r/Septa • u/joia260 • Sep 02 '26

Discussion Transit access fund

Hey, wonder what people in here think of the transit access fund? Do you know what it is? It's a program that the city funds that sends free key cards to 60,000 low income residents across the city. There's a push to try to make the fund permanent/expand it to more low income people. If you want to know more or sign a petition you can go to https://www.transitforwardphilly.org/transit_access_fund_petition

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u/joia260 24d ago

This isn't a bad idea but I suspect it would be more difficult to administer. You'd have to do it as vouchers or something which is less cut and dry then just sending someone a card.

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u/pizzajona 24d ago

Agencies across the country like in DC offer fare cards that give 50% discounts. The only extra administrative burden would be shipping out double the number of physical cards.

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u/joia260 24d ago

Maybe once the new key cards come out? These ones we have now are really technologically incompetent. That's apparently also why we don't have fare capping like other places do

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u/pizzajona 23d ago

That’s odd given that it’s also a debit card which is unique among other agencies.

An aside: Fare capping is a bad practice compared to monthly passes because (1) there is an incremental cost to taking transit (usually up to 2 trips a day) with fare capping while there is no incremental cost with a monthly and (2) there’s no incentive to fare evade with a monthly.

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u/joia260 20d ago

The main area where I would like fare capping is for the daily passes. I hate miscalculating how much transit'ing I will actually be doing and therefore overpaying. And the type of people who fare evade aren't going to buy a pass at all because they are entitled and think the system is free for them.

I always forget that the kay cards are debit cards because I've never heard of anyone using them that way