately redirected $153 million in federal highway funding to help prop up SEPTA. This year, though, Shapiro has said that’s likely not an option, and additional funds for the transit agency in his budget request haven’t made it through Pennsylvania’s divided Legislature.

As a result, SEPTA says, it has no option but to ultimately cut service by 45% and increase fares by 20%.

“One thing that we want to be very clear about is these cuts are the last thing that we want to do,” said Andrew Busch, a SEPTA spokesperson. “We are still hopeful that a funding agreement, as part of a budget, can be agreed to.”

Still, there’s not much time left at this point, Busch said. SEPTA doesn’t have a specific date for when the cuts will begin, but without funding, the agency will be forced at some point in August to start reducing service.

“We’ll hit a date in August that will be kind of like a go-or-no-go date, and if there’s not an agreement by then, we have to go ahead with the cuts,” Busch said.

For New Jersey specifically, the agency is planning to reduce midday and weekend service on the Trenton Line from hourly to every two hours, as well as eliminate some peak and evening service, according to information on its website. Then, in January, the transit agency will completely discontinue all service on the Trenton Line.

Train service to central New Jersey will continue on the West Trenton Line, but even that will see reduced service — as with the Trenton line, midday service will be reduced to every two hours beginning in August, with some evening service and one weekend trip eliminated. In January, rail service will be eliminated after 9 p.m.

Paige Morgan, a resident of New Brunswick, who was at the Trenton Transit Center the afternoon of July 29, said the cuts are “absolutely awful and heartbreaking.”

“It’s only going to hurt the poorest people among us, but it’s not going to disadvantage people who are wealthy enough to own cars either, because it’s just going to put more cars on the road, and it’s to make traffic worse for everyone, to say nothing of the environmental effects,” Morgan said.

Morgan, who described herself as a “proud non-car owner” said she mostly walks to work at Rutgers University’s main campus, but sometimes has to visit the university’s Camden campus, a trip that she relies on the Trenton Line for.

“Cutting funding to SEPTA is only going to lead to greater expenses down the road,” she said. “If they want to get control of the budget, then there are other ways of doing it, including taxing the wealthiest members of the area and of the state, and it benefits everyone for Philly and the greater SEPTA area to have transit.”

Philadelphia resident Amaris Rose said she uses the Trenton Line to commute to New Jersey.

“We need these lines,” she said. “People depend on them to get to work and school every day.”

Without SEPTA service, she said, she will likely be forced to use Amtrak, which is often much more expensive than the $10-$11 fare SEPTA charges for service to New Jersey.

Meko Love of Sicklerville, New Jersey, hadn’t heard about the looming cuts, and she learned the news while using the Trenton Line to get home after travel issues that had sent her to Newark Liberty International Airport instead of to Philadelphia.

“They can’t do that, people need this,” she said. “I just left Newark and took the train to come here. To hear that is like, no, I need this train.”

The Trenton Line isn’t something she uses all the time, but she’s used to knowing it’s there.

“Normally, this is my go-to because it’s easier and cheaper,” she said.

Unfortunately, Busch said, if the funding doesn’t come and SEPTA is forced to actually implement the service cuts, it also will become much harder to resume service again down the line.

“If we’re going through a couple months of not being able to hire, it’s going to be hard to ramp service up to where it was, because our head count has taken a hit,” Busch said. 

And the longer SEPTA goes without adequate funding, the worse it gets.

“If you get really far down the road, it ends up costing significantly more money to bring service back than to just preserve it, because you’re talking about having to maintain vehicles that are out of service, shut down tracks, all that,” Busch said. “That all costs a lot of money to take it out of service and then bring it back up to service. It really is kind of an unprecedented thing. There’s not really an equivalent that we can point to in another transit agency where something like this has happened, so probably a lot of unknowns, too, that we’ll run into once it starts.”

At this point, it’s a game of wait-and-see.

“We’re waiting to hear more out of Harrisburg,” he said. “But to the customers in New Jersey who could be affected, we would say that we’re going to do everything we can to avoid these cuts. Please stay tuned. And in the meantime, if you want to get more information about what we’re doing and how it affects each line, we have that on our website. But expect some more information in the coming weeks about whether we are definitely going to have to go ahead with this or not. We’re going to do our best to get word out to our customers as soon as possible.”

Headline updated on July 31, 2025.