John Beale, Post-Gazette
	Proposed Port Authority fare increases and cuts in weekend services would have a severe effect on Allegheny County?s poor and elderly. This woman, who identified herself only as Joann, said that without weekend bus service she would no longer be able to go to church on Sunday. She?s walking along Spring Garden Avenue on the North Side

Port Authority buses, trains and vans are more than a cheap, convenient, Monday-through-Friday ride to Pittsburgh.

"Transit is a lifeline to town. It touches many people other than commuters," said Mariann Geyer, executive director of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.

So, she said, riders and non-riders alike should be worried that the nation's 14th-largest transit system is proposing to become one of the nation's most expensive transit systems with a $2.50 base fare.

Just as significant, the authority proposes to eliminate service on weekends and holidays, and drop weekday service after 9 p.m. unless Gov. Ed Rendell and the state legislature provide tax money to fill a $30 million budget deficit.

The fare increases are to go into effect about Feb. 1. Service cuts, which include eliminating 70 of 230 weekday bus-trolley routes, would begin in early March.

These changes, combined with cuts in Access program transit service for aged and ill riders, could mean $54 million in revenue and savings, thereby keeping the authority solvent for a while longer.

Consumers would pay more for less service. In some cases, they would have to change their lifestyles to make up for the loss of bus service.

Julie Kroft, 27, a student at Chatham College and a Starbucks employee, depends on buses to get to school and work.

"I don't have a license or a car," she said yesterday, as she stood in the rain in Shadyside, waiting for her bus. If the cutbacks go through, she said, she probably would face the additional expense of moving. Kroft lives in Highland Park, an hour's walk from Chatham's Squirrel Hill campus.

Russell Leming, 28, is equally dependent on public transportation. He rides the bus from his home in Ross to his job at a newsstand in Oakland. "For me this would create an economic hardship," he said of getting to work on Saturday.

Leming said he would have to take a cab. But the $35 round-trip would eat up all his earnings for the day.

Marie Williams, 64, of Garfield, said she is angry with what she perceives as a Port Authority tactic of scaring riders with dire predictions of service cuts.

"It's blackmail. Just raise the fares and be done with it," said Williams, who relies entirely on buses to buy her groceries and get to work.

In her part of town, she said, jitney drivers are her only alternative to buses. Every time the Port Authority raises its rates, so do the jitneys, she said.

Paying a bus fare of $4 or $5 would be painful, but more palatable than the regular threats of deep service cuts, said Williams, who describes herself as someone who lives by the bus schedules.

Stephen Donahue, of a 50-member group called Save Our Transit, said ending weekend service would be disastrous.

He said his anger is directed at the state legislature for dawdling on a dependable funding source for mass-transit systems, which curtail pollution and enable many people to live within their budgets.

"This is the fourth year we've been invited to some sort of hearing to comment on transit funding, but the bills always die. There's no commitment to public transportation in Pennsylvania,'' he said.

A Bloomfield resident, Donahue does not own a car. If all service reductions occur, he said, his life would be more of a struggle.

"I could afford a clunker, but I'd have a hard time affording insurance," said the community organizer with the Thomas Merton Center, a liberal advocacy group.

The Port Authority has said the elimination of weekend and late-night service would cost 500 transit workers their jobs. Even so, no wage cuts for 2,600 remaining transit employees have been broached -- a point not lost on many bus riders.

Vern Peden, 85, who has no car, said he thinks the proposed elimination of weekend service is intended to raise fares without much opposition. He also believes the maneuver is designed to jolt the state legislature into action. "Harrisburg will come up with something, a bailout," Peden said from his Shadyside bus stop.

Another concern is what transit cutbacks would mean to the heart of the city.

Geyer said a study in which the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership participated earlier this year showed 140,000 people converge on Downtown every weekday. Forty-eight percent -- or about 68,000 people -- travel by public transit.

Between 12,000 and 13,000 of those people have no other means of transportation. These are not only commuters with office jobs but students, clerks, housekeepers, restaurant workers and people with business or medical appointments.

Others important to Downtown's economy are suburban residents who ride public transportation for entertainment and sporting events. For instance, trolleys were fuller yesterday because of South Hills residents who rode in to see the Pitt-Boston College football game.

Visitors and conventioneers also bank on transit service, everything from trolleys to Station Square to the Mon Incline for a look at the city from Mount Washington.

Pittsburgh has a sizable senior-citizen population that rides transit for free and comes Downtown to shop and visit, often for nostalgic purposes. "If they don't have an alternative, they will become shut-ins," Geyer said.

PNC and Mellon Financial built new offices Downtown as centers of 24-hour banking operations, partly because of public transit availability.

Of the Downtown clientele, service workers trying to pay their bills may have the most to lose if weekend transit service ends.

"You have folks who clean buildings overnight, the hospitality industry, financial operations. ... They go on round-the-clock and those folks need to be provided access," Geyer said. "You get rid of mass transit and you cut off their link to a paycheck."

Though not as severe, the fallout of transit cuts is important at suburban businesses too, mall managers said.

"They'll affect us but we'll have to evaluate how much," said Jason Heur, Century III Mall manager, where 1,500 people work.

The Port Authority has a park-and-ride lot and bus shelters at the West Mifflin mall, so elimination of service also would affect any number of its shoppers.

"A lot of people come by bus, especially on Saturday," Heur said.

Public hearings on the service cuts and fare increases are scheduled for Nov. 4.

The county transit agency, which last year provided 65.7 million bus, trolley, incline and special Access Program rides, is in a funding crisis for the fourth year in a row. Fares were increased and service was trimmed in 2001 and 2002. One-time fixes eliminated a $20 million deficit last year.

Identical bills introduced in the state House and Senate in June would remove a $75 million cap on the amount of the state sales tax that can go toward public transit.

If the bill passed, it would generate $262 million the first year. With a $63.5 million share to the Port Authority, more than enough money would be available to avoid fare increases and service cuts.

Other bills to help transit systems have stalled in recent years, partly because of concerns of inefficiencies in the Philadelphia area's operations.