Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s potential big year of changes hinges on state funding increase

Pittsburgh Regional Transit knows 2025 could be a monumental year for transit service in Allegheny County. It just isn’t sure whether the changes will be positive or negative for the system.

On the positive side, the agency is moving ahead with improvements on the light rail system, beginning construction on the second phase of the Bus Rapid Transit system between Downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland, debuting a group ridership pass for employers and apartment building owners, and putting the final touches on a bus route redesign to provide more local service that doesn’t have to pass through the city.

But unless the state Legislature takes action for the first time in more than 10 years to increase transit funding by June 30, CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman said the agency will begin planning severe service cutbacks for the new fiscal year that begins July 1.

“The funding level from 15 years ago doesn’t work now,” Kelleman said in a recent interview. “Every transportation entity in the state is in the same position. If we don’t get more funding by June 30, we have no choice but to develop plans for painful cuts in 2026.

“The only things to do are to raise fares or make severe service cuts.”

Reaching this point

In 2012 — after years of delays that led to sharp service cuts and years of employee wage freezes when PRT was known as Port Authority of Allegheny County — the state Legislature agreed on a comprehensive transportation funding bill known as Act 89. That bill was the financial blueprint for state transportation funding for the next 10 years, designed to support transit agencies across the state so they could provide the service their communities need.

With funding in place, the authority replaced CEO Steve Bland by promoting Ellen McLean, the chief financial officer, first as interim CEO in 2013 and then permanently to job in 2014. McLean followed state recommendations for fiscal control and over four years built a strong financial reserve for the agency.

But at that point, then-Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald decided it was time for the agency to begin growing again. After a national search, the agency hired Kelleman, who was brought in from a Tampa, Florida, agency for her strong background in transit planning and expansion.

Kelleman said McLean left the agency with a “fantastic foundation” by minimizing the use of state funds in the early years of Act 88. That buffer allowed the agency to expand its planning and management under Kelleman, add some service and develop its first long-term plan in decades.

It also put the agency in a good place when the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged ridership at agencies across the country. With several hundred million dollars in extra federal assistance, PRT kept service running for those riders who needed, but it didn’t have to spend down its reserves.

“The concerns we’re having about money now, we would have been at this point at the start of COVID” early 2020 in this area, Kelleman said.

PRT was able to keep most of its service during the pandemic until it fired more than 40 operators in early 2022 who refused to be vaccinated against the virus. That led to the agency’s rate of canceled trips reaching more than 15% because it didn’t have enough drivers, and eventually it reduced scheduled service to meet the staff available.

Some transit agencies in Pennsylvania already have spent all their extra federal funds and are struggling while others such as PRT are just reaching the end of that money and beginning to tap reserves. In the Philadelphia area, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority was ready to begin serious service cuts and rate increases by the end of this year until Gov. Josh Shapiro shifted $154.3 million in November from road projects that weren’t ready for construction yet to give the agency a six-month bridge in hopes the Legislature passes a new funding bill when it returns early next year.

When the Legislature passed the 2024-25 budget in July, it failed to address transit funding but promised to deal with the issue when members returned in the fall before the election. The House passed three funding bills, but the Senate never voted on any of them, and the issue is still waiting to be addressed.

Although all counties have some kind of transit service, Republican leaders in the Senate said additional funding is a hard sell to members from rural areas because more than 80% of the money goes to the Philadelphia area and Allegheny County.

The timing is critical, Kelleman said. She plans to spend a lot of time in the state capital over the next six months lobbying for more transit funding.

With fixed costs such as wages, benefits and pensions, transit agencies have limited places where they can save money without cutting service, Kelleman said. Health care and pension costs alone amount to about $120 million in the agency’s $539.3 million budget this year.

“There’s no amount of savings we can make that can cover that,” Kelleman said.

Changes for 2025

The long list of projects scheduled for 2025 are designed to expand service between local communities, increase ridership and meet community needs for midday and late-night service that shifted during the pandemic.

The rail work is needed to preserve a system the agency considers a strong asset even though ridership has been slower to return there since the pandemic. That will include track work in the tunnels under Downtown Pittsburgh and renovations in the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel this year and rehabilitating the Panhandle Bridge that carries trains from Pittsburgh’s South Side across the Monongahela River to Downtown Pittsburgh over the next four years.

The new dedicated bus lanes between Downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland are well underway in the Golden Triangle, and construction will begin in early 2025 on the section from Uptown to Oakland. The $291 million project is designed to improve service reliability between two of the state’s top three economic generation neighborhoods by keeping buses from getting caught in traffic jams.

Group passes, which will be available to employers and apartment building owners beginning in January, could increase ridership and reduce pollution and congestion by getting cars off city streets. Under the program, sponsors can buy monthly passes for $28 – a reduction of nearly 70% — as long as they provide them to every qualified employee or tenant at the same price or lower.

The benefit has proven popular in other regions where more than half of a transit system’s riders are part of a group pass program.

Redesigning bus routes could bring the biggest changes to PRT in more than 60 years. The agency has been working for nearly two years to change the path of routes designed decades ago to meet new growth patterns that have shifted residential areas to northern and western communities that have limited service.

The agency believes it can provide service to new areas with only slight reductions to existing service. It has been holding neighborhood meetings to gather input and ideas and will return before the end of the year with draft plans for residents to review to see if recommendations meet what the community needs.

Additionally, PRT is using federal grants to work on expanding service among local communities in the Harrison and McKeesport areas. That service would use small buses to provide microservice directly between communities so riders don’t have to travel to Downtown Pittsburgh and transfer to another bus to get to a neighboring area.

Although future funding is uncertain, Kelleman said her mandate is to continue the future plans and adjust if necessary.

“The folks in Allegheny County deserve to have the reliability to know they can get where they need to go,” Kelleman said. “We will continue to make the plans for what this region deserves and work on the money to keep it running.”