Sewickley's bus route 14, which PRT has pegged for elimination, fuels the region

On a sunny March afternoon, a blind woman walked up to a bus stop on Sewickley’s Beaver Street, guided as much by her white cane as her spunky 6-year-old daughter.

Kong Lee takes Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s bus route 14 several times a week to pick up the youngest of her four children, Paloma, from a half-day kindergarten program at St. Stephen’s Church in Sewickley.

She doesn’t know what the pair will do if Pittsburgh Regional Transit eliminates route 14, one of 41 lines on the chopping block as Pennsylvania’s second-largest transit agency looks to plug a massive — and growing — budget deficit.

“They need to spend their money a little more wisely,” said Lee, 43, of Leetsdale. “Maybe PRT can pay for my Uber rides, what do you think?”

Pittsburgh Regional Transit last month pitched drastic changes — including steep, widespread service cuts — to address what it said is a huge budget deficit and insufficient state aid.

The proposed service reductions, which would be the agency’s largest rollback in a decade, would eliminate the transit agency’s light-rail Silver Line and 41 of its roughly 100 bus routes.

It also would end all service after 11 p.m., spike rates for the elderly and disabled for the first time in 12 years and reduce service by at least 30% on 34 other routes.

State funding is at the heart of the problem.

The agency is facing a $100 million deficit in 2026, CEO Katharine Kelleman has said. The shortfall is projected to swell to $1.8 billion over the next 10 years.

“Pittsburgh Regional Transit has a deficit,” Kelleman said. “This is not new. But this is critical.”

The agency’s board has not voted on proposed cuts. A monthslong public comment period opened March 31.

Public transit helped build Quaker Valley communities

The pandemic knocked a deep dent into public transit.

Ridership on U.S. buses, trains and light-rail systems dropped 81% from 2019 to 2020, causing nearly all agencies that report to the Federal Transportation Agency — 97% of them — to slash services.

PRT served more than 64 million riders in fiscal year 2018, data shows. By 2021, the number was less than one-third of that — around 20 million. Last year it clocked in at 33.2 million.

The ridership plunge also hit the 14, which PRT has dubbed the Ohio Valley line.

When the pandemic hit, the route dropped to 656 weekly riders from 1,368 riders a year earlier, PRT data shows. Last year, ridership again dropped — and remained less than half of what it was pre-pandemic.

“Very rarely do I see people standing, waiting for the bus,” said Edgeworth police chief John Burlett, whose small municipality offers just six bus stops. “But who’s it going to hurt? The people who have no other choice.”

Sewickley — and many of the communities that surround it — owe much of their existence to transportation.

Native Americans walked hunting trails near Sewickley before colonists started settling there in the late 1700s, according to Amanda Schaffer, executive director of the Sewickley Valley Historical Society.

But, the town only developed into what it resembles today when trains arrived a century later. By 1860, seven years after the railroad reached Sewickley, the newly incorporated town was home to nearly 1,600 residents.

The town’s walkable business district flourished thanks to trolleys and street cars, Schaffer said. By the 1920s, decades before Pittsburgh’s post-war automotive boom, Sewickley boasted multiple car dealerships, gas stations and mechanics.

PRT’s bus route 14 — which runs from Ambridge to Pittsburgh’s North Shore — is part of the area’s transportation history, Schaffer said.

“I don’t know how much Sewickley benefits from the bus — but I know there are people who work here who do use it,” she said. “The workers and the hospital visitors? That’s where you’ll see the impact with the lack of a bus line.”

Representatives from the Heritage Valley Health System, which runs the hospital on Sewickley’s Broad Street, did not return an email or phone call seeking comment.

Others are hesitant to sound the alarms.

From Feb. 6 to March 12, Glen Osborne closed parts of Beaver Road for inspections. Bus route 14 detoured to Ohio River Boulevard.

“Nobody called me and had any complaints that people didn’t have bus service in Glen Osborne,” borough secretary Diane Vierling said. “The impact on local residents in our area isn’t severe.”

Working class impact

Wealth skews perceptions of public transit in the Sewickley area, many people told TribLive.

Western Allegheny County has some gilded edges. The median household incomes in Edgeworth and leafy Sewickley Heights topped $200,000 in 2023, nearly three times the national figure, census data shows.

But, other communities sitting on the Ohio River’s banks are decidedly working-class.

Sewickley’s most recent median household income was $71,922, below the national figure of $80,610, census data shows.

Nearly one in five residents in Ambridge, the Beaver County town where bus route 14 starts its trek into Pittsburgh, live in poverty. That’s higher than Pennsylvania’s average of about 12%.

And, in Leetsdale, more than one in every 10 units that house the borough’s roughly 1,100 residents can be found in Leetsdale Manor, a high-rise featuring 70 low-income apartments for senior citizens and individuals with disabilities.

Some of the apartments are subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“They are the ones who use public transit daily — to get to the supermarket, businesses, the doctor’s office,” said Leetsdale Councilwoman Maria Napolitano, who moved there more than 10 years ago.

The council president said her husband, who commutes daily to a banking job in Downtown Pittsburgh, also represents a large portion of Leetsdale residents.

“Pretty much everyone who makes a wage commutes into Pittsburgh,” she said. Losing the 14 bus route “is just going to be devastating.”

Others commute locally. Ambridge resident Jean Clady is one of about five employees at Safran’s Supermarket who ride the bus regularly.

The only other supermarket near Safran’s, which sits in the heart of Sewickley’s business district, is a 30-minute bus ride over the Ohio River and into Moon, near Robert Morris University.

“I don’t have a problem if they want to cut the service a little bit,” said Clady, 60, of Ambridge, a 12-year Safran’s veteran. “I wouldn’t have a problem if they reduced the service — or even increased the fare — but, if it wasn’t here, we’d have to catch the Uber.”

Transit isn’t just an issue in Pittsburgh.

Each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties operates a transit program and 38 of them have fixed-route bus service, said Christopher Sandvig, executive director of the transit advocacy group Mobilify Southwestern Pennsylvania.

“These folks who are your baristas, your dry cleaners, your cleaning crews, all of these folks are using public transit to get you your latte,” Sandvig said.

“Pittsburgh is always worried about losing people, about young people moving away, about attracting new talent,” he added. “And you can’t do that without a transit agency.”

Sarah Davies also rides bus route 14 into Sewickley. She works two to four days a week as a reference librarian at Sewickley Public Library.

Davies said she, too, is not alone. Many in the library’s 11-town service area — from Glenfield and Haysville to the Beaver County line — rely on public transit.

“We are lucky to be in a walkable neighborhood,” said Davies, 39, of Ambridge. “But that route is always on the chopping block.”

Uncertain future

Pittsburgh Regional Transit said it needs $117 million from Harrisburg to keep its buses and light-rail cars running.

But, State Sen. Devlin Robinson, the Bridgeville Republican who represents the Sewickley area in the state capital, said he “would caution against putting a price tag on anything.”

“I don’t know what we’ll settle on come June,” Robinson said. “But I know I’m going to go to the table for PRT as hard as I can.”

Robinson said he’s been “hearing from a lot of constituents who rely on the PRT system.” He stressed, though, that it might be too early to propose measures like Act 89, the 2013 measure that provided transit agencies with a decade-long flow of state funds.

“We don’t want to put a Band-Aid on this situation,” Robinson said. “We want to make sure we get PRT … as healthy as it can be.”

Rodney DeCubellis was still driving 34 years ago when he started commuting from his native Ambridge to Pittsburgh to work at a U.S. Postal Service facility on the city’s North Side.

Two years later, he started riding Port Authority buses when Retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease causing progressive vision loss, rendered him blind.

“I used to stand on the bus because there was no room from Sewickley to Pittsburgh,” DeCubellis said.

The crowds started to thin over the years. Then, covid hit.

On a recent Tuesday, the Beaver County man, white cane in hand, stood alongside just two or three other people waiting to board PRT’s 14 bus at a park-and-ride near downtown Ambridge.

His 7:47 a.m. departure ensured he’d get to work by 9 a.m.

“I’ve been riding this bus about 32 years,” he said. “If they cut it, that would be really tough … I’m not planning to retire yet. But, that could do it.”