Pittsburgh Regional Transit will use hearings on service cuts to rally riders - Pittsburgh Union Progress (2025)

Pittsburgh Regional Transit – along with other transit agencies in Pennsylvania – is in an unusual situation.

On Tuesday, the agency will begin the federally required process for major service cuts and a fare increase. At the same time, it is lobbying elected officials in Harrisburg to increase its annual subsidy to cover a projected $117 million deficit in the budget it will approve next month so PRT won’t have to follow through with a 35% cut in service beginning in February and a 25-cent increase in the basic fare to $3.

Under ordinary circumstances, PRT would use this type of hearing to justify the need for the changes when it hears from the public from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Pittsburgh Ballroom on the third floor of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. But the agency and riders are on the same side this time, and neither wants to see cuts CEO Katherine Eagan Kelleman has said would be “devastating.”

Kelleman and other PRT officials have spent a lot of time lobbying Harrisburg leaders in the past six months, something that’s not as easy to do for those whose lives would be disrupted by cuts. So the agency is encouraging riders to come forward and tell their stories about the hardships that would be caused if the cuts are implemented.

“This is different,” Kelleman said after Friday’s monthly PRT board meeting. “[These cuts] are out of our hands. It’s our responsibility to make sure [the riders’] voices are heard.”

Kellerman used her remarks at Friday’s meeting to highlight stories of a home health aide who wouldn’t be able to care for her clients and a military veteran with a back injury who couldn’t visit his family if the cuts go through.

“For a lot of these people, there is no plan B,” she said. “We truly make life happen for these people.”

The cuts also would eliminate 40 bus routes that would leave 19 municipalities and three city neighborhoods without service, close the Silver Line on the light rail system, end service at 11 p.m. and shrink the Access paratransit program’s service area by 62%.

Kelleman also is scheduled to be one of the speakers at a riders rally scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Tuesday outside the convention center by Pittsburghers for Public Transit.

Pittsburgh Regional and other agencies across the state say they are struggling because the state last passed a 10-year increase in the transit subsidy in 2014 and federal emergency funds awarded during the pandemic have run dry. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Association is facing a $213 million deficit and a 45% cut in service after Gov. Josh Shapiro shifted $153.4 million in future road construction funds to get the agency through the current fiscal year.

Shapiro has proposed the same increase in transit subsidy that Senate Republicans refused to vote on last year: a 1.75% increase in transit’s share of the state’s sales tax revenue. That would give Pittsburgh Regional just over $42 million, not nearly what it says it needs to avoid cuts.

Senate Republicans say the state has other budget problems and increasing money for public transit is a hard sell to its members because about 87% of the money goes to support PRT and SEPTA, not the rural areas many of them serve. Kelleman and SEPTA leaders say they spend billions spread across every county in the state every year and a sharp cut in their spending would cause serious economic problems.

Right now, the agencies say they believe legislators are listening to them and asking for more information about their financial problems, but no legislation has been proposed beyond Shapiro’s recommendation.

PRT will have additional hearings from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. May 6 at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland and June 12 at the Downtown convention center.

The state budget is scheduled to be approved by June 30.