People chant at a rally opposing potential Pittsburgh Regional Transit service cuts and fare increases, Tuesday, April 29, outside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Downtown. The event coincided with the first in PRT’s three public hearings on the proposed changes. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Allegheny County’s transit agency came out of the pandemic hooked on federal support, and now wants the state to step in. Harrisburg realities make that a rough road, but Pittsburgh Regional Transit has supporters.
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Allegheny County’s public transit network is leaning more on government support to make ends meet than before the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend that could continue as Pittsburgh Regional Transit seeks more than $100 million in new backing from the state.
That’s one finding of a PublicSource review of PRT finances: Subsidies and other support from government entities at least equaled 85% of operating expenses every year since 2020. The figure is up from around 73% a decade ago, boosted in part by more than $500 million in pandemic-related federal payments from 2020 to 2024.
Now spent down, the stimulus money helped PRT limit service cuts to 20% while expenses jumped, ridership and farebox revenue cratered, and support from the state — over half the $540 million operating budget — inched up. Without significantly more money from the state next year, executives warn PRT will slash more than a third of bus, light rail and Monongahela Incline service starting in February.
Proposed cutbacks also would shelve the ongoing Bus Line Redesign meant to improve service and grow ridership — a project that should ease PRT’s subsidy dependence over the long term, agency leaders said. Lawmakers have until June 30 to finalize a state budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins July 1.
“The federal stimulus funds kind of gave the state a break,” PRT Chief Financial Officer Donminika Brown told PublicSource. “But now that they’re done, it’s time for the state to step back” up.
That means not only more state money, but also new options for generating income, CEO Katharine Kelleman said. She and Brown spoke in a 90-minute interview in late May at PRT’s Downtown headquarters.
“We would like to lock in a long-term, sustainable level of state funding, but then talk to our legislature about giving us options locally” to diversify revenue streams and consider more county involvement, Kelleman said. Pennsylvania rules limit how local taxing bodies can contribute to public transit.
PRT is seeking $117 million more from Harrisburg in fiscal 2026 — a roughly 39% bump and nearly three times the increase proposed by Gov. Josh Shapiro. The agency’s request includes sustained funding, with incremental annual increases, to avoid cuts over the next decade.
Fee hikes or partnerships?
In separate interviews, Democratic and Republican lawmakers agreed the commonwealth needs a long-range strategy to maintain transit and prevent yearly scrambles to keep agencies afloat. But they differed over how to craft that strategy, with Democrats pitching targeted tax and fee increases while GOP leadership favored more local investment and public-private partnerships.
Policymakers on both sides said it’s too soon to predict how state transit money may shake out in this budget cycle. PRT executives said they’re making frequent trips to Harrisburg as part of an amplified lobbying campaign.
“Sustainability comes from more than just state funding,” said state Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford and Fulton, the GOP leader in the House. “In fact, if you’re relying just on state funding to make yourself sustainable, you’ve got a problem.”
At the same time, some PRT advocates argue that state support hasn’t kept pace with financial demands, including health benefits and pay rates negotiated in collective bargaining. The agency’s state subsidies climbed by $50 million since fiscal year 2019 while operating expenses are up $98 million, budgets show.
PRT projects a $50 million deficit this fiscal year, a number that would double to $100 million next year without major service changes or substantially more state money. Deficit spending at that level would consume PRT reserves within a few years — what agency spokesman Adam Brandolph has called a “death cliff.”
“There’s only so much you can fund an entire system off of fares. There is a reason why state dollars are needed for public transit,” said state Sen. Lindsey Williams, D-West View, a Senate Transportation Committee member who joined the PRT board this spring.
Williams defended state subsidies as an investment in regional economic development, cautioning that more cuts would threaten a “catastrophic” spiral in ridership. She and other transit advocates argued for long-term mechanisms for state funding similar to the now-expired Act 89 of 2013, which established a decade’s worth of state support.
Williams and three peers — Reps. Aerion Abney, D-Manchester, and Jessica Benham, D-South Side, and Sen. Nikil Saval, D-Philadelphia — are promoting a blueprint from Transit for All PA, a statewide advocacy group. Its multipart plan would expand on Shapiro’s proposal to increase transit’s share of state sales tax revenue, bumping the daily car rental fee from $2 to $6.50 and the car lease tax from 3% to 5%.
The plan would also impose a 6% excise fee statewide on ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. In all, Williams said, the effort would translate into nearly $700 million a year for transit — enough to restore 2019 service levels for PRT and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Other transit agencies would see another 10% on top of their 2019-level funding.
SEPTA has warned of 45% service cuts if lawmakers don’t pass Shapiro’s most recent funding proposal, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Shapiro’s office didn’t comment specifically on the Transit for All plan, which Williams said has support from several senators. Topper, the House Republican leader, said the Transit for All ideas would “be on the table” in budget talks.
He encouraged more investment at the local level, transit system reforms and an exploration of public-private partnerships to promote financial sustainability.
“Just getting things done to try to get through one budget cycle is not working for us,” Topper said. “We have to be prepared for what’s coming.”
State tax revenue can’t be the only resource making transit systems viable for the long term, he said, underscoring Pennsylvania’s fiscal challenges. The commonwealth will keep seeing state budget deficits even if spending doesn’t grow, he added.
“No increases to funding will be sustainable if we don’t get some economic growth happening in Pennsylvania, and in a hurry,” Topper said.
He expects to see some increases in PRT fares, “and I think that’s OK,” he said. “I’m a guy who drives the turnpike a lot. I know what increased fares mean. A lot of my constituents do.”
Under the worst-case proposal that PRT unveiled in March, the agency’s standard base fare next year would climb from the current $2.75 to $3, a seven-day pass from $25 to $27 and monthly passes from $97.50 to $106.50.
Did PRT sound the alarm too late?
Williams didn’t realize the scale of PRT’s straits until March, just before PRT went public with the extent of potential service cuts, the senator said. At a Senate committee meeting in October, Kelleman highlighted the need for reliable transit funding and warned of a funding cliff.
Yet “I didn’t know what the dollar amount was” to plug the gap, nor the reductions that could be necessary, Williams said. “I think PRT thought they were being clear to legislators to their needs without the dollar amount, but I don’t think that was received the way they thought it was.”
Now Williams wishes lawmakers had begun talking about additional funding options a year ago. “The legislature moves slow.”
Kelleman said PRT needed time to determine its baseline financial needs for the next 10 years — the same timeframe under Act 89 — before taking that number public. Further, she said the agency didn’t know what the Shapiro administration would include for transit in his fiscal 2026 budget proposal, released in February, and how that might affect PRT’s calculations.
“They were very well aware of the financial situation of SEPTA and PRT, probably other agencies across the state,” Kelleman said. “ … We wanted to make sure that our numbers were very solid.”
PRT doesn’t make direct budget requests of the governor but shares financial information in part through the state Department of Transportation, a conduit to the governor’s office, Kelleman said. She noted the PRT board includes a gubernatorial appointee.
A PRT memorandum sent to Lt. Gov. Austin Davis in January 2024 detailed a possible “fiscal cliff,” or depletion of operating reserves, by fiscal year 2028, according to email obtained through an open-records request.
The PRT operating deficit would reach about $190 million in 2028 if state and local support remains at 2024 levels, among other circumstances, according to the 2024 memo from Brown. She wrote that a 25% cut in service capacity could be necessary for the agency to remain solvent.
Brown noted that PRT could “stave off the ‘fiscal cliff’” until late 2029 if state operating assistance were to increase by $69 million starting in the 2025 fiscal year, which began last July. But the state did not increase operating assistance to PRT for the year.
In response to questions from PublicSource, a PennDOT spokesperson said the department “was first made aware of PRT’s $117 million operational deficit, and the risk to maintaining current service in early [calendar] 2025, after the governor’s proposed budget was finalized” for the 2026 fiscal year.
Davis’ office did not specify how the lieutenant governor, a former PRT board member, followed up on Brown’s memo from 2024. His spokesperson, Kirstin Alvanitakis, said the administration has communicated with PRT and other transit agencies for more than two years “about the need for increased state support.”
Davis “has been working with the governor and the whole administration to make it clear to legislators on both sides of the aisle that doing nothing is not an option,” Alvanitakis said in a statement. Separately, gubernatorial spokesperson Manuel Bonder said action hinges on the Republican-majority Senate.
Shapiro “has proposed a plan to support mass transit for two years in a row and flexed funding directly to give the legislature time to act,” Bonder said. “The House has passed his plan three times — the Senate needs to get this done and help deliver a comprehensive, bipartisan transportation funding plan.”
Sen. Scott Martin, the Lancaster County Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, did not respond to requests for comment.
Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, said he and colleagues “were a little surprised to see the magnitude of the [PRT budget] shortfall over the next period of years.” Some Republican lawmakers questioned the credibility of PRT’s nine-figure appeal, while some Democrats vented frustration that the agency didn’t offer a more thorough projection sooner, he said.
But Costa doesn’t believe the information’s timing upset the legislative process, he said.
“We’re going to reach the [funding] number we can get consensus on,” he said. He supports more state money for PRT through dedicated revenue or other funding streams — including for other transit operations statewide. Prospects include a 50- to 75-cent fee on package deliveries, excluding products exempted from the state sales tax, Costa said.
But “it’s going to be a heavy lift to try to get the numbers that PRT and SEPTA are seeking,” he said.
“Given that we have a divided legislature, folks should be prepared for anywhere from the full range of proposed cuts and fare increases to not having any at all.”
He is encouraging more regional cooperation among Southwestern Pennsylvania transit agencies.
A tough sell for advocates, business
As state governments tighten budgets, it can be harder for transit agencies to ask for money, said Jacob Wasserman of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Some are drawing more paying riders and fare revenue with redesigned bus networks, he said.
Specifically, running buses throughout the day instead of focusing solely on commuter patterns can help restore ridership, said Wasserman, a research program manager. Strengthening major arterial lines can be effective too, he told PublicSource.
“Reliability and frequency are two major factors, along with safety, that will get [people] to ride,” Wasserman said.
If PRT has a chance, it could come from a confluence of grassroots activism and corporate influence.
Thousands of Pennsylvanians are rallying to boost state money for public transportation, said Laura Chu Wiens, executive director at Pittsburghers for Public Transit. The grassroots group is part of Transit for All, which has seen more than 20,000 supporters send more than 100,000 letters to the General Assembly since March, she said.
“While the situation is existential for mass transit in Pennsylvania, we also have the most visionary and practical response — and the most organized constituency statewide — that we’ve ever seen,” Chu Wiens said.
The most effective advocates for transit are often major businesses arguing for workforce transportation, said Kevin Corbett, a former president and CEO of New Jersey Transit. That representation can include large employers helping transit agencies compete for public money.
“If you’re the head of a transit agency going around with a tin cup — some people get it more than others, but the public isn’t going to be overly sympathetic” to you, said Corbett, now a senior fellow at the Rutgers University School of Engineering.
In the Pittsburgh area, Allegheny Health Network and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development are among those chiming in for transit. More than 20% of hospital workers use public transit to commute, with Black employees four times as likely as white employees to use the resource, Dr. Mark Rubino told a Senate Democratic committee in April.
“Public transit plays a crucial role in facilitating access to health care, especially for economically vulnerable populations and riders with disabilities,” said Rubino, president at the AHN Forbes and Allegheny Valley hospitals.
“When patients miss appointments, their health can suffer, or they can end up requiring urgent care because small health issues become bigger ones without anyone noticing,” he said in prepared testimony.
Before the same committee, Allegheny Conference Vice President Dan Alwine called transit a critical mechanism for bolstering workforce mobility and the regional market.
“Businesses have choices. They can invest in places that are ready to grow with them — or they can go elsewhere,” Alwine said in his written remarks. “We have the talent, the vision and the assets to compete. But we need the infrastructure — and the policy decisions — to match.”
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 story was fact-checked by Ember Duke.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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