(The 48 bus | Photo: Philadelphia Magazine)

We're over at the Inquirer op-ed page today, laying out some customer-friendly changes SEPTA can make to their bus network to stop bleeding ridership. 

(Photo credit: PlanPhilly)

After years of waiting and frustrating delays, SEPTA riders are finally getting a modern card payment system. Not only will we be able to use credit cards to pay for transit rides, and automatically refill our passes online, the payment system will introduce the city to a brand new technology--a technology that could combine with policy changes to drastically increase transit ridership, and meaningfully change the way Philadelphia residents and visitors get around our city.

One important point of fact that's been curiously absent from the SEPTA strike conversations is that the state troopers budget is on course to gobble up the entire increase in transportation funding by the end of the decade.