SEPTA’s bus route overhaul is almost done after years of public input and revisions. Some riders are still unhappy.

Some communities are still fighting as SEPTA planners consider last-minute refinements to the third and final edition of a proposed redesign of bus routes.

Residents of Strawberry Mansion and Logan Square say that the plan would deprive them of crucial bus connections to other parts of the city, and fear that their concerns have been overlooked.

The two hot spots of protest couldn’t be more different: Strawberry Mansion, with a median household income of about $24,000 and Logan Square, which includes Chinatown and the neighborhoods on either side of the Parkway and where the median household income is about $73,000.

But they are united in feeling shafted by SEPTA’s “Bus Revolution” plan.

Strawberry Mansion residents turned out in force for hearings at Temple University’s Liacouras Center and SEPTA headquarters in late September. They were concerned most about losing Route 32.

“I think we are loud. Whether we’re being heard, that remains to be seen,” said the Rev. Tyrone Williams, program coordinator at the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corporation, who helps neighbors organize.

In the fall of 2021, SEPTA undertook the first comprehensive revamping of the bus network since the agency began in 1964, spurred by a drop in ridership even before the pandemic, with the goal of making bus service more frequent and reliable. Agency staff also had been studying other bus system redesigns for four years beforehand.

Time is running out for major changes. Residents made their final pleas at 10 formal public hearings in September; a hearing examiner’s report with recommendations will be released in the next few weeks, officials said. The Bus Revolution team is aiming for SEPTA board approval in the winter of 2024.

“We are ready to transition to implementation,” said Dan Nemiroff, the planning manager for the project. Before the latest hearings, SEPTA had two years of public meetings, including on two earlier drafts, and made revisions based on issues people raised.

The first version contained deeper changes, slimming the network to 99 routes. It encouraged transfers to frequent routes from less frequent ones, as well as to the Broad Street Line and the Market-Frankford El. Many pushed back, saying they wanted to keep familiar one-seat rides. Some said at hearings that they especially were wary of having to use the subway or El.

Already, the plan has morphed as routes marked for elimination were put back on maps or combined with others. The most recent proposal has a total of 106 fixed routes, down from the current 125 — 43 frequent routes compared with 33 in the existing network.

For instance, in December 2022, SEPTA reversed its proposal to end routes 9 and 27 at 30th Street Station after getting an earful in Roxborough and Manayunk. Residents didn’t want to transfer and wanted to keep their one-seat rides to Center City.

Changes are still possible in the third draft and SEPTA is working on some possibilities, Nemiroff said, but he does not expect sweeping ones. He declined to describe the changes under consideration.

“This is certainly the largest public-engagement endeavor SEPTA’s ever undertaken,” Nemiroff said. “I think that we’ve gotten the feedback that we needed to make decisions all throughout this process, with good participation from a lot of areas.”

In the two years before September’s round of hearings, SEPTA held 144 in-person events and 37 virtual meetings to discuss changing the bus network with residents and hear concerns. It also conducted surveys and took comments through its website, phone, email and regular mail — more than 20,000 in all.

That doesn’t count outreach in the fall of 2021, when about 7,000 people responded to SEPTA’s questions about what they wanted from their bus service — in a survey and at pop-up events at transportation centers.

In the end, the redesigned network must be budget neutral, meaning it has to work with the same number of overall service hours and costs as now.

“We’re very sensitive to the resources. We aren’t in a position to do a lot of big stuff,” Nemiroff said.

That would be true even if SEPTA wasn’t facing a fiscal crisis as federal pandemic aid expires, he said. “We have a limited number of operators, we have a little limited number of buses,” Nemiroff said. “We can only operate the system in the footprint we have.”

Many riders have expressed skepticism at the idea of budget neutrality, saying it effectively forces service cuts. That is driving the opposition in Strawberry Mansion and Logan Square. Routes 32 and 49 serve both areas.

The 32 bus will be discontinued under the latest proposal and a reconfigured Route 49, which heads west to University City and the medical centers there, will replace it.

Williams, the organizer in Strawberry Mansion, said that removing Route 32, which serves the west side of the neighborhood would remove a good connection to Center City and force many residents to walk farther to catch other routes.

The move “definitely would have a negative impact on this community. I hope SEPTA considers that,” he said.

And some riders who live in the area bound by Spring Garden and Market Streets and the Schuylkill say SEPTA’s changes, as now written, would leave them with no way to get to 30th Street Station by transit, as well as the museums and institutions along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, or to the Avenue of the Arts, currently served by Route 32.

“Maybe the consultants are looking at the demographics of the area and deciding that no one living in those neighborhoods ‘needs to take the bus,’” said Lisa Hastings, a retired environmental scientist who has a condo on Hamilton Street. “There is a very strong prejudice that buses are [only] for poor people.”

Walking even a short distance can be difficult for many people with mobility issues, including wheelchair and walker users and older residents, Hastings said. “Many needs are not visible or monetary,” she said.

SEPTA says the change makes sense.

According to Nemiroff, the 32 bus has a low ridership, but Route 48, which is heavily used, cuts through Strawberry Mansion on North 29th Street, would still get riders to Center City, as far south as JFK Boulevard and Market Street, which have bus lanes.

It would not serve the Avenue of the Arts and South Broad Street as Route 32 does, according to the latest draft. “We looked at the data again and again and there aren’t a lot of people who go below Chestnut or Walnut,” Nemiroff said.

SEPTA would still have bus service that crosses the Parkway and could get people close to the attractions there, Nemiroff said, mentioning Routes 33, 43, 48, and 49.

Whatever the final, final version ends up being, conditions outside SEPTA’s control present challenges to reaching the professed goal of more frequent and reliable bus service: congested traffic, narrow streets, parking that obscures sight lines at four-way intersections and blocks access to bus stops, trash trucks, even deliveries of provisions to bodegas.

“I drive these streets,” bus operator Ferdinand Romero testified at a Center City hearing in late September. “What good are 15-minute frequencies if you are stuck in traffic?” He mentioned Ridge Avenue, a thoroughfare on the route he drives.

Some help with part of the congestion problem could be on the way. On Oct. 26, City Council unanimously passed a bill that would authorize the use of cameras to enforce parking violations in bus-only lanes and bus stop zones, which slow buses on some of the city’s busiest routes and, especially, endanger people with disabilities trying to board.

A 70-day trial SEPTA ran in the spring of windshield mounted cameras with AI technology found 36,392 instances of illegally parked vehicles blocking Center City bus-only lanes and bus stops in West Philadelphia and Upper Darby.

The transit agency also wants more signal prioritization for transit buses, a feature that allows bus operators to switch traffic lights to green as they approach, and more dedicated bus lanes. Both would require coordination with the city and PennDot.

Service changes would be phased in during the fall of 2024 after intensive communication to show people how the new route scheme works and some of its benefits.

Nemiroff knows that, despite months of efforts to get the public’s opinion, some people may still dislike the result.

“We can only change their mind through providing good service, trying to make it more reliable,” he said. “You sort of have to make the change to show the benefits.”