Viral tweet sparks divisive SEPTA fare evasion discourse online

The City Hall SEPTA station now has full-length fare gates to ensure fare evaders don’t get a free pass, and one individual voiced their displeasure on Twitter. This stirred up an absolute firestorm on social media, and, quite frankly, the timeline was not pleased.

Promoting fare evasion on SEPTA is cool, apparently:

I’m not here to dogpile on this person, though I completely disagree with their viewpoint on this topic. Sure, the views-to-likes ratio pretty much sums up the consensus opinion, but I’d like to engage with this in an intellectually honest way.

First of all, just pay the damn fare. It makes no sense to me that you demand a service be provided and then refuse to pay to make that service run. I don’t think SEPTA should be run like a business and be 100% profitable. After all, a public good. However, there is a social contract that all riders should adhere to.

Holding open the gate, regardless of who it’s for, just signals to me that you expect the bare minimum and, therefore, think that’s what everyone who paid their fare should be okay with as well. I don’t think that’s a way to operate in society.

I understand that fare hikes do make things more difficult for those with lower incomes, but that’s precisely why SEPTA has Zero and Reduced Fare programs. Maybe it would be a better use of time if you spread information about how people can enroll in these programs. Maybe you already do that, and, if so, fair play, but this kind of approach pretty much nullifies that.

A counter to this could be that I don’t give this same level of scrutiny to cars and those who drive them. That could not be further from the truth. People who drive and park like assholes for free impact everyone’s quality of life on a daily basis.

That’s one of many reasons why I quite literally want nothing more for the Fighting City of Philadelphia than a robust, safe transit network. I’m not saying curbing fare evasion would completely solve these problems, but at the very least, it would ensure that those partaking in the system are bought into it.

Don’t you think for a second I’m letting Harrisburg off the hook for SEPTA’s issues, either. I genuinely implored their top brass to reach out to President Xi for funding as part of their belt-and-road initiative.

I also don’t completely disagree with the idea that fares are not the best way to collect revenue for transit, but it’s what we’re working with right now. There are better ways to try and affect policy changes than by letting folks onto the subway for free.

For example, I’ve been in multiple countries where there’s no fare gates for their transit network, but have transit officers randomly patrol through. If you’re caught riding without a pass, you get a hefty fine. There are solutions here.

You may be sitting there thinking, “Dude, it’s not that deep.” And that’s fine if you want to feel that way. But this kind of societal rot infuriates me to no end. Our city deserves better, and I’d hope that my fellow residents would feel the same way.

And it drives me nuts that, more often than not, this kind of performative shit comes from those who claim to be society’s moral betters. In reality, while it makes them feel better about themselves, it harms our city’s most vulnerable communities more than anyone else.

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