{"id":127625,"date":"2026-03-02T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127625\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T19:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:10:10","slug":"pennsylvania-lawmakers-debate-mass-transit-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127625\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania lawmakers debate mass transit funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

(WHTM)\u2013 It\u2019s the second week of appropriations hearings in the State House and Senate, and the seat got a bit hot on Monday for the PennDOT Secretary on the issue of mass transit.<\/p>\n

Mass transit is the ultimate source of tension in the legislature, as rural Republicans whose constituents don\u2019t and never will use mass transit butt heads with Democratic urban and suburban lawmakers whose constituents rely on it.<\/p>\n

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Mass transit dominated the first hour of the Senate appropriations hearing on Monday. Lawmakers debated over whether SEPTA, which is in the Philadelphia region, really has the financial crisis that they have repeatedly suggested.<\/p>\n

Senators insisted SEPTA and Pittsburgh\u2019s system are sitting on a pot of money that they could be using but aren\u2019t, while also sounding alarms and threatening service cuts.<\/p>\n

PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll will be back at the State Capitol in the afternoon. PennDOT is a big chunk of state dollars, so it is a rare double session for him.<\/p>\n

Republican Senators also noted that Pennsylvania is fourth in the nation in mass transit funding behind New York, California, and Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(WHTM)\u2013 It\u2019s the second week of appropriations hearings in the State House and Senate, and the seat got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59455,23747,25866,3431,28,30,29,59454,2618,6651],"class_list":{"0":"post-127625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-house-and-senate","9":"tag-lawmakers","10":"tag-mass-transit","11":"tag-penndot","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","14":"tag-pennsylvania-news","15":"tag-senate-appropriations","16":"tag-septa","17":"tag-whtm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}