The Lehigh Valley’s mass transit system has been trying to keep up with the region’s growth over the last decade, but it faces significant cutbacks if it doesn’t receive additional funding from Harrisburg.

LANTA on Tuesday released a draft budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts July 1, that doesn’t include any extra money from the state. It instead includes a 20% service cut, a 25% fare increase on fixed routes and a 25% fare increase on shared ride services for seniors.

It also includes an unfunded deficit of approximately $8 million on the bus system and an additional $3 million for shared ride services.

Cuts could include half of service after 7 p.m. daily, half of Saturday service and 75% of Sunday service. Service to northern destinations in the Valley, including the Slate Belt, Walnutport and Slatington, could be eliminated. LANTA said specific plans have not been finalized, but any cuts would begin in January.

LANTA Executive Director Owen O’Neil said the agency had been approaching this point for a few years. The state transit funding level hasn’t increased since Act 44 in 2007 and capital projects were last funded by Act 89 in 2013.

Additional funding during the COVID pandemic helped extend LANTA services, O’Neil said, but that has finally run out.

“We’ve been kind of working and advocating along with the other transit systems around the state because they are kind of in the same boat,” O’Neil told The Morning Call on Tuesday. “They might just be getting to this point next year instead of this year, but we’ve been working over the last couple of years, advocating for a new funding bill. We knew that if it wasn’t for the COVID dollars, we would have been in this situation two years ago.”