‘Nowhere I’d rather be’: Pittsburgh Regional Transit CEO gets $55,542 bonus, contract extension through 2029

CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman will remain at Pittsburgh Regional Transit through 2029.

The agency’s board of directors voted unanimously to extend Kelleman’s contract Friday. The provisions of the contract, which was scheduled to expire at the end of the year, remain the same with a 5% annual raise and a maximum bonus of 20% each year.

With the raise, Kelleman’s base salary increases to $312,001. Her bonus for 2024 was $55,542, which amounts to 18% and pushed her total compensation to $367,543.

The raise and bonus come at a time when the agency is in a tumultuous situation because it is facing a deficit of $100 million for the new year that begins July 1. In remarks to the board before the contract extension was approved, she said, “The situation isn’t good. It is dire.”

Without an increase in state funds, the agency has said it will begin planning for service cuts, fare increases and layoffs for 2026. The governor’s proposed budget this year calls for an increase of just over $40 million, but Republicans rejected that same proposal last year and have expressed skepticism about passing it this year.

Many transit agencies across the state — and the country — are facing financial problems that started during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government gave transit agencies hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency subsidies to keep them operating when ridership collapsed and costs for sanitizing equipment and workplaces soared.

Now, that money is running out before ridership has returned at many agencies. PRT’s annual report released last week said ridership remains more than 30% below pre-pandemic levels.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which serves five counties around Philadelphia, already has run out of its extra federal money. In November, Gov. Josh Shapiro shifted $153 million from road and bridge projects to keep the agency running without service cuts and fare increases through the end of the fiscal year in June.

Board Chairwoman Jennifer Liptak said she’s not concerned about announcing the contract extension and bonus at a time when the agency is seeking a hefty increase in state subsidy. The board followed its usual practice of awarding the bonus at the beginning of the year and wanted to extend Kelleman’s contract now to show stability and make sure she would be there during this rough time.

In her remarks during the meeting, Liptak said the board believes Kelleman has done a “remarkable” job meeting goals the board set for her.

“I think it would be worse to do this later in the year,” Liptak said in an interview after the meeting. “We want to make sure everyone knows we have confidence in Katharine and she is going to be here.”

Kelleman said in an interview, “there’s nowhere I’d rather be” than the Pittsburgh area.
This is Kelleman’s second contract extension since she came to the local agency in 2018 from Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority in Tampa, Florida, with a strong planning background. She took over an agency ready for growth after years of service cuts and a salary freeze.

She ticked off a number of accomplishments, including expanding the administrative staff and increasing salaries to meet the industry standard. Administrative salaries were 84% below the national average when she arrived, she said, but that figure has been reduced to about 6%.

The agency also had no staff responsible for long-term planning. That changed, and two years ago, the agency completed a 25-year plan with goals such as extending the light rail system to the North Hills and a new transit corridor from the Strip District through Oakland to the South Hills.

Kellerman said her first contract included only a performance bonus and no annual raise because she thought it was important to prove her value and bring up the salaries of administrators under her.

The agency also was among the first in the country during the pandemic to install barriers to separate drivers from passengers and to install air filtration systems in all of its vehicles to try to control the spread of the virus.

More recently, PRT hired more trainers and offered bonuses to new transit drivers to increase staff and reduce the number of missed trips because drivers weren’t available. Now, the agency has a full staff of drivers and for the past few weeks has missed only two or three service hours a day, less than 0.1% of trips missed, Kelleman said.

The agency also is in the process of building the $291 million University Line, exclusive bus lanes between Oakland and Downtown Pittsburgh designed to provide more reliable service between two of the state’s three busiest economic centers. The Downtown portion is scheduled to open in June, and the rest should be finished in 2027.

For now, Kelleman said her biggest immediate chore is to continue lobbying state lawmakers to provide “reliable, adequate funding” for “the type of transit system the Pittsburgh area deserves.” She said she has been in Harrisburg four times already this year and expects to return mid-March to push for funding increases.