[Update: Since this story was published, Mayor Parker reversed course on cuts to SEPTA benefits for workers and low-income residents, and has promised to continue the programs for the next year.]

By now, it’s clear to anyone paying attention that SEPTA is in a crisis — what has been termed a “death spiral” — due to lack of ridership and accompanying lack of revenue.

That’s why in the fall Governor Josh Shapiro flexed highway funds to SEPTA last fall after transit funding negotiations stalled in the Republican-controlled PA Senate, and why he has included more money for the agency in his proposed FY 2026 budget. By law, this would require the City to invest more local funds into SEPTA as well.

Mayor Cherelle Parker has proposed spending $135 million on SEPTA operating subsidies in fiscal year 2026, along with $9 million for capital spending — $24 million overall more than last year. But she is also talking about cutting two programs that benefit not only the transit agency, but also Philadelphia workers.

A lot of ink has been spilled already — including by former Mayor Jim Kenney — about the administration’s plan to cancel the Zero Fare pilot program for low-income riders, and there’s movement underway by transit advocates and some of the further-left members of City Council to save that program. It’s a worthy cause, but for the purpose of this piece, I want to call attention to the other benefit Mayor Parker is looking at: the SEPTA Key Advantage benefit for city workers.

City Finance Director Rob Dubow told City Council in late March that Parker wants to reduce the City’s Key Advantage spend from $9 million to $5 million. City spokesman Joe Grace says the administration is in negotiations with SEPTA to reduce the cost of the program, so that it can spend less, while still not burdening city workers. He also noted that Parker has proposed a FY26 SEPTA operating subsidy of $135 million, plus another $9 million for capital expenses.

Still, it’s worth restating the original case for the Key Advantage program, and why it’s something the Parker administration should be looking to expand to other large institutions — while setting an example by offering the transit benefit to all municipal workers.

A benefit 30,000 Philly workers reap

During and after Covid, SEPTA ridership faltered and still hasn’t recovered to early 2020 levels. Currently the systemwide ridership recovery stands at about 75 percent of its pre-pandemic status. With a pressing need to try some new things to spur more ridership, SEPTA management reached for an idea that was internally controversial for years, until advocates spurred them to really look under the hood and examine the financials — the institutional pass.

The idea behind institutional passes is that, instead of trying to win back ridership just by persuading a lot more individual people to go buy transit passes, we can persuade institutions to buy the passes on behalf of their members.

The key insight is that institutions and buildings are just as much “users” of the transportation system as individuals are — City Hall, the Municipal Services Building, and Suburban Station being some of the most prominent examples around. The institutions take up precious land near transit lines, creating an opportunity cost for SEPTA if the building users take transit at below-average rates. And the institutions’ choices for how to structure employee benefits and other factors within their control also contribute to individuals’ choices about how to get there.

When institutions occupy the most transit-accessible land, and then provide excessive parking, or provide parking benefits for workers without also providing transit benefits, they aren’t being a good friend to SEPTA.

As with many things in life, if you buy in bulk, you should get a discounted price, and that’s how SEPTA structured the Key Advantage program for workers and students. On the condition that participating institutions must make their whole membership eligible for the benefit — workers and students, for example — SEPTA offers an initial 50 percent discount per pass, which can be adjusted up or down by 10 percent every 6 months based on usage. The more often their workers use the pass, the less of a discount the institutions get, and the reverse is also true.

Some organizations choose to eat the full cost and offer the benefit to workers at no charge, while some organizations have a co-pay requirement. Either way, it’s a lot cheaper for an individual than buying a pass at full cost, so it’s turned out to be pretty popular where it’s offered.

The Key Advantage program started in 2022 with three pilot organizations: Penn Medicine, Drexel University and Wawa. About 60 employers now participate in the program, according to SEPTA. Of the 61,000 employees eligible for the benefit, more than 30,000 employees make use of it.

On average, these pass holders take about 595,000 trips monthly, around 75 percent on citywide transit and 25 percent on Regional Rail. They took 25 trips on average per month, as of February 2025. While initially only available to large employers, now companies of any size can offer the benefit.

Among municipal workers, the “free” transit benefit has been very popular, saving them around $11 million in transportation costs collectively.

As of March 2025, 14,501 City of Philadelphia employees elected to take advantage of the benefit, out of the 23,000 employees who are eligible. That number for April 2025 is 14,527 so far, with less than a week remaining to enroll for the month. Since the start of the program, the City has increased their enrollment from 54 percent of eligible workers to 64 percent, or an addition of approximately 2,000 employees.

What’s more, workers who receive the Key Advantage benefit ride SEPTA around 13 percent more on average than they did before receiving the benefit.

Using influence to grow Key Advantage

Key Advantage users are still a small share of riders, but it’s easy to see how broadening the use of a benefit that “feels free” to the user leads to more individual ridership, and not just for work commuting, but for all kinds of travel. And for those who can forgo owning a car because of it, this could add up to a pretty significant raise in people’s disposable income.

It’s also a carrot to make the stick of the Mayor’s return-to-office order go down a little easier. If the City’s going to make everybody commute five days a week, they can at least pay for people’s transit to get there. Fairly or not, the return-to-office move was a hit to morale in many departments, and cutting enrollment or reducing the value of the transit benefit would be a further blow to morale.

The City of Philadelphia has set a positive example for every other large institution in town by opting in its own workers, which is exactly why it was so worrisome to read that they might be cutting back the benefit. With Drexel opting out for financial reasons, and then Wawa opting out because they closed most of their stores in the city, the program needs another shot in the arm, and at the very least, it needs the largest participating organization — city government — not to pull back now.

Instead, city government should be looking to assert this priority more with the organizations where it has some financial control or relationships of influence. When the benefit first rolled out, for example, many teachers and School District workers were under the impression that they would get it too, only to realize it didn’t apply to their contracts. But why not? Especially with neighborhood parking woes driving a lot of agita among teachers and District staff, and few realistic options to expand the parking supply in tightly-packed rowhouse neighborhoods, extending the pass to SDP workers seems like an obvious thing to try, even though it wouldn’t work for literally every last person.

Community College of Philadelphia unionized workers have been fighting to get Key Advantage benefits for both workers and students included in their new contract, but management punted on a firm commitment, promising to negotiate with SEPTA. This seems like a great place for Mayor Parker or her SEPTA board appointees to butt in and try to ensure it happens. Likewise with other large institutions like Comcast, Penn and Temple, who have so far avoided this conversation, while suburban colleges like Bryn Mawr and perhaps soon Haverford opt their students in more enthusiastically.

If everyone plays their role, we could one day have a system where most of the large institutions in Philadelphia offer institutional transit passes to workers and students, providing SEPTA with a healthy stream of stable, passive income in addition to regular fares, giving the agency more of a protective buffer from the uncertainties of federal and state funding. The City could do more to help us get there.

Jon Geeting is the director of engagement at Philadelphia 3.0, a political action committee that supports efforts to reform and modernize City Hall.

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