The future of public transit in Pittsburgh rests on the votes of state lawmakers in Harrisburg. On Tuesday, members of the state Senate Democratic Policy Committee — Nick Miller, Jay Costa, Wayne Fontana and Lindsey Williams — held a hearing in downtown Pittsburgh to map out a route that avoids sharp public transit cuts and a fare hike.
“Costs continue to rise and we are getting to a point where it cuts along the lines of route reductions, but also eliminating jobs and increasing fares,” Costa said. “The immediacy of getting something done is real right now, more so than it was in the past. It's a more dire situation now than it was six months ago or a year ago.”
The senators heard from a lineup of speakers including Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll, Laura Poskin of Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh, Kendra Ross of Pittsburgh-based tech company Duolingo, and Katharine Kelleman, CEO of Pittsburgh Regional Transit. Together they outlined the need for public transit for local communities and the region’s economy as a whole.
Pittsburgh Regional Transit is headed toward a $100 million budget deficit starting on July 1. To keep up service for the next decade, the agency is asking the state for a $117 million annual bump in its subsidy. Without it, the agency plans to reduce service by more than a third starting next February. That would mean cutting 41 bus routes, along with major reductions to T service and ACCESS, PRT’s paratransit service.
Under PRT’s proposed plan, 19 municipalities and city neighborhoods would be cut off from transit access completely, and no route would have service after 11 p.m. PRT would raise fares from $2.75 to $3, a hike which would make them the fifth-highest rates in the country.
Since opening the plan to public input last month, said Kelleman, “We've heard very strongly from our community. I think in the first two weeks of our public comment window, we received over 2,100 comments from folks feeling very strongly about what this proposed service changes would do for them.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a $40 million increase for transit in the coming year's budget, which would be matched with funds from Allegheny County. Shapiro proposed a similar plan last year, but Senate Republicans didn’t even bring the bill up for a vote.
At the policy committee meeting Tuesday, proponents of the bill stressed the economic impact of public transit.
Pennsylvania’s economy is driven “in so many ways” by Allegheny County and the counties in the Philadelphia area that make up the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority footprint, according to Carroll. While his own county, Sullivan County, “is a very nice county,” its economy “is completely dependent upon, and the revenue that they receive in the Commonwealth is completely dependent upon, the economic success of Allegheny County and the five counties that constitute SEPTA. And you can repeat that for so many of our rural counties.”
Duolingo grew from a startup to a publicly-traded company in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood — and transit is one reason why, said Ross. Public transit is “a key factor in us attracting top tech talent” competing with cities like San Francisco and New York, she said. The proposed PRT cuts are a “topic of significant concern” for the company and its employees, particularly in attracting young tech talent and retaining those who moved to Pittsburgh from bigger cities.
“A lot of them do not drive or decide that they don't want to drive to work, because that's not what they've had to do in those other larger cities,” Ross said. “It would have an impact on particularly our younger talent, who has just become accustomed to not having to have that driver commute.”
Large employers such as Giant Eagle rely on PRT to get a broad swath of their workers to their jobs everyday. At some Giant Eagle locations, more than 20% of workers depend on it for their daily commute, according to Vic Vercammen, the company’s vice president of safety, regulatory and government affairs. Figuring out a bipartisan solution “is necessary for regional growth,” Vercammen said.
Transit for All PA!, a coalition of transit advocates, pitched a package of potential funding mechanisms for public transit. The group proposed increasing the existing Car Rental Tax and Car Lease Tax and a statewide Ride Hailing Excise Tax in addition to the governor’s proposal. According to their projections, the additional revenue would restore transit service across the state to 2019 levels and add 10% more service outside of the transit-heavy Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions.
PRT gets more than half of its revenue each year from the state, but the last time PRT got an increase was in 2013, when the legislature passed Act 89. That law provided more funds for public transit agencies across the state while also funding road and bridge construction for 10 years. But the state let Act 89 lapse when federal pandemic relief money cushioned any funding gaps. Those federal funds dried up last year, leaving PRT to draw down $58 million from its reserves to balance their budget.
To get state funding for transit, Democratic lawmakers have to find common ground with their peers in the GOP, who control the state Senate. Republicans “don't see it necessary to address the transit funding crisis,” Costa said. “They deem it necessary to address transportation funding. When these are coupled together and historically have been, we're willing to be able to do that. But what we need to do is sit down in a room and figure out what a good revenue stream for each might look like.”
