City’s police cars, ambulances, fire trucks in ‘dire straits,’ officials warn

The state of Pittsburgh’s fleet of government vehicles is in “dire straits,” officials said Tuesday, including fire trucks and ambulances.

“I can’t stress enough how we are in dire straits,” Timothy Leech, vice president of the local firefighters union, told City Council. “There are real examples of the crisis we’re in, we’ve seen over the past couple months where fire engines have been down … and we haven’t had enough front-line trucks, engines and motors to keep our firehouse up and running.”

If the city ordered a new fire truck today, it wouldn’t be operational for two years because of supply chain issues, Fire Chief Darryl Jones told lawmakers.

Vehicles for police, public works and emergency medical services aren’t much better off, officials said.

“We’re not in competition with our contemporaries here, but our fleet also needs assistance in a big way,” said Phillip Carey, the assistant police chief.

Their testimony came during a post-agenda City Council meeting specifically for Council members to explore the status of the city’s fleet.

Typically after a police cruiser hits 100,000 miles, it is “utilized in a different fashion,” Mr. Carey said. Rather than being used for daily patrols, he said, it will be deployed for short-term special events.

But because of a lack of vehicles in reserve, officers are using some vehicles with 150,000 miles on them, Mr. Carey said.

Council approved the purchase of 60 new police cruisers last summer. But because of inflation and supply chain issues, the department was only able to secure 29 of them, Councilman Anthony Coghill said. Mr. Coghill has proposed using $900,000 in revenue from income taxes to purchase the other 31 vehicles, though Council hasn’t approved that measure yet.

In the Department of Public Works, the majority of vehicles exceed the ideal lifespan for the agency by three to seven years, Director Chris Hornstein said.

“Roughly 10% of the streets division is in long-term parking right now awaiting maintenance,” Mr. Hornstein said of the division’s fleet. “Ten percent of our fleet are literally not available to us.”

The streets division is responsible for maintenance such as snow and ice removal, as well as street resurfacing.

The Public Works department has seen significant work delays because of fleet problems, Mr. Hornstein said. Several mowers were recently not operational, which meant crews had to trim weeds in road right-of-ways by hand, which takes “quadruple the time.” And if the right-of-ways don’t get trimmed, he said, it becomes dangerous for drivers.

Garbage pickup has also been delayed at times because drivers were waiting for trucks to return from maintenance.

“This is inherent waste,” Mr. Hornstein said. “If the vehicle was reliable and ready to run we’d be performing more work and service.”

EMS Chief Amera Gilchrist sounded less alarmed.

“I wouldn’t say we are in dire straits; we are behind the eight ball,” she said.

Trucks have broken down en route to calls and with patients in ambulances on the way to hospitals, Ms. Gilchrist said.

“That’s unacceptable for a city as great as ours,” she said.

EMS is still waiting on vehicles ordered last year, Ms. Gilchrist said, and will be asking for either two new ambulances or three remodeled ones in upcoming budget talks.

During last year’s budget negotiations, the city’s fleet division asked for $24 million just to bring the vehicles “up to par,” according to Brandon Walton, senior manager for the city’s fleet services. It ended up getting $6 million. “This Council is going to have to make some hard decisions,” Mr. Coghill said. “It’s going to be expensive, very expensive, but we can’t ignore it.”

In addition to an initial investment to bring much of the fleet back into use, Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said the city needs a consistent plan to avoid paying large sums of money just to keep things running. It’s not clear where even such an initial investment might come from.

“It’s all a matter of smart management of the fleet,” he said. “And because of the lack of funding, we’re not doing it. We’re duct-taping and bubble-gumming things together.”