More often than not, Pittsburgh’s snow-clearing fleet is plowing uphill, according to Public Works officials — and it’s not likely to get much better anytime soon.
At a presentation in front of City Council on Tuesday, officials described the challenges faced by the city’s snow-clearing team.
Beyond the typical difficulties of hilly terrain and often-unpredictable weather, one big problem is the state of the fleet. Public works director Chris Hornstein said the city should ideally have roughly 123 snow-fleet vehicles to adequately handle “what I think residents want to see” in a street-clearing response. Instead, it has 103 snow fleet vehicles — and around a third of those, or 37 vehicles, are out of commission.
“Right now, trucks are very challenging for us,” Hornstein said, though he noted that the department is working with its vendor to address the issue. “We remain cautiously optimistic, but it is a limiting factor.”
The average vehicle age of the fleet is 11 years — and the normal life cycle of a truck is closer to 10 years, Hornstein said. Ideally, he said, the average vehicle would have about five years of service.
But despite the need, the city’s budget for vehicles has shrunk for the current year.
Pittsburgh has so far allocated $7.9 million to the city’s Equipment Leasing Authority, which oversees vehicle purchases and maintenance for city operations, to purchase vehicles across all its departments in 2025. That’s a drop from $14.5 million in 2024, and well below what the city spent in prior years, when an influx of federal aid was available to local governments dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2023 the city set aside $13.1 million for vehicle purchases, after investing $12.5 million in 2022 and $10.8 million in 2021.
But such numbers arguably mask long-term funding problems for the vehicle fleet. In 2021, before COVID aid was available, the city had only set aside $2.8 million for vehicle purchases. And for much of the early 21st century, Pittsburgh was under state financial oversight that limited spending. The money put aside for vehicles rarely exceeded $10 million per year, and sometimes was less than $3 million.
Peter McDevitt, council’s budget director, said that in order to maintain a suitable fleet, the city should really be setting aside $20 million per year — a number no budget has ever reached.
Costs for maintaining those aging vehicles are steep. McDevitt, who also serves as the Equipment Leasing Authority treasurer, said the city spent over $4 million last year on emergency repairs for the city’s vehicle fleet. That’s in addition to the $3 million it budgeted for contracted, normal maintenance costs.
Some councilors argued that the city was paying the price for not focusing COVID aid and other resources on the need for such vehicles.
“This is, again, more deferred maintenance,” said City Councilor Bob Charland. “As we continue to not invest the way that we should, we end up being in the situation that we're in, where 37 vehicles are unavailable.”
Officials critique
Public works officials did push back on claims — circulated on social media and elsewhere that the city has run so low on salt that it has used sand on streets. While it did purchase sand in case it was needed during a period when salt supplies were low, they acknowledged, they didn’t need to use it.
But City Controller Rachael Heisler said the lack of funding for the “rapidly aging” fleet was a lasting problem — one that affects not just road crews but ambulances and other first-response vehicles.
“The fleet needs investment, and that’s across public safety and public works,” she said.
Officials admitted solutions weren’t easy to come by. Heisler suggested that the city “explore relationships with our nonprofit partners” by, for example, calling on healthcare providers to help invest in the ambulance fleet that brings them patients. But in any case, she said, the end of COVID aid and a long-anticipated hike in bond payments meant “we are in for some lean years.”
Councilor Erika Strassburger brought up the idea of working with and paying surrounding boroughs, like Munhall, to help clear snow from Pittsburgh’s border neighborhoods.
“We’re in a crunch right now, and I think we have to use creativity like that, and good government practices like that,” Strassburger said.
Councilor Theresa Kail Smith was less enthusiastic about the idea. She said she was concerned that those boroughs would prioritize their own streets before dealing with those of the city, leaving Pittsburgh streets neglected.
“I think if you want to do these types of things, you better have real answers for people and tell them how you're going to support them and help provide real services to them,” she said.
Kail Smith argued the city should move funds from other areas of its budget to better support basic services like snow clearing.
“If it’s taking money from one thing to buy some of the needed equipment,” she said, “that’s what we have to do.”
Hornstein said that in the meantime, the city can, and has, made some improvements — in part by using a real-time safety system that helps reduce operational costs and sends vehicles in for minor repairs instead of letting problems grow until they require major overhauls.
“‘These things can be done,” he said, “if we're all willing and able to roll up our sleeves and figure out how can we best support our people in the field and make things better.”
