If you used to take the bus and now you don’t, you are not alone.
As service frequency has fallen, so has transit ridership, but a series of proposals for more funding may turn things around.
A review of the service by Pittsburghers for Public Transit found that overall service on Pittsburgh Regional Transit in “vehicle revenue hours,” or the amount of time buses and the light rail are traveling on routes, has fallen by 37% over the last 20 years and ridership has followed.
“Of course, the pandemic has affected ridership and service provision, but not every transit agency made the decision to cut service as PRT has and continues to do,” Laura Chu Wiens, executive director of Pittsburghers for Public Transit, says.
While Wiens acknowledges that a driver shortage is part of the problem with local service, she cites other cities where the level of transit service was maintained and even expanded – and ridership was also up.
“I think that is an important lesson for us. Your service should not be dictated by ridership; rather ridership follows service. And so when we invest in quality service, riders will be there,” she says.
Pittsburghers for Public Transit held a “legislative round table” on Feb. 20, pulling together riders, members of Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s board of directors, and local, state and federal officials to talk about the need for more frequent bus service.
Ridership on PRT buses has been falling since they were called PAT buses operated by the Port Authority of Allegheny County 20 years ago.
In 2006 just under 69 million commuters rode on local transit, according to the PRT’s 2015 annual service report, which looked at 10 years of rider data. More recent figures show that ridership was about 65 million trips in fiscal 2019, the last before the service was affected by the pandemic.
Ridership in Fiscal 2023, which ended June 30, was still down. Passengers took a total of nearly 38 million rides, which includes all modes of transit: buses, light rail, the Monongahela Incline and paratransit, according to the most recent report.
PRT’s annual service report noted: “Total annual hours of service in [fiscal year 2023] were roughly 15% lower than [fiscal year 2019], prior to the start of the pandemic.”
Most of the county’s residents aren’t within walking distance of transit, with PRT reporting that 48% of them live within walking distance of a stop. And 17% live in a “frequent service area,” where they can access transit “every 15 minutes for at least 15 hours a day and every 30 minutes for an additional five hours a day, every day of the week.”
The report stated that service frequency was down in fiscal 2023 due to a lack of drivers.
The number of PRT drivers has declined by nearly 40% over the last two decades, Ross Nicotero, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union local 85, said during the meeting.
“Nineteen years ago we had 1,600 operators in the budget. Right now they have 1,200 and of those 1,200, only 1,000 are filled. So what’s going on is the front line of the industry, the operator, is getting decimated and crushed every day,” he said.
He added that there were 50 or 60 retirements in the first two months of the year, dropping the level of drivers below 1,000.
The system also needs to be repaired.
Ernest Rajakone, Allegheny County’s deputy chief of staff for intergovernmental affairs, says there is a backlog of about $2 billion worth of repairs in the system, or more than four times the 2024 operating budget of $457 million.
PRT spokesman Adam Brandoff says those needed repairs reflect years of deferred maintenance.
There may be some help on the way.
Rajakone said Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed increasing funding for transit by $282 million statewide, which would add $39 million a year to the $295 million the state already provides as a subsidy for Allegheny County transit. It would be the first increase in state funding for transit in more than a decade, he says.
State funding is vital to the service because riders pay a small portion of what it costs to fund transit.
In its Annual Service Report last year, PRT said the real cost of a single ride was not the $2.50 paid at the farebox, but $12.03, which is down from the pandemic high of $18.42 in 2021 when ridership was at its lowest, but still well above the 2019 cost of $6.34.
Wasi Mohamed, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, says there is also a move on the federal level to provide more funding for transit.
Lee is one of the co-sponsors of the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act proposed by U.S. Rep Hank Johnson of Georgia which would provide $20 billion a year for four years for transit systems operating budgets. Mohamed says that, if the bill is enacted, PRT would be in line for $175 million a year.
“We know how not having that kind of baseline service keeps people from jobs, from family, from medical care, from groceries, from meaningful connections in the community,” he says. “A lack of service robs people of their time, forces them to wait in the rain or snow for buses that only come every couple of hours, and we recognize the disparate impact this lack of service and service reductions have on our black, brown and low-income communities, who need enhancement in service, not service reductions, to help build their lives.”