A 43 Bailey bus drives down Sixth Avenue, Downtown, on Thursday, March 20, 2025. The 43 is among 40 bus lines that would cease to exist under a potential regimen of cuts if Pittsburgh Regional Transit does not get a boost in state funding. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource)
Without a boost in state funding, according to Pittsburgh Regional Transit, many bus lines could disappear and most of the rest would see cuts in frequency or length.
“PublicSource is an independent nonprofit newsroom serving the Pittsburgh region. Sign up for our free newsletters.”
Pittsburgh Regional Transit riders would see widespread service reductions and nearly 10% fare increases under a proposal introduced at a meeting of its board committees on Thursday.
Starting in February, the changes would eliminate just more than a third of PRT bus, T light rail and Monongahela Incline service if the cash-strapped agency doesn’t secure a significant increase in state funding for the fiscal year that starts July 1, agency executives said. PRT is seeking $117 million more, a roughly 39% increase.
PRT’s full board will vote March 28 on whether to move the proposed cuts into a public comment period that would last into June. Gov. Josh Shapiro has offered about $40 million more for PRT, which projects a $100 million deficit next year if it doesn’t make extensive changes to operations or receive substantially more state support.
The system is already running a $50 million deficit this year.
“We have been thrifty. We have frozen salaries. We have cut services. We have shut garages,” PRT CEO Katharine Kelleman said before the committee members, cautioning against what she called “generational damage to this network.”
Without more state money, “we’re talking catastrophic service changes” and fares that would rank among the highest in the country, she said. “If you haven’t heard us before, consider our voices raised.”
Specifically, the proposal calls for cutting 35% of the hours that bus, T light rail and Mon Incline vehicles spend in operation. That includes the complete elimination of the T Silver Line and 40 bus routes, along with reduced service on 53 bus routes and the T Red Line.
Three Pittsburgh neighborhoods and 19 municipalities in Allegheny, Beaver and Westmoreland counties would lose service completely, and the agency would cut off service system-wide after 11 p.m., officials said. They estimated 180,000 residents and 50,000 jobs would lose access to nearby public transit.
Those who would be most affected should speak up about how the cuts would affect routine life in the Pittsburgh area, PRT Chief Development Officer Amy Silbermann said. The agency expects it would lose about 20% of riders under the reduction strategy.
“Talk to lawmakers. Come to hearings,” Silbermann said.
Provided that the board approves a period for public comment, PRT will begin soliciting feedback March 31 and host three public hearings in April, May and June ahead of its next budget adoption. “That input will be very helpful to us to understand which pieces are most impactful to the community,” Silbermann said.
The agency sought to limit how the proposal would affect vulnerable communities that rely most on public transit, but many of those areas would still face sharp service reductions, she said. Those losing transit service would include Ambridge and East McKeesport.
Among other parts of the proposal:
- Standard base fare would rise from $2.75 to $3, and a seven-day pass would cost $27 instead of the current $25. Monthly passes would jump from $97.50 to $106.50.
- ACCESS, a paratransit service for the elderly and people with disabilities, would impose a 20% fare increase and cut its service area by more than half.
- PRT’s ongoing Bus Line Redesign Project, meant to serve riders better, would be shelved.
- The agency would have no money to cover extra service for special events like concerts, football games and the 2026 NFL Draft, expected to draw 1 million people to the area in April 2026. PRT provided 40,000 passenger trips for each of two Taylor Swift concerts in 2023 at Acrisure Stadium, Kelleman said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the PRT workforce might change under the plan. Kelleman called it a “unique challenge to shrink the footprint and [have] everyone stay here.” She said forthcoming conversations will focus on internal operations, noting that workforce reductions generally can happen through attrition or not filling open positions.
Meanwhile, Pittsburghers for Public Transit, an advocacy group, said the overall proposal “would effectively kill public transit in our region” if allowed to take effect.
And “the commensurate damage to our riders, our economy, our health care system, our road congestion and air quality is incalculable,” the group said in a statement.
It pointed in part to a string of cuts already imposed in the PRT system, which has reduced service about 36% and lost half its riders over the last quarter century. Ridership is down about a third since the COVID-19 pandemic alone, Kelleman said.
The proposal for a 35% reduction next year assumes lawmakers would increase state funding — PRT’s main revenue source — by about 2%, similar to the uptick that the agency received for this year. If state funding continues to climb around that rate, and other factors remain stable, the agency likely would have to make the contemplated reductions, but avoid additional major cuts over the next decade, Chief Financial Officer Donminika Brown said.
Shapiro’s $40 million proposal amounts to roughly a 13% increase — enough to ease some of the possible reduction, spokesman Adam Brandolph said. The agency’s $117 million request includes sustained state funding at that level — plus incremental annual increases — over the next decade to avoid future cuts.
In a statement Thursday afternoon, Shapiro spokesman Manuel Bonder said the governor “will continue his work to bring legislators together to secure meaningful investments in mass transit.”
“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 the funding, the legislature needs [to] pass it,” Bonder said. The House “has passed the governor’s proposal multiple times, but the Senate has repeatedly failed to act.”
State Sen. Scott Martin, R-Lancaster, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, could not be reached immediately.
State Rep. Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia, voiced support for Shapiro’s overall proposal to increase public transit funding by nearly $293 million statewide. In a statement Thursday, Harris described mass transit as “at the heart of our state’s economy.”
And “if we care about our economy, we must care about mass transit,” said Harris, majority chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Pressures on the PRT system include relatively sluggish growth in state contributions, which haven’t kept pace with rising expenses, according to the agency. Fixed costs like health care and labor limit its options for trimming expenses, so service reductions are among few ways to balance the budget, Brandolph has said.
Without an infusion from the state or major operational changes, PRT’s annual deficits are on pace to eclipse $110 million by 2018, according to the agency. Its reserve stands around $360 million.
Given that, the agency would face a “death cliff” — ceasing to exist — in about three years, Brandolph has said.
Still, the agency faces a challenging Harrisburg budget season, in which lawmakers are grappling with a multibillion-dollar structural deficit in the state budget. State Sen. Judy Ward, R-Blair County, has said the budget doesn’t have much leeway for new spending.
During conversations with transit agencies, she has stressed a “need to right-size,” Ward has said. She chairs the Senate Transportation Committee.
!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}}))}();
In a statement last week, Rep. Ed Neilson said Pennsylvania can’t afford to hold back funding for public transit. The Philadelphia Democrat is majority chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
Lawmakers will be negotiating state spending over the next several months. They face a June 30 deadline to finalize the budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins the next day.
The threatened bus routes
Forty bus routes would face total elimination, as would the light rail Silver Line, under a Pittsburgh Regional Transit proposal. Bus lines facing extinction would be:
- 2 Mount Royal
- 4 Troy Hill
- 7 Spring Garden
- 14 Ohio Valley
- 18 Manchester
- 19L Emsworth Limited
- 20 Kennedy
- 26 Chartiers
- 29 Robinson
- 36 Banksville
- 38 Green Tree
- 39 Brookline
- 40 Mount Washington
- 41 Bower Hill
- 43 Bailey
- 51L Carrick Limited
- 52L Homeville Limited
- 53L Homestead Park Limited
- 58 Greenfield
- 65 Squirrel Hill
- 71 Edgewood Town Center
- G3 Moon Flyer
- G31 Bridgeville Flyer
- O1 Ross Flyer
- O5 Thompson Run Flyer via 279
- O12 McKnight Flyer
- P7 McKeesport Flyer
- P10 Allegheny Valley Flyer
- P12 Holiday Park Flyer
- P13 Mount Royal Flyer
- P16 Penn Hills Flyer
- P17 Lincoln Park Flyer
- P67 Monroeville Flyer
- P69 Trafford Flyer
- P71 Swissvale Flyer
- P76 Lincoln Highway Flyer
- Y1 Large Flyer
- Y45 Baldwin Manor Flyer
- Y47 Curry Flyer
- Y49 Prospect Flyer
Another 33 bus lines — most of the remaining routes — would face major drops in frequency of service, while three would be reduced in length, as would the light rail Red Line. Another 20 routes and the Monongahela Incline would see minor reductions.
The light rail Blue Line would see more weekend service to take up some of the slack for the lost Silver Line, and the 53 Homestead Park bus line would similarly increase its runs to make up for elimination of the 53L.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information received after initial publication.
Adam Smeltz is a freelance reporter and former staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He can be reached at asmeltz@gmail.com.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
About Post Author
