Pittsburgh Regional Transit has identified a location in Moon for a new $300 million long-term maintenance garage and is waiting for a decision on a federal grant to determine how quickly the project can proceed.
If it can get funding, the agency wants to build the facility at the site of its park-and-ride lot on University Boulevard in Moon. The lot has about 600 spaces but has been underutilized since the pandemic, plus the agency owns additional property at the site to provide enough space for the new long-term maintenance garage.
The agency’s current facility for long-term maintenance in Pittsburgh’s Manchester neighborhood is where buses go for major overhauls or repairs, not the same as the four regional garages that provide daily maintenance to keep the fleet of about 720 buses running. The Manchester site is old, doesn’t have space for expansion and needs $40 million in repairs.
Even with those upgrades, it wouldn’t be the type of modern facility the agency needs for the growing fleet of electric buses, leaving the agency “back at square one,” said Amy Silbermann, the agency’s chief development officer. That’s why the agency has asked the Federal Transit Administration for a $250 million grant under the Buses and Bus Facility and Low and No Emissions program.
The agency’s board approved a local contribution of $50 million for the project as part of the annual capital budget last month.
Silbermann said PRT settled on the University Boulevard site because it is property the agency already owns and it wouldn’t involve extensive demolition. The property is set back from University Boulevard between a Sheetz convenience store and Brewer Airport Toyota, and has its own access road, Port Authority Drive.
PRT spokesman Andrew Carr said in a statement the agency has briefed local officials about the project, which he stressed would not be a facility with heavy daily traffic like the regional service garages. The garage would be an environmentally friendly facility where several hundred workers perform long-term repairs after accidents or mechanical overhauls of vehicles.
The garage also would include workforce training space, paint shops, parts storage and a sign shop.
The agency believes the garage can be placed on the site to leave additional land for transit-oriented development that the township is interested in. The project also shouldn’t interfere with the township’s Stevenson Mill Connector Road project, Carr said.
Silbermann said the garage would be a multiyear project and the agency won’t start preliminary design until it has funding. Grant awards are expected to be announced in mid-July.
The agency hasn’t decided what it would do if it doesn’t receive the grant, Silbermann said. CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman has said the agency is close to paying off its long-term debt and could borrow money for major projects.
Plans for the long-term maintenance garage come while the agency also is looking for space to build another regional service garage because it can’t expand its fleet of buses without additional space. That facility would have a similar price tag, Silbermann said, but it is unlikely that construction of the two garages would overlap because that could be too difficult for agency staff to handle.
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Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.