[wrx_snobordr]

*CAUTION LONG RANT BELOW*

SEPTA is a joke. No offense, but they are sitting in the pot of **** they made. They remind m so much of the big 3 auto makers, and we all know the **** storm they are facing.

Septa pays a starting bus driver around 13 an hour, not great. But in 5 years that same person is making over $21 an hour. Now, that is not exactly great pay but then again, $45k to drive a bus isn't terrible either. Where they get hooked up at though is health care and Pensions. They are a government organization, people expect, people should be read Unions, for the gov to provide them with health care. So, they strike and they get health care, it may not be great, but it is paid for. How many other on here get that? I know I don't make $45k a year but I still have to pay for my health care. Then there is the pensions. Again, a relic of the past, before the 401(k), the Roth IRA, normal IRA or the many other vehicles people can use to build and grow their OWN retirement. Instead, SEPTA is still doling out money for all retired workers for both Pensions and Health care.

Then we have the issue of terrible use of resources. Who uses the bus the most? I would bet that 90% of the people who use them are in the city. Yet, at 11:15 at night, I am driving home down rt 13 near bristol and I see a bus, empty, driving its route. I go to the Oxford Valley mall, I see buses sitting outside waiting to pick up 3 or 4 people. I am sorry, but do we really need either of those routes? Or at least do we need them running at the consistency they are running currently? I could single handedly go in and save them millions just by reworking certain routes. Combine certain low passenger routes so the loop is bigger and cut the need for buses. I would then go in and rework the organizational structure. Personally, I don't know how it works, but if my guess is correct it is like any union run facility, inefficiently. I would restructure it to a learning organization, everyone is trained to do every job in their area. There wouldn't be a guy to mount a tire and a guy to put it on and a guy to hold the air gun, it would be 1 guy. There wouldn't be 3 levels of management, there would be 1. It would be made up of older workers who actually do the work. There would be monthly meetings of different groups of people to discuss ways to make things run smoother, and management would do what is suggested, after all, who knows what they need better than the workers.

Another option is leasing. I am sure there are companies out there would love to get their hands on the money that could be made by owning certain bus routes. Just as we are doing with roads, lease routes to private companies. Smaller routes, instead of cutting them and losing profit, lease them and make profit. Do the same with some of the bigger routes.

But of course, this is all just a pipe dream, none of this is possible. The second you told a unionized government run company that they will have to start being like teh rest of us and paying for their insurance, pre-tax of course, or may actually have to plan for their retirement and not sit on the shoulders of all of us other working stiffs they would be out in the streets up in arms begging for our support, while we ride our bikes to our non-tenure granting, non-health care subsidizing, non-pension providing jobs.

Forget about trying to lease the routes or reorganize the business structure. It will be spun as a non-worker friendly tragedy stealing the food off of poor SEPTA workers plates. Nothing will be said about the thousands of people who will have to move or find a new job because they can't afford to ride the bus or were one of the ones whose line was cut because the SEPTA employees were not willing to budge. They also will ignore the fact that all those who may be laid off if the company was reorganized, would still be able to apply to the new companies who took over the routes, given their experience, they would have a pretty damn good shot at getting the job, and since its private, it would most likely be better anyway.

*Rant off*