For nearly three weeks, Pittsburgh Regional Transit CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman and her planning staff have been playing a daily waiting game, waiting for the state Legislature to adopt a new budget with or without additional funding for public transit.
Until legislators reach a conclusion on a budget that was due June 30, the agency won’t have the guidance it needs to plan the level of future transit service for Allegheny County. Faced with a $100 million deficit this year and more than $2 billion over the next 10 years, the PRT board last month passed what Kelleman on Friday called “a pretty gruesome” 10-year plan that calls for a 35% service cut, 38% reduction in workforce, no service after 11 p.m., a 62% reduction in the service area for Access paratransit, and a 25-cent fare increase to $3.
That plan, scheduled to start in February, can be changed at any time. Until the agency knows the amount of state subsidy it will receive and for how long, Kelleman said she is reluctant to make any changes to the 10-year plan.
“If we don’t know how long we have to wait [for a state budget] or how much money there is going to be, it’s difficult to plan for,” Kelleman said. “I wish there was an easier decision for us to make.”
The agency’s concern is that it could avoid the cuts and continue spending at current levels for now, then find out there is no additional state money. That would reduce the agency’s $394.2 million in reserve funds and shorten its plan to offer a stable level of service to something fewer than 10 years.
“This is an extremely delicate balance,” PRT spokesman Adam Brandolph said about how much reserve money the agency should spend. “There is so much uncertainty. There are just a lot of unknowns.”
That is in stark contrast to more than two dozen transit advocates, who Friday encouraged the board to use some of its reserve funds to delay the scheduled cutbacks until September 2026 while legislators work out a long-range funding plan. They fear that once service is reduced, it will never be restored, noting that service remains down about 20% since 2000.
Speaker after speaker on Friday lobbied the board to delay the cutbacks because of the harmful effects they will cause. Working through Pittsburghers for Public Transit and its statewide group Transit for All PA, advocates have sent more than 200,000 letters lobbying legislators for more support for transit.
Now, they are trying to buy more time before cuts begin. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which serves five counties around Philadelphia, announced this week that cuts would begin there in the next couple of months.
Last week, responding to a request from board members for more options, PRT staff told the board that delaying the cuts until September 2026 would lead to the agency using $100 million in reserve funds in 2027, and then yearly beginning in 2032 until they ran out a couple years later.
Nickole Nisby, former mayor of Duquesne and a member of Pittsburghers for Public Transit, said the cuts would be particularly harmful to struggling communities in the Monongahela Valley. Five communities in that once-thriving steel corridor have among the highest usage of transit in the state with Homestead first and Rankin third.
Some of those communities are food deserts, she said, where if bus service cuts happen some residents will have to “choose between eating and trying to survive.”
“We’ve done our part [by lobbying for more money],” she said. “Now it’s time for you to do yours [by delaying cuts].”
Elaina Brown of Pittsburgh Food Policy Council told the board that transportation is the biggest factor that causes low-income people to struggle to get food. Transit is often “the only reliable way” they have to get food, she said.
Lynda VanBueren of Pittsburgh’s West End said she relies on transit to get to art classes at Community College of Allegheny County during the day and ballet classes at night. Without transit, she said, she would be “basically be trapped at home with no purpose in life.”
In her remarks to the board before the advocates spoke, Kelleman urged them to continue their fight.
“We can’t stretch the service on grit alone,” she said. “Make sure you tell Harrisburg you need transit, and you need it funded.”
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.