The $535.3 million budget approved Friday by Pittsburgh Regional Transit assumes the agency’s ridership will grow 15% in the next year and use $69.5 million in federal stimulus funds. The budget has only minor changes from the preliminary plan recommended last month. It was approved unanimously.
The new budget comes on the heels of the agency’s biggest ridership weekend since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The two Taylor Swift concerts at Acrisure Stadium and Juneteenth activities in Downtown Pittsburgh drew more than 85,000 riders to the light rail system last Friday and Saturday, about four times the normal ridership those days.
CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman said it was particularly encouraging that so many young riders used public transit for the concerts.
The board also approved a capital budget of $195.2 million that includes funds to begin work on two of the agency’s largest pending projects, replacing its light rail trains and rehabilitating the Panhandle Bridge that carries those trains across the Monongahela River between Pittsburgh’s Downtown and South Side neighborhoods. The 81 new trains are expected to cost more than $500 million and take more than eight years to deliver while the bridge could cost about $65 million over the next three years.
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.