After a day of discrimination accusations, surprise revelations, sparring lawyers and uncooperative witnesses, a Philadelphia judge again delayed deciding whether or not the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority can eliminate its 60-cent transfers as it restructures its fares.

Judge Gary DiVito, after hearing witnesses most of the day Monday, continued hearings until Thursday.

In the second day of hearings, the city’s lawyer accused SEPTA of blatant discrimination when deciding to eliminate transfers, which he said intentionally targeted minorities.

“They would not have done this if it were a predominately white population,” attorney Mark Zecca told the court.

DiVito shot down Zecca, telling him there was no evidence of racial motivations behind the agency’s decision.

The city has based its suit to force SEPTA to keep transfers, in part, on charges of discrimination saying that by eliminating transfers the agency hit the wallets of minorities and the city’s poor the hardest.

SEPTA officials have denied that saying that the agency decided to get rid of transfers as a way of streamlining its ticketing processes.

Also Monday, it was revealed that the Federal Transit Administration sent a letter, dated Friday, to SEPTA officials warning that the agency must conduct an impact study, examining how fare changes would affect minority and low-income users, before implementing a fare restructuring program. According to the letter, federal law obligates the transit agency to determine if any fare increase would “have a disproportionately high and adverse effect on minority and low-income riders.”

The city, though it supported a fare increase, has stated repeatedly that the terms approved by the SEPTA board in June increase fares for some riders as high as 200 percent while cutting costs for other riders by 20 percent.

“The data are clear,” said city solicitor Romulo Diaz, during a break in the proceedings. “There is an inequity and disproportionate impact. We believe it’s illegal.”

The letter from the federal agency bolstered the city’s position, he said.

“They haven’t satisfied the FTA,” Diaz told reporters.

SEPTA officials, however, said they did do a breakdown of the impact and believe that will satisfy the federal government.

“We did an analysis,” said spokesman Jim Whittaker. “We’re talking to the FTA to find out if the analysis meets their requirements. We believe the measures we took to put the fare increase in place were proper.”

He went to explain that the federal guidelines cited in the letter were not in place when SEPTA first proposed its fare restructuring.

Several witnesses testified among them. Christopher Zearfoss, testifying for the city, told the court that while the city supported a general 11 percent fare increase, it could not support the elimination of the transfers, which means that some riders face increases that total 87 percent and others 200 percent. In addition, he said, that by merging zones in some areas suburban riders would actually see a drop in their transportation costs.

Another city witness, Budget Director Diane Reed said a survey done in 2006 showed that a higher percentage of Blacks then whites use SEPTA.

According to the survey, of the 85 percent of Blacks who did use the system, 85 percent were low income with incomes below $30,000.