Pa. House GOP leader says state’s transit agencies should privatize

• By Tom Riese/ WESA

The state’s Republican House leader says transit agencies in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should consider privatizing some services to become more sustainable.

State Rep. Jesse Topper (R-Bedford/Fulton) suggested in a memo to colleagues this month that Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority could outsource bus operations to save money. The agency faces large deficits and possible service cuts — problems also faced by the struggling Pittsburgh Regional Transit system.

“We cannot continue to put Pennsylvania taxpayers on the hook for filling the budget hole of a transit system in crisis,” Topper wrote, adding he understands “the critical nature of providing mass transit to our major cities in Pennsylvania.”

And while Topper has singled out the Philadelphia-area system for changes, he told reporters Wednesday that any public transit agencies facing strain, including PRT, could learn from the private sector too.

“We need to ensure that they’re doing everything they can to be sustainable and that we’re encouraging new and innovative ways to make that happen,” Topper said in his Harrisburg office. “The same old, same old is clearly not working.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a $40 million hike for PRT in the coming year’s state budget, though Pittsburgh leaders say the agency needs at least $100 million to avoid a crisis. (SEPTA, meanwhile, says it needs more than $200 million to avoid disaster: Shapiro’s budget plan includes $165 million.)

For their part, state House and Senate Democrats unveiled their own proposals to save public transportation: add a tax to ride-share programs like Uber or Lyft or increase car rental fees to provide additional revenue. Allegheny County state Sen. Lindsey Williams and state House members Aerion Abney and Jessica Benham are behind those ideas, which Democrats are calling the “Transit for All PA Funding Package.”

“These sustainable investments in our systems will pay dividends for generations to come” and “[builds] on Governor Shapiro’s proposal to increase the allocation of existing sales tax,” the memo’s sponsors wrote.

Topper said Wednesday he has yet to review the Democrats’ proposals. But he said the state may not be able to keep increasing budget allocations for transit in the years to come:

“When that happens, what are our other alternatives?” he asked.

Hiring third-party bus operators would be the “minimum” transit systems could consider, Topper wrote in his memo to colleagues. But privatizing even that one element, he wrote, could create savings “while finding efficiencies and innovations that only the private sector can bring to bear.”

A spokesperson for Pittsburgh Regional Transit said that the agency has no interest in privatization, and that history showed it was a bad idea.

“Privatized transit prioritizes profitability over accessibility, equity, and community service,” said Adam Brandolph, of PRT. “Public agencies are accountable to the people, not shareholders, and are more likely to maintain unprofitable but essential routes that serve low-income or underserved communities.”

Brandolph pointed out that the state created PRT — then the Port Authority of Allegheny County — in the 1950s precisely because for-profit operators had filed. The move was needed “because 30-plus private entities that operated various components of public transit services were either bankrupt or on the verge of bankruptcy and dissolution.”

“Privatization of transit services did not work in the 1940s and ’50s,” Brandolph said. “And it will not work in 2025.”