Pittsburgh Regional Transit will receive financial help to boost its services during the 2026 NFL Draft.
“The best way for football fans to get Downtown is on public transportation,” Jerad Bachar, president and CEO of local tourism agency Visit Pittsburgh, said during a transit agency committee meeting Thursday.
The Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau Educational Foundation — a nonprofit managed by Visit Pittsburgh — will provide $350,000 to help cover costs the agency will incur from running extra buses and light rail services throughout the three-day event.
Adam Brandolph, a transit agency spokesman, said Friday he could not say roughly what percentage of Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s outlay for the draft would be covered by the grant.
Officials during Thursday’s meeting provided few details about the public transportation options that will be in place for the draft.
“At a very high level, the plan will include additional trips on certain routes basically from each part of the region during the draft to make sure that we’re prepared for the additional amount of people that we anticipate during those days of the draft,” Pittsburgh Regional Transit Chief Legal Officer Mike Cetra said.
Katharine Kelleman, the transit system’s CEO, said they will be “running every single car we can have out there.”
Officials are expecting between 500,000 and 700,000 fans to flock to the draft, Bachar said.
“We shouldn’t shy away from that,” he said. “We shouldn’t let that number scare us.”
As a point of comparison, the recent St. Patrick’s Day parade drew crowds of 200,000 to 300,000, Bachar estimated.
He said there would be a “really strong, multimodal, holistic approach” in place to get people to and from the draft “in a safe and secure manner.”