Rebuilding Ridership: A Collaboration Between Philadelphia, SEPTA, and Jawnt

Like many cities, Philadelphia entered 2022 with a steep decline in transit ridership following the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift towards remote work. When transit ridership declines, farebox revenue falls and agencies are usually forced to cut service, creating a “death spiral” effect that, in 2022, every US transit agency was grappling to avoid.

In the face of shrinking ridership and funds, the City of Philadelphia and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) worked together, with Jawnt’s help, to turn this trend around.

Creating new incentives for transit use

To bring riders back to public transit, the City and SEPTA launched a coordinated effort. First, the City of Philadelphia passed a commuter benefit mandate. Any employer in the City of Philadelphia with more than 50 employees is now required to offer pre-tax commuter benefits or a transit pass to their employees. Philadelphia modeled their program on several existing programs nationwide: Seattle, DC, San Francisco, New York, and the entire State of New Jersey. Though many employers offered transit benefits before the requirement, employers now had a requirement to help their employees with their commuting costs.

At the same time, SEPTA was developing a new employer-based pass program, the SEPTA Key Advantage program, which was based on its existing monthly pass options—like the Anywhere TrailPass, which costs $207 a month and offers unlimited rides across all SEPTA services. Through the Key Advantage program, employers could buy steeply discounted Anywhere Trail Passes—as low as $27 a month—if they paid for passes for all of their employees.

Challenges in rolling out a new commuter benefits program

With the mandate poised to go into effect, and the new employer-focused pass coming online, all that was left was for employers to step up and begin issuing passes. However, for a city with an economy as diverse as Philadelphia’s, this was easier said than done.

In the lead up to launch, SEPTA heard loud and clear from its employer partners that the process of administering this new benefit was going to be an obstacle that no one involved was positioned to surmount:

• Employers and HR teams. To receive the SEPTA Key Advantage pass, each employee must pick up their own SEPTA Key card, register the card online, and then provide their account number to SEPTA so the pass can be loaded on the correct card. These are a lot of steps for an administrator to support, with a wide margin for error. Administrators often don’t ride transit themselves, and may not have all the context needed to answer employee questions.
• Traditional third party benefit administrators. Many employers already work with third party benefit administrators, who are often better positioned to communicate and support employees with their benefit enrollments. The SEPTA Key Advantage program was tricky enough to communicate that many third parties fell short. As one administrator put it: “once they make their money on healthcare and retirement, commuter [benefits] is a rounding error for them.”‍
• The transit agency. Many transit agencies manage their own employer pass programs in-house. This includes marketing online and in-person with tabling events, fulfilling orders, and supporting customer questions. Transit staff are well equipped to discuss details of their own pass programs and ordering eccentricities, but SEPTA felt that its staff did not have the capacity to absorb such a large new responsibility.

Jawnt teams up with SEPTA to administer passes

Knowing the success of the SEPTA Key Advantage program relied on a smooth experience for both employers and employees, SEPTA issued an RFP for administrative support. Jawnt was awarded the initial contract in time to co-create the launch, and has been supporting the project ever since. SEPTA licenses Jawnt’s services, so employees are able to receive Jawnt’s support at no additional cost.

Jawnt’s support for SEPTA includes:

• Program marketing. Jawnt produces high-level brochures, detailed one-page explainers, digital and out-of-home ads, and much more to spread the word about SEPTA Key Advantage. Jawnt regularly joins SEPTA, and often hosts their own table, at public and private events to encourage participation. Jawnt has helped grow the number of participating employers from 3 to over 70 since launch.
• New employer onboarding. When an employer is interested, SEPTA refers them to Jawnt’s accounts team. Jawnt handles roster integration, whether it's a dashboard and CSV for smaller companies or a fully automated HRIS integration for a major organization. Jawnt works with employers to customize their offerings, calibrating employee subsidies and potentially including bikeshare and other mobility benefits.
• Enrollment support. Jawnt ensures eligible employees are informed and supported during their monthly enrollment window. Jawnt was able to reduce card error rates from over 10% to less than 1% by adding field-level validation to their SEPTA Key Advantage enrollment form. Along with thoughtfully crafted support articles and live, multilingual customer support by phone, text, and email, Jawnt ensures every eligible employee is able to receive the mobility benefits that meet their needs.
• Order fulfillment. SEPTA Key Advantage passes must be ordered through SEPTA’s internal website, which Jawnt handles on employers’ behalf to fulfill their employee enrollments. While Jawnt manages to triage and reduce most errors, Jawnt and SEPTA remain in close contact to resolve trickier cases.
• Invoicing and deductions. Each month, Jawnt automatically distributes the invoices and ACH transactions necessary to fund employee passes. Jawnt also prepares and distributes deduction files, necessary to properly manage qualified pre-tax deductions, in the format necessary for each employer.‍
• Reporting and data-driven insights. As part of the Jawnt platform, employers have self-serve access to reports on enrollment and participation, as well as the ability to drill down to review and manage individual employee choices. Jawnt also rolls up these statistics for SEPTA, presenting monthly to the pass programs team.

Evaluating the results

In 2024, SEPTA and Jawnt co-presented a paper on the effectiveness of SEPTA Key Advantage in driving enrollment to the Transportation Research Board. They found that ridership increased at a faster rate for participants in the SEPTA Key Advantage program than the system overall.

• Enrolled employees increased their SEPTA Bus and Metro trips by 40% and Regional Rail by 73% over the 13-month study period, compared to 13% and 32% SEPTA-wide.
• Analyzing case studies of three larger employers confirmed that employees increased their ridership when the passes were partially subsidized, and increased it even further when their passes were entirely subsidized.

The return of SEPTA riders to Philadelphia is no accident. Even with a desirable product (the discounted transit pass), and a stick (the benefit mandate), the combination could not have been effective without a carrot (benefit administration). As other regions look for their own solutions through commuter benefits, a fully supportive, modern benefit administrator can make all the difference.