PA: Harrisburg public transit nearing fiscal cliff as Gov. Shapiro pushes for budget deal

The Harrisburg region’s mass transit agency is about a year away from financial calamity, according to its executive director, as Gov. Josh Shapiro lobbies the legislature to approve a boost for public transportation funding.

Shapiro made an appearance Monday at rabbittransit’s bus depot on Cameron Street in Harrisburg, making the case that his proposed transit funding increase in the 2025-26 budget isn’t just a matter of Philadelphia.

“This isn’t just some big city issue,” Shapiro said. “We know how vitally important rabbittransit is here in south-central Pennsylvania, especially for our seniors who need these resources to be able to get around.”

Shapiro’s budget framework calls for an increase to the portion of the state’s sales and use tax that is dedicated to public transit, devoting an extra $292.5 million of tax income to that purpose and backfilling the money elsewhere.

But the governor, a Democrat, has emphasized that he’s also open to other funding mechanisms if that’s what Republicans want. Pennsylvania’s fiscal year ends June 30, with lawmakers returning to Harrisburg this week for the final stretch of budget negotiations.

Much of the discussion around the proposed funding enhancement has centered on SEPTA, which serves the Philadelphia metro region and is the state’s largest local transit agency.

SEPTA, which is facing imminent funding shortfalls and major cutbacks, would receive the bulk of the new funding, given that it has the most ridership. But smaller agencies would also receive a proportional slice.

Rabbittransit would get an extra $5.7 million per year, according to Shapiro’s estimates, bringing its total state funding to $29.3 million annually — a crucial boost given that it is also facing a major fiscal cliff.

“The wheels come off the bus in the 2027 fiscal year, so starting July 2026,” Rich Farr, rabbittransit’s executive director told PennLive.

Rabbittransit operates fixed-route bus service in the York- Gettysburg- Hanover metro area, as well as the Harrisburg- Carlisle metro routes taken over from Capital Area Transit (CAT), which rabbittransit absorbed through a merger several years ago. The combined agency is now formally known as the Susquehanna Regional Transportation Authority (SRTA).

Rabbittransit also runs a paratransit shared-ride service throughout 11 counties in south-central Pennsylvania. This service uses small buses or vans to shuttle senior citizens and the disabled, usually in more remote areas.

Ridership has largely rebounded from the slump that occurred during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Farr said. Shared-ride usage is at 125% of its pre-pandemic level. Fixed-route ridership for York- Gettysburg- Hanover is back to its 2019 levels, and Harrisburg metro ridership has rebounded to about 72% of where it was before COVID, and continues to recover.

But increased operating costs and stagnant public support has strapped rabbittransit’s finances.

“We’re using fixed-route revenue to balance the budget in the shared-ride program, and we have to fix that,” Farr said. Cash flow from fixed-route service can only cover the shared-ride service for so long before it’s exhausted, and raising fares for shared-ride service is likely a losing proposition given that it’s user base can’t afford higher rates.

“That’s my immediate crisis,” Farr said. “Next year, when I run out of fixed-route money, I don’t know what happens.”

The merger allowed CAT and rabbittransit to cut their overhead costs by $11 million, Farr said, but the agency has also had to raise wages in order to retain drivers. A $2.50 per hour pay hike costs $4.5 million per year, Farr said.

Rabbittransit had 617 employees and 435 vehicles as of its last annual report, carrying over 3.3 million riders per year.

“It gets me downtown to where I need to be,” said Lou Diehl, a Lower Paxton township resident who attended Monday’s event with Shapiro.

“That’s why we bought our house where we did, it’s one block off the fixed-route service,” said Diehl, who is legally blind and has been dependent on public transit for mobility most of his life.

Across the state and nation, many transit agencies have voiced concern about a downward spiral. Low pandemic-era ridership forced them to cut services, eliminating routes and increasing the headway time between buses. Riders are reluctant to come back because of poor service, which can’t be improved without a jump-start of funding.

Experience has shown this to be the case, Farr said. Cutting headway times from 30 minutes to 15 minutes for select routes in York caused ridership to jump 18%.

“That shows me that if you give it the service that it deserves, people will respond positively by using it,” Farr said. Rabbittransit would like to do the same with higher-traffic routes in Harrisburg, Farr said, but would need extra state financial support.

“Mass transit drives $5.4 billion of economic activity every single year in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said. “It’s logical. You don’t need some fancy analyst to explain to you that if folks can’t get to work, that employer can’t produce their product, can’t deliver their service, can’t make sure we make lives better,” the governor continued, adding that mass transit is “a major selling point” in discussions with large companies that are looking to move into the commonwealth.

This is the second year that Shapiro has pitched increasing transit’s share of the sales tax. While the Democratic-majority House has moved legislation to do so, the Republican-controlled Senate has not taken it up.

Many Republicans have asked for a parallel increase in funding for the rural roads and bridges that their constituents are more reliant upon, although Shapiro stresses that he has made record progress in bridge repair. Conservatives have also pushed for transit to be funded through a new dedicated revenue stream, rather than taking a larger piece of the sales tax pie.

Legislation to regulate and tax so-called ‘skill games’ — the slot-machine-like terminals that are not under the state’s casino law — and dedicate the revenue to transit was talked about last year, but never came to fruition.

Shapiro indicated Monday that he’s open to any number of options.

“The Senate has made clear that they’ve got different ideas – or they’ve got ideas, I shouldn’t say different – on funding streams, and I’m open to those,” Shapiro told reporters Monday. “And they’ve made clear that they want to do something on roads as well as on mass transit. I’m open to that as well. There’s no reason why we can’t come together.”

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