SEPTA changes threaten city access

I often lay face-up on my vinyl, waterproof mattress, hoping to jump-start my neurons into exploring life's most precious phenomena, as the sweat slowly pools on the nape of my neck. The trickle-down effect, I call it. Last week, after spending a good 10 minutes silently debating why the ceiling in the high rises happens to resemble the consistency of oatmeal, I dreamed of a more fundamental quandary, one that has probably been haunting the Penn community at large for decades. "What came first?" I mouthed slowly, as the synapses fired and my lobes tickled. "A really cool acronym? Or the phrase hidden within its uppercase letters?"

As I pondered logistics, I glanced down at my T-shirt, a fashionable XXL number featuring a map of the entire Philadelphia transit system. SEPTA tracks stretched across my chest and dipped onto my stomach. The Blue Line bumped my belly button, before crisscrossing at my liver and heading towards my spleen. "How did we come to associate SEPTA with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority?" I wondered, as I lightly traced the El with a fingertip. And more importantly, does everybody, from first-time students to veteran Penn faculty and staff, realize that SEPTA has shifted its acronym, and become synonymous with Screwing Everyone in Philadelphia Time and Again?

For those of you not up on the latest transport gossip, let me explain. Last week, SEPTA issued a press release stating that "drastic measures ... must be taken unless sufficient funding is provided to maintain public transportation services" in the Philadelphia area. These actions include a "25 [percent] average increase in the price of tokens, weekly and monthly passes, and [Americans with Disabilities Act] fares." In addition, SEPTA plans a 20 percent reduction in all weekday service and plans to discontinue "all weekend transit, regional rail and Paratransit service" across the entire region starting Jan. 1. As SEPTA puts it, these actions would have an "incalculable effect on the regional economy."

Is SEPTA nuts? Aside from that crazy bus driver who speaks in a falsetto on the 40, no, not really. With rising gas prices, it makes sense that eventually fares would have to be increased. I'm not going to delve into the fact that SEPTA switched from trolleys to buses at some point in its history, making the entire transportation system reliant on the oil industry and its fluctuating monkey-barrel prices. Aside from switching to a system with those funky Japanese bullet trains that run on air, I don't think there's any getting around a fare increase. And frankly, I don't think Philadelphia has the money to install one of those air trains right now. But without intervention from the state, SEPTA's proposal to cut weekend service would send Philadelphia's already quivering economy into a dive worthy of Jacques Cousteau.

SEPTA's strategy would mean we would no longer be able to take a bus, subway or trolley to Center City on Saturdays or Sundays. No more Shampoo, guys. No more Condom Kingdom without a cab. No Gallery, no Jeweler's Row and no Redding Terminal unless you're one of the few on campus with a car. Tourists would be stranded in Center City, unable to get to the Art Museum or the Franklin Institute. Employees who use SEPTA as their transportation on the weekends would be stuck. I'm going to guess those sleepovers in "The Place that Loves You Back" will slowly end, as people realize that the city doesn't Love them enough to herd them around.

One of the primary reasons I came to the city that Unconditionally Loves me Back, even when I'm a bad little girl, was the ability to experience everything an urban area has to offer. However, it was not until recently that SEPTA and I became intimate with each other. Last year -- my first at Penn -- I took SEPTA maybe twice, and both times were during NSO with my hall. This summer, though, I lived in Philadelphia and became a venerable SEPTA goddess. I went through token packets from Freshgrocer like a Chuck E. Cheese addict doped up on the Skeeball machine. Lovingly shoving each token into the slot on the bus and hearing that gratifying clunk made me quickly skulk through the aisle and find an empty seat. Each time I gently plucked the yellow wire, the bus would come to a stumbling halt, and I'd bounce my way off and through an area to explore. Old City, New City, Sex and the City -- I covered it all.

I felt like a modern-day Harriet the Spy. I can't afford cabs to whisk me around door-to-door. And truthfully, cabs seem to be taking the easy way out. Half the battle of going to the MYtter Museum or the Real World House is getting there. By canceling weekend service in the Philadelphia region, SEPTA is sadly not only derailing the economy, but also the culture of the entire area.

So now I have another acronym for them to consider: Stop Eliminating Philadelphia's Transportation Alternatives.

Melody Joy Kramer is a junior English major from Cherry Hill, N.J. Perpendicular Harmony appears on Wednesdays.

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