Pittsburgh vehicle repairs bust city budget by nearly $600K

Time to search the couch cushions. Pittsburgh has blown through its budget for vehicle maintenance this year by nearly $600,000 and still has a month of repairs to go.

Illinois-based Transdev maintains and repairs the city’s 1,200-plus fire trucks, ambulances, snowplows and other vehicles. The aging fleet has been plagued by frequent breakdowns and the need for significant — and often costly — repairs.

Pittsburgh has a six-year, $79 million contract with Transdev. That includes nearly $8.5 million budgeted this year for routine maintenance and over $4 million for more serious repairs.

But that $12.5 million has already been spent.

On Wednesday, City Council gave preliminary approval to pony up an extra $400,000 for repairs. It’ll face another bill for $189,000 early next year.

Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith, D-West End, abstained.

“This is tough to look at,” Councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, said. “I don’t know what else we can do, but we do have to pay our bill.”

Officials have criticized Transdev for being too expensive, providing incomplete invoices and requiring the city to overpay for routine maintenance costs.

The contract allows Transdev to keep 20% of those overpayments, while the city is reimbursed the rest.

Pittsburgh Controller Rachael Heisler and several City Council members have attacked the payment structure.

Heisler over the summer briefly withheld payments to Transdev as she sought more information and a legal opinion.

Firmin Maurice, the city’s senior fleet manager, told council the $400,000 amounts to about six months of work on close to 400 vehicles.

It won’t cover any work done this month.

“That seems incredibly high, it really does,” Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, said.

Officials for years have complained the fleet is chronically underfunded and prone to failure.

Ambulances have broken down with patients en route to the hospital. Snowplows are routinely out of service during winter storms.

Mayor Ed Gainey’s proposed 2026 spending plan allocates about $10 million for vehicles. That’s less than half of what Maurice has said the city should spend each year.

Maurice said vehicle maintenance costs are so high because the fleet is too old.

“This is just like putting a Band-Aid on a huge bleed,” Councilwoman Erika Strassburger, D-Squirrel Hill, said. “We need to upgrade our vehicles and stop repairing 25-year-old vehicles. That’s going to be the only solution here.”