Since its passage, SEPTA has launched a host of infrastructure overhauls, replacing the substations and catenary wires that power Regional Rail trains, increasing parking options at overstuffed suburban stations, and upgrading Regional Rail safety systems per a federal mandate other railroads ignore. SEPTA does not let a single groundbreaking go by without thanking Act 89. SEPTA didn’t get the $420 million a year it said it needed from the Commonwealth, but what it did get - around $330 million a year, up from $120 million a year before the act’s passage - has proven enough to keep the trains running and the bridges standing. SEPTA’s most urgent current capital needs center on the Regional Rail system, and regional legislative support to meet that demand was instrumental in Act 89’s passage. “It was all about doing what’s right for this region,” and in turn the Commonwealth, said SEPTA Assistant General Manager for Government and Public Affairs Fran Kelley. To hear the authority say it, SEPTA-the entire region, really-was saved by those six representatives in the Pennsylvania House who switched from nays to ayes between the first losing vote on Act 89 and the successful second. If Harrisburg couldn’t pass a new transportation funding bill, the future looked grim: nine Regional Rail lines abandoned trolleys replaced by buses traffic-choked roads flooded by 90,000 former transit riders across the region. In 2013, SEPTA avoided a doomsday scenario by just six votes.

Septa subway schedule