PPT builds Transit justice every day, every month, every year—and 2025 was no exception.
So what does justice look like for transit riders and for transit workers?
Transit justice begins and ends with all of us at the table—in Pittsburgh City Hall, in PRT’s boardroom, in Harrisburg, and in Washington.
Transit justice is about riders and workers setting the table– making the table large enough to hold all of us and our dreams- and not merely accepting the crumbs.
In 2026, more of you were at the table and set the agenda than ever before:
- You testified at PRT’s service hearings and addressed the PRT Board of Directors around the Bus Line Redesign 1.0 and our transit service quality.
- You spoke up for affordable housing and bus shelters and passing a budget for free transit for all downtown City workers at Pittsburgh City Council and City Planning.
- Over 15 of you from the Mon Valley, the Southern Hilltop communities and transit workers committed to a months-long organizing fellowship, where through intensive study and practice have refined your expertise on the needs and opportunities around transit in your communities.
- As part of the weekly research committee meetings or the statewide Transit for All PA calls, you developed our policy demand for service and state funding, putting pen to paper to make a plan for more transit, not less.
- You met with dozens of City and state legislators telling your transit story, putting forward transit funding solutions and demanding more transit, not less.
- Joined the inaugural Organizing Committee training series, building critical campaign-winning skills in our community.
- You hosted the largest national gathering of transit advocates for a conference on transit skills-building
This year, transit was the defining issue in the state budget fight: state legislators have said never heard more about an issue—ever—than they did this year about transit.
That is because of you.
The Transit for All PA policy package for service growth and expansion—the legislative proposal that you and hundreds of your peers across the state developed and ratified—is the only transit legislation being considered by legislators for the next two years.
Your work has won us all a seat at a table. A table big enough for everyone, and a table big enough to hold our dreams.
That’s the transit justice we delivered in 2025.
2025’s Tangible Transit Organizing Wins
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.” – Assata Shakur
We’re not just committed to grassroots organizing, we are committed to winning what our communities need and deserve. Here are some of the wins you racked up in 2025:
- Averted the most imminent, catastrophic transit cuts in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia’s history through months of rallying, public testimony, participatory research on state transit funding policy, legislative visits, letter writing and more.
- Protected transit access for shoppers & workers at the Waterfront mall (and had the most ruckus press conference this town has ever seen with a bus stop marching band parade)!
- Won free transit passes for all 750 downtown City of Pittsburgh employees through PRT’s new bulk transit discount program, the PRTner pass.
- Conducted bus shelter audits and crowdsourced rider data to help the City identify and install new bus shelters, so riders have a dignified and safe place to wait. These shelters were made possible by the funds that you won in the 2025 City of Pittsburgh Budget- the first ever transit amenities line item in Pittsburgh history.
2025 by the Numbers
There’s no way around it: in 2025, PPT has grown bigger, bolder, and faster than ever before.
To give you a sense of this growth, staff measure the size of our Movement by the number of people in a contact database—in other words, folks who have agreed to be organized around our issues.
Thanks to the organizing prowess of PPT’s local and statewide members, our database contacts have grown an absolutely stunning 72% since December of 2024. That’s just over 32,500 people who joined the fight in 2025. Check out this (awe-inspiring!) graph that charts contact growth over the past year:
Image Description: a graph of red bars showing the growth of PPT & Transit for All PA! supporters: from just over 10,000 in Dec. 2024, to around 45,000 in Dec. 2026.
If that data isn’t juicy enough for you, take a look at these other stats showing this massive growth:
- 350,000+: letters Pennsylvanians sent to their state legislators in support of robust, sustainable transit funding
- 32,500+: new contacts added to the contact database in 2025
- 350: Pennsylvanians who traveled to Harrisburg for a rally and lobby day supporting state transit funding (legislative partners told staff that this was the biggest rally they’ve ever seen at the Capitol!)
- 50: PA Senate districts with Transit for All PA supporters (yes, that means supporters in every single legislative district in Pennsylvania!)
- 100+: attendees at PPT’s 2025 National Transit Advocacy Spring Training (want to join in for Spring Training in 2026?)
- 1500+: members of PPT, thanks to the new, more inclusive membership definition
- 317: PPT members who contributed to our Year-End Member Drive to build new constellations of power
- 41: members who started a monthly recurring dues-paying membership, sustaining transit organizing for the long haul
Most of all, our victory is in our clarity of purpose across so many differences. Our victory is in our smart, committed, caring community. Because the damn fascists are doing everything they can to divide us—by race, geography, by our abilities, by our income, by our nationalities. They wouldn’t try so hard if they weren’t so afraid of us, of how powerful we are together.
In 2025 we built a new constellation of power here at PPT. We’ve won many things, but more victories can and must be on our horizon in 2026.
In sum: cheers to you, to us, and to our collective liberation.