Pittsburgh in Dire Need of Dependable Ambulances

Nov. 27—Pittsburgh ambulances break down so often while transporting patients to the hospital that the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services has stopped keeping track.

Ambulances are constantly out of service, parts are limited and the production of new trucks has been delayed years because of lack of funding and pandemic-era supply chain issues, EMS Chief Amera Gilchrist told members of city council during a budget hearing last week.

There have been times where the standard ambulances and the spares were all out of commission and the bureau had to use special event ambulances, which are smaller, to cover routine calls. Including spares and heavy rescue ambulances, the city has a total of 28 rigs.

EMS isn't the only department facing issues with its vehicles. Police cruisers are aging faster than the rate of replacement, fire trucks are on back order and maintenance costs for other aging vehicles keeps increasing.

City officials have estimated that to properly upkeep the fleet, they should be investing between $20 million and $24 million annually.

The 2025 budget allocates just over $6 million to buy new vehicles, a decrease of about $3.5 million from the $9.5 million allocated in the 2024 budget. Budget projections over the next five years show allocations for the fleet decreasing, down to about $3 million in 2026 all the way to about $2.4 million in 2030.

An aging fleet has plagued the city for years now. City council members heard a similar story in May 2023 from officials. Last year, Timothy Leech, the vice president of the local firefighters union said that the fleet was in "dire straits."

At that meeting last year, Chief Gilchrist said that she wouldn't say EMS was in "dire straits," but was "behind the eight ball."

But things have changed since last year.

"To speak frankly, I think the fleet situation is dire," she said last week.

Councilman Anthony Coghill, also a member of the Equipment Leasing Authority, which is in charge of purchasing city vehicles and holding the title, has for many years advocated to increase the budget for vehicle upgrades.

"The root of this problem is the age of our fleet," Mr. Coghill said during a council meeting last week. "We're only putting really a quarter of what we should be putting into it every year for new vehicle purchases. So here we are with an aging fleet and an extraordinarily high cost of maintenance. That's not going to get any better... it's just going to get worse."

During the budget hearing last week Chief Gilchrist pointed to Alabama, where a young girl had drowned over the summer and the ambulance broke down a quarter mile away from the hospital. Paramedics carried the girl on a cot, while continuing CPR to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Chief Gilchrist said it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that something similar could happen in Pittsburgh.

Chief Gilchrist assured city council that no city residents were going without care, but the bureau "constantly has trucks out of service" and the garage where the ambulances are repaired has to "scavenge" parts off old trucks.

"We can't have people dying because a truck can't get there or a truck breaks down," Councilman Bob Charland said during the budget hearing. "It's the same with [the fire bureau]. These are the basic things a city is required to provide. These are not nice-to-haves, these are absolutely mandatory things."

Because of the age of the fleet, many of the vehicles need near-constant maintenance, driving up the cost. The age of the fleet varies between departments; some vehicles, like police cruisers, are only 4 or 5 years old, but because of the almost constant use, the vehicles wear out quickly.

So far in 2024, the city has overspent what they originally allotted for vehicle maintenance, which was about $12.1 million. Monday, city council members approved an additional $500,000 to be paid out to TransDev, the company that manages fleet maintenance, bringing the total contract with the company to nearly $79 million over a six-year period.

"That's an eye-popping number to me," Mr. Coghill said.

The approved $500,000 will likely only cover expenses for October. Jenn Olzinger, the city's chief procurement officer estimated that next month, they'll be back at City Council asking for more money to pay for November and December expenditures.

The city will go into 2025 owing TransDev money; exactly how much will depend on the repairs needed through the end of this year.

"[We'll be] hitting 2025 at a deficit in those noncontract expenditures due to the age of our fleet," Ms. Olzinger told council members last week.

Non-contract expenditures include things such as repairs after the vehicle is in an accident or replacing engines or exhaust systems. Contract expenditures are regular maintenance things like oil changes.

"We'll probably be back here next year asking for more," Ms. Olzinger said.

She said that the city is spending about $500,000 a month just to keep the vehicles running.

The contract with TransDev covers all vehicles owned by the city, not just public safety. For garbage trucks alone, the city has spent over a million dollars on non-contract repairs, Ms. Olzinger said.

The contract breaks down to about $13 million a year for vehicle maintenance.

"It's just so enormous that it makes you a little sick to the stomach," Councilwoman Deb Gross said.

"Almost every department, one of the things they talk to us about is the broken down vehicles," Councilman Bob Charland said last week. "This is not sustainable for us to keep paying this."

The EMS bureau does have five new ambulances on the way, two of which should be available for service in December or January. There is also money in the budget to buy another one in 2025, although it's unclear when those would hit Pittsburgh streets.

When cities across the country received their federal COVID-19 relief funding, many of them used that money to upgrade their emergency vehicles, creating an extreme increase in demand, a shortage in supplies and delayed production.

Chief Gilchrist said ideally, she would like eight more, in addition to the five ambulances that have already been ordered.

Each one costs the city about $575,000, officials said during the council meeting last week. Currently, the bureau has 13 frontline units, five EMT units, two heavy rescue trucks and eight spares.

Buying eight new ambulances would allow the bureau to get rid of the spares, some of which are from 2013 and have "a couple hundred thousand miles" on them, according to EMS Deputy Chief Jeff Tremel.

In the Bureau of Police, things are looking a bit more optimistic.

In August 2023, the city reallocated some of its federal relief dollars to buy new police cruisers. While there have been purchases of new police vehicles, the process of getting them on the road takes longer. The vehicles, once they arrive in the city, have to be upfitted with city specific technology like radios and cameras.

The bureau is "in the process of taking old ones off the road and bringing new ones out," Acting Police Chief Christopher Ragland said. The fleet is "in better shape than than we had been in the years past," he said.

But Mr. Schmidt warned council that this was not the time to get complacent.

"Don't take this as an opportunity to say 'oh we don't need any police cars for a while.' We need to make sure we're balancing that," he said.

He said the city tends to fall into a cycle of waiting, buying a bunch of new vehicles and then having to spend a large sum of money to replace all those vehicles when they age out around the same time.

Though suggested in the past, the city has not put together an annual purchasing plan for its fleet. The city also cannot defer maintenance on any of the older vehicles, because the entire fleet would be "sitting on the lot broken," Ms. Olzinger said.

"We wouldn't be able to service our citizens," she said.

All of the concerns raised by city officials are "going to be even more exasperated because we're putting even less money into vehicles this budget season," Council President Dan Lavelle said last week.

"It's going to get worse before it gets better," he said.

___

(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.