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State and city public officials hosted a town hall Thursday to address transit funding, or the lack thereof, included in Pennsylvania’s budget, which was approved last week after a stalemate that lasted more than four months.
State Sen. Nikil Saval, D-Philadelphia, Philadelphia City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke and Transit Forward Philadelphia invited transit riders to the Friends Center in Center City to learn about the challenges they’re facing and to discuss what can be done to support additional legislation.
Transportation fell off the state’s priority list for the budget after SEPTA and Pittsburgh Regional Transit opted to cover operating costs with money from a reserve fund usually meant for capital projects. Saval said the region could see “some of the ramifications of this” going forward, including service cuts and more projects being postponed. However, he said there still are some positive takeaways.
“We did not win everything this round, but our fight for fully funded transit was known across the state, and frankly, known nationally,” Saval said. “And our demands for long-term funding reverberated in every corner of the commonwealth, to thousands of riders, to hundreds of elected officials and to the nearly 100 people in this room tonight.”