‘An absolute crisis’: Pittsburgh Regional Transit proposes massive cuts and higher fares

Pittsburgh Regional Transit announced plans Thursday to raise fares and slash the region’s transit service by nearly 40% — cutting 41 bus routes entirely, while making major reductions to light-rail service, most bus routes and PRT’s paratransit service — unless it gets more money from the state.

“This is really hitting almost every single route in our entire system from 2 Mount Royal to the 93 and the Silver Line,” said Adam Brandolph, deputy chief communications officer at PRT. “We certainly don't want this. This is an absolute crisis.”

(A full list of cuts and reductions approved Wednesday can be found on PRT’s ‘funding crisis’ webpage.)

PRT’s Planning and Stakeholder Relations Committee approved the plan to cut 41 routes, which together serve almost every part of the county, including the Silver Line on the T, which runs from Library through Overbrook to Downtown. It also included a major service reduction on 34 routes, and a slight reduction of service to another 20 routes. The agency also proposed to raise transit fares from $2.75 to $3 — making them “some of the highest transit fares in the country,” according to Brandolph.

“We are requiring people to transfer or take multiple trips … we are requiring longer travel times… [and] we will certainly have more bus and train overcrowding,” said Amy Silbermann, PRT chief development officer, during a Thursday-morning meeting of the transit agency’s board.

If this plan goes into effect — which officials said would happen next February under present circumstances — 19 municipalities and city neighborhoods would no longer have public transportation. And there would be no public transit in the region after 11 p.m.

In a release issued shortly after the plan was unveiled Thursday morning, advocacy group Pittsburghers for Public Transit said the cuts would be “catastrophic” and said transit service was “fully at a crisis point.”

“This would effectively kill public transit in our region, and the commensurate damage to our riders, our economy, our healthcare system, our road congestion and air quality is incalculable,” said the statement.

Transit officials agreed the impact would be severe.

“When we see cuts due to funding, it creates this death spiral,” Brandolph said. “We're going to see cuts due to lack of funding, and then lack of funding due to less ridership, and so on and so forth. These cuts are certainly not part of anything that we would ever want to do. It's a sad day in Allegheny County.”

PRT faces a $100 million deficit starting on July 1. To keep their current levels of service, the agency is asking the state for a $117 million increase in their subsidy. Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a plan that would give the agency roughly $40 million in additional state funding, which would spur more money via a match from Allegheny County.

Shapiro proposed the same plan last year, but it didn’t come up for a vote in the state Senate. Every county in the state is home to a public transit agency, but representatives from the state’s rural districts have resisted voting for funding that’s largely directed to PRT and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in the Philadelphia-area. It won’t be settled until the legislature votes on the budget in June.

State Rep. Jessica Benham, a Pittsburgh Democrat who is vice-chair for the county's legislative delegation, said she and and her Allegheny County colleagues have made state funding for the transit agency a top priority.

"There is a regional commitment to getting this funding across the finish line," she said shortly after the board meeting. And she said the issue was personal for her.

"Before I was an elected official, I actually didn't have a car. I took public transit everywhere," she told WESA. "I know what it's like to wait for a bus that only comes every 40 minutes. I know what it's like to be outside in the rain and the snow and all kinds of weather relying on public transit."

Politically, the challenge in Harrisburg is that despite the presence of smaller-scale transit systems outside Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Republicans often don't feel they have as direct a stake.

Still Republican House member Jeremy Shaffer said “a good, comprehensive transportation system” is important, even though PRT routes offer little direct service to his district on the county's northern tier.

Shaffer called on Shapiro to find a solution for Pittsburgh’s transit system the way he did for Philadelphia’s SEPTA. Shapiro redirected $153 million in federal funds to the southeastern transit in November as it too faced a fiscal cliff.

Shaffer said Pittsburgh's transit agency had relied for too long on one-time revenue sources. But he added, "If the governor was able to give a significant infusion of money to SEPTA while [PRT] got zero dollars … I do not think that that was an equitable thing.”

Shapiro proposed a $40 million increase for transit in the coming year's budget, which is currently being deliberated in Harrisburg. In a statement, Shapiro's office said, "For the second year in a row, the Governor has proposed a historic investment in mass transit — the largest increase in state funding for transit in more than a decade — but in order to deliver that funding, the legislature needs pass it."

That may not be an easy sell with some Republicans. "We have a structural budget deficit which must be addressed," said Senate Republican leader Joe Pittman in a statement. "[I]t is critical for our mass transit systems to demonstrate they are running as efficiently as possible, and that riders and local governments who benefit from their services are paying their fair share."

Pittman also reiterated that Republicans would want money for infrastructure needs addressed alongside transit funding: State "roads and bridges carry millions of commonwealth residents daily," the statement asserted, "and must also be a part of any consideration of additional state funding for transportation."

“I think it's fair to say our region is in a transportation crisis,” said Erin Dalton, director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services speaking at an event Monday. “There's not been sufficient state funding for the local program for many years.”

The last time PRT got a funding boost from the state was in 2013, when the legislature passed Act 89. It provided more money for public transit as well as for roads and bridges throughout the state for 10 years. Federal pandemic relief money filled in funding gaps and the state let Act 89 lapse. The federal support dried up last year and PRT relied on $58 million from their reserve funds to balance its budget.

The cost of health care, pensions for retirees and purchasing materials have gone up quicker than the amount of money PRT received from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, according to Brandolph.

At the same time, ridership in Pittsburgh and in cities throughout the country plummeted during the pandemic, in large part due to remote work. It’s been slow to rebound. In December 2019, an average of 192,969 took a ride on the bus or light rail during the weekday. By December 2024, only 102,507 got on the bus or the T on a typical weekday that month, according to PRT data.

Transit service in the region has been shrinking since the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the service cuts in 2011 and 2012 that “really cut out a lot of riders,” according to Chris Sandvig, executive director at Mobilify, a transportation advocacy group. “The Port Authority said, rightly so, ‘the fat is gone, we're now cutting into muscle’,” Sandvig said. “This round of cuts, cuts into the bone. There isn't much left.”

Seniors and low-income riders are most at risk with the proposed cuts — 51% of PRT’s riders earn a household income of less than $25,000 a year, according to PRT’s 2025 budget.

“I think we should be pretty worried about it as this is the way people get to jobs,” Dalton said. “This is the way people get to medical appointments, to school and so on.”

According to the 2023 Allegheny County Quality of Life Survey from University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research, 81% of respondents thought that there was a problem with the availability of public transit in the county.

The agency’s plan to redesign the region’s bus routes will be set aside if they don’t get the funding they’re asking for from the state. PRT’s $291 million Bus Rapid Transit project between Oakland and Downtown would ride on, since it's paid for by a dedicated funding source.

The proposal goes before PRT’s board on March 28 with a public comment period that would start on March 31. If the plan is approved, public comment would be collected through mid-June. PRT will be hosting at least three additional public hearings so that riders can tell legislators in Harrisburg what they think about the cuts.

2 - Mount Royal
4 - Troy Hill
7 - Spring Garden
O12 - McKnight Flyer
14 - Ohio Valley
18 - Manchester
19L - Emsworth Limited
20 - Kennedy
26 - Chartiers
29 - Robinson
G31 - Bridgeville Flyer
36 - Banksville
38 - Greentree
39 - Brookline
40 - Mt. Washington
41 - Bower Hill
43 - Bailey
Y45 - Baldwin Manor Flyer
Y47 - Curry Flyer
Y49 - Prospect Flyer
51L - Carrick Limited
52L - Homeville Limited
53L - Homestead Park Limited
58 - Greenfield
65 - Squirrel Hill
P67 - Monroeville Flyer
P69 - Trafford Flyer
71 - Edgewood Town Center
P71 - Swissvale Flyer
P76 - Lincoln Highway Flyer
P7 - McKeesport Flyer
P10 - Allegheny Valley Flyer
P12 - Holiday Park Flyer
P13 - Mount Royal Flyer
P16 - Penn Hills Flyer
P17 - Lincoln Park Flyer
G3 - Moon Flyer
Y1 - Large Flyer
O1 - Ross Flyer
O5 - Thompson Run Flyer
SV - Silver Line

Kate Giammarise contributed reporting.