A few more students may have experienced first-day-of-school grogginess Monday than on the typical start of a new school year.
In addition to the usual adjustments for the end of summer break and moves to new schools, some students had to get up even earlier than usual to adapt to SEPTA service cuts and schedule changes that went into effect Sunday and Monday.
Camille Ballard, a junior at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), said she had to alter her schedule and route because SEPTA reduced the frequency of bus and train departures and shortened some lines.
For years, she’s made the roughly hourlong trip from her home in Olney by taking a bus, the Metro/Broad Street Line, and another bus — but that last route no longer extends all the way to her school.
“I have to walk more now and leave earlier now, because the trains are delayed,” Ballard said Monday morning, as she joined a line of students waiting to enter the school’s campus at Broad and Christian streets. “There used to be a bus that took us straight to CAPA, but now it doesn’t, like, really run anymore. So we had to walk all the way.”
SEPTA eliminated 32 bus routes and made other cuts after the state legislature was unable to agree on a budget boost to close the agency’s $213 million annual deficit. A 21.5% fare hike is planned for a week from now, on Sept. 1, and more severe service reductions will go into effect in January if the budget impasse isn’t resolved by then.
Ballard said she’s not looking forward to having to do extra walking every morning for weeks or possibly the whole year, if her old bus route isn’t restored.
“Hopefully they fix the issue — you know, give them the money that they deserve,” she said.
No time left for homework
Zuzanna Bartosiewicz, a 16-year-old visual arts student at CAPA, said she just finished dealing with constant transit hassles over the summer. She was commuting to community college classes and often ended up paying for Uber rides when her bus failed to show up on time.
Now her mom is warning her that the revised transit schedules may end up lengthening her long daily trip home from CAPA via the Metro and the G/Route 15 trolley.
“She said I might have to wait longer to get home, and I usually get home at like 5,” said Bartosiewicz, who lives in Port Richmond. “I feel like I won’t have time to do homework if I’m getting, like, that late, or even have free time.”
Tens of thousands of the district’s 198,000 students commute to school on SEPTA, including about 52,000 who the district provides with student fare cards.
School officials are encouraging those affected by the transit cuts to arrange carpools and to join the district’s Flat Rate program, which pays eligible families $300 each to drive their children to school. They also directed parents to a document SEPTA prepared outlining changes affecting specific schools and suggesting alternate routes.
“Students will not be penalized for lateness due to these cuts, which are beyond their control,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said in an email to families Monday.
During a back-to-school event at Steel Elementary this morning, Mayor Cherelle Parker acknowledged the impact of the changes, saying, “We know we’re still facing a monumental challenge right now with the state of affairs with our mass transit system.”
Parker said she had “faith” in Gov. Josh Shapiro and legislative leaders as they continue work on the transit funding issue and the state budget as a whole, which is nearly two months overdue. The state Senate is set to reconvene Sept. 8.
Unreliable routes get worse
For a number of students, the new service reductions are just the latest in an ongoing series of transportation hiccups they have to deal with, such as bus lines that are unreliable due to frequent driver unavailability and Regional Rail trips canceled because of increased safety inspections of aging rail cars.
CAPA senior Sloane Moore, 17, said he used to take the 40 bus to school from West Philly, but switched to bicycling because the 40 “has just become way too unreliable for me to get here on time, just consistently. It’s been the reason I’m late to school a lot of the times.”
The new service reductions mean the 40 is now picking up less often than before, which will make using the route even less feasible, said Moore, a music major.
Cycling isn’t “too bad,” he said. “It’s definitely dependent on the weather, how easy it is. I don’t really have full control of it. It’s not a permanent solution, definitely.”
Like many others, Moore said he’s worried about the impact of the potential additional cuts planned for January.
A planned daily stop to all rail service at 9 p.m. would make it difficult for him to get home from his afterschool job, and the possible elimination of the Wilmington/Newark Regional Rail line would complicate trips to Ridley Park, where his band practices.
“With the train line being gone, I’m just going to have to find a completely different way to get there,” he said.
As Moore spoke, buses on routes 32 and 4 periodically disgorged groups of students onto Broad Street across the street from CAPA, at a stop no longer serviced by the 27 due to the shortening of that line. The southbound 27 now ends at City Hall, and some students said they switched to the 45 or other routes for the last leg of their commutes.
Many others got rides to school from their parents or guardians, who clogged Christian Street just east of Broad as they let their children out. Some lingered to take pictures and videos as the students walked up to the line to start their first day in a new grade.
Warnings of traffic tie-ups
City officials were preparing for possible bad traffic conditions in central Philadelphia as people whose usual transit lines were discontinued or became less frequent switched to driving. They had advised commuters to avoid driving into the city this week and to use transit or other modes instead.
It was not immediately clear if traffic actually worsened this morning because of the transit cuts, but some commuters took the city’s advice just in case.
“Sometimes I’ll drive in, but with the start of the school year, the traffic’s already bad enough, so I’m not going to drive. On Christian Street, it’s all backed up, and there are lots of people around there,” said Giulio Sorgini, who was waiting for a northbound 32 on Broad Street, next to CAPA.
Sorgini, an educator at the Museum of Art, said he was curious to see whether sending out fewer vehicles over the course of the day would result in more crowding on his bus.
The service reductions so far have not significantly impacted his routine, he said, although he was surprised when his usual bus arrived seven minutes later than it used to.
“I certainly forgot this morning that the bus is going to come later than I expected,” he said. “I think once the full cuts come into effect in January, and they eliminate the 32, then I’m in trouble.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
