Pittsburgh Transit Advocates Press State Sen. Devlin Robinson On Budget Funding

By Chris Potter, Pennsylvania Capital-Star

August 28, 2025

The already long-overdue state budget and a related impasse over state transit funding is already causing massive service disruptions across the Philadelphia region. Demonstrators in Pittsburgh came to state Sen. Devlin Robinson’s district office in Bethel Park Tuesday with a simple message: Don’t let it happen here.

Or as Laura Chu Wiens, the executive director of Pittsburghers for Public Transit put it: “Pass the damn budget with more money, not less.”

“ The cuts [that] are devastating lives and the economy and sporting events in Philadelphia are foreshadowing the cuts that we are about to see enacted here,” she said during the rally. “All of it is preventable.”

Pittsburghers so far have been spared the transportation nightmares being experienced in Philadelphia, but that could change: Pittsburgh Regional Transit has announced plans to raise fares and cut service by 40 percent next February if it doesn’t get the state funding it needs.

And as speakers pointed out Tuesday at the demonstration, many of those cuts would either cancel or drastically reduce service in the 37th Senate district represented by Robinson.

The second-term Republican’s district features a Pittsburgh Regional Transit maintenance garage and routes serving commuters in the southern and western Allegheny County suburbs.

Speakers noted that Robinson’s own office had surveyed constituents on the transit-funding issue, and found that 9 in 10 people favored investing at least $40 million in state funds for the local transit service: Fewer than 1 in 10 did not support additional funding.

Given that, Chu Wiens said, “We ask Senator Robinson: Who do you work for?”

While public transit may be less of a concern in the school districts that make up the 37th district, speakers noted that — as in Philadelphia — students in particular had much to lose if transit cuts happened.

“Our students ride public transportation to receive public education,” said Billy Hileman, who leads the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. “In Pittsburgh, thousands of students will be affected by the cuts that are likely to happen if this is not resolved. … Some students [are] taking two or three buses, and you wanna make it harder.”

Karen Lyons, an activist and Woodland Hills School District board member, said the possibility of transit cuts only added to the uncertainty already being experienced by school districts, which rely on state funding and must sometimes take out loans to cover expenses when it is delayed.

“Students are back in school, but without a budget, schools don’t have the funding they need to educate them,” she said. And if transit cuts take place, “Many students won’t even be able to get to school in the first place.”

“Our state constitution guarantees every child a thorough and efficient system of public education,” she added. “That promise means ensuring that students can actually access their education, and access depends on a reliable public transit system.”

Organizers said a similar rally was being held concurrently across the state, at the suburban Philadelphia offices of fellow Senate Republican Tracy Pennycuick. Along with fellow Philadelphia-area Republicans Frank Farry and Joe Picozzi, she and Robinson are considered the likeliest members of the Republican Senate caucus to be sympathetic to transit riders.

After a round of chants urging “Hey Robinson, you listen to us / Don’t throw transit under the bus,” demonstrators entered Robinson’s district office itself.

As often happens in such encounters, they were told he was in a meeting and unavailable to discuss the issue with them. They spoke for several minutes to staff through an office window: Lyons, for one, said, “The students in these school districts will pay the price for the ignorance and disrespect that these politicians have imposed on them.”

They left shortly after, chanting “We’ll be back,” and passing three Bethel Park police officers who’d appeared at the building’s front entrance. Several of the demonstrators could be seen a short time later, waiting at a Washington Road bus stop for what presumably would be an inbound 36 bus.
In an interview later with WESA, Robinson acknowledged that his office’s survey “told me that PRT and public transit is very important to my constituents, which I believe it is as well.”

But he said Senate Republicans are doing their part to fulfill that mandate.

“The governor sets the ceiling for all the departments’ budgets” when making his original proposal in February, Robinson said — and that proposal included nearly $300 million in transit spending, $40 million of which was slated for Pittsburgh Regional Transit. “And I made sure they got every penny that was requested.”

Senate Republicans sought to do so earlier this month with a plan to take funds from the Public Transit Trust Fund, matching the nearly $300 million proposed by Shapiro to pay for operations instead of the infrastructure projects it was meant to cover. They also proposed withdrawing another nearly $300 million sum to cover the cost of rural roads and bridges in areas that aren’t served by transit.

“That money is sitting idle … and the state will make it back through interest,” said Robsinson. “So why not use it to bail out transit across the state?”

Transit supporters have decried the plan since Republicans voted for it, as it will mean less money for investing in transit infrastructure in the future, in part by dedicating funds to road and bridge projects that have nothing to do with transit.

And they say it provides a brief fix rather than a longer-term source of funding. (Democrats have proposed funding the hike by earmarking a portion of the state sales tax for transit.)

On Tuesday, Chu Wiens decried using trust-fund money as being “like mortgaging your house to pay the bills.” And while she said roads and bridges also deserved more investment, the GOP proposal would not provide a steady revenue stream for doing so.

Rather, it would “make our transit systems more insolvent and less safe” by diverting money “from the existing Public Transit Trust Fund to fund roads and bridges instead,” she said.

Robinson said such moves are necessary to reach a deal. In a legislature that represents both urban and rural areas, he said, “You want everybody to share in the pie. There’s a lot of rural House members and Senators who don’t have public transit in their districts. But they do have a lot of road infrastructure needs to be addressed. “

Voters need to realize that “there are three entities negotiating this budget: the House, the Senate and the governor,” Robinson added. “They’re all pretty far apart.”

Still, he said, the parties involved were meeting, and while he said it was legitimate to worry that Pittsburgh’s transit system could see cuts in February, “I feel pretty good that we are going to get this done before the end of the year.”

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