SEPTA said ‘there really is no way forward’ to build the Roosevelt Boulevard subway

SEPTA’s chief executive dampened hopes for a Roosevelt Boulevard subway on Friday, saying that the transit authority doesn’t have the money now or a secure enough regional funding base to make the massive project happen.

“With the limited amount of funds that we have right now, there really is no way forward,” CEO and general manager Leslie S. Richards told the Philadelphia Business Journal. “The math just doesn’t work.”

Building a subway-elevated rail line down the median of Roosevelt Boulevard would cost at least $3 billion, Richards said.

The idea of using rapid transit to cut through congestion on the dangerous arterial road has been on city and regional planning documents for more than a century — before the Boulevard was as busy as it is today. Interest has waxed and waned over the decades.

In the last year, the proposal was revived again by elected officials and community leaders in the Northeast, led by Jay Arzu, a doctoral student in urban and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania who has championed the subway.

Like any expensive transit project, a boulevard subway may be a long shot amid intense competition for funding, but until last week SEPTA officials had publicly taken a neutral stance and expressed a willingness to discuss it.

» READ MORE: A Roosevelt Boulevard subway got an airing in a public meeting. The idea seems to have momentum.

Arzu, the transportation scholar, said he was surprised by Richards’ comments, adding that she “is being honest about SEPTA’s situation,” and he appreciates that.

At the same time SEPTA remains committed to the $2 billion proposed four-mile extension of light rail service to King of Prussia. Arzu and others argue that a Roosevelt Boulevard subway would have a bigger impact on the region.

“Projected ridership levels on the [KOP] line are dismal,” he said. The rail extension would carry about 10,000 daily riders, according to SEPTA projections. “I don’t see it scoring well” for grants from the Federal Transit Administration, Arzu said.

A Boulevard subway could draw up to 124,500 daily riders, according to a 2003 city Planning Commission study.

“We need to look harder at setting our transit priorities as a region,” Arzu said. “I don’t want to fight against Montco at all [but] it’s time to have tough conversations.”

Richards and SEPTA’s other leaders have often said the agency is disadvantaged compared with large transit systems in other cities because the four suburban counties and Philadelphia kick in less money.

SEPTA’s current $1.1 billion capital budget is its largest ever, but some big metropolitan systems regularly have twice that for upgrades. According to SEPTA, similar regions around the country have invested an average of 75% more in transit than Southeastern Pennsylvania. Metro Denver, for example spends $120 per capita annually, to $17 per capita contributed from the governments of Philadelphia and its four suburban counties, SEPTA says in its budget documents.

In addition to KOP rail, SEPTA plans to modernize its trolley network, including new vehicles, as well as buying needed replacements for aging subway and Regional Rail cars.

“Where other cities see big, dynamic and transformative projects and say, ‘What do we need to do?’ we don’t think big enough,” said State Rep. Jared Solomon (D., Phila.), who represents parts of the Northeast. “People are starving for a sweeping vision.”

He has been agnostic on what gets built, noting cheaper alternatives to a subway would also help — things like light rail, a monorail system, or trolleys running down the median of the Boulevard. But the Northeast, the largest landmass in the city and biggest single part of its tax base, deserves better connections, Solomon said.

Both he and Arzu, as well as Richards and other officials, have called for a rethinking of how much local governments pay in to SEPTA so it can fund more transit investments for the whole region.

“I think Leslie opened a good can of worms,” Arzu said.