Weekend and weekday after-hours transit service is as important to major employers such as PNC Bank as it is to bus rider Susan Etters, a blind woman from Sewickley.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette What happened to the money? Herbert Jones, of Niagara Street in Oakland, shakes his finger as he asks the question of the Port Authority during yesterday's public hearing on the transit agency's fiscal woes. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Lawmakers mostly a no-show at hearing Financial problems threaten T's North Shore extension

Both say they would find themselves in dire straits if the Port Authority carries out a proposal to slash service drastically and impose a new round of fare increases.

PNC Bank invested $150 million to build a new Downtown banking center where half of its 6,500 employees depend on buses and trolleys to perform financial services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It's a major factor why PNC located there," its manager of government relations, Tom Lamb, testified yesterday at a Port Authority hearing on its proposal to institute the biggest fare hikes and deepest bus-trolley-paratransit service cuts ever. "It's critical to our future."

PNC not only built next door to the First Avenue light-rail station, but it also contributed $4 million toward construction costs.

Etters, 52, spends $660 a year for a transit pass. She and her seeing-eye dog, Forbes (after Forbes Avenue), board the 16A bus at 6:45 a.m. and transfer to a 501 or a 71D Downtown to get to Oakland at 7:45 a.m. in time for her job as a switchboard operator, she said.

Only the 501 bus is proposed for elimination, but she said she'll become a virtual shut-in if the authority closes the system at 9 a.m. weekdays and cuts out all Saturday, Sunday and holiday runs.

"I use buses to get to my job, to go shopping, to get my medication," she said. "My life depends on the bus."

Port Authority officials heard from more than 150 people during the all-day hearing at the Sheraton Station Square. Local lawmakers and state officials were invited, too, but only a few showed up.

Blaming chronic underfunding by the state, the authority is proposing to raise the base fare by a record 75 cents, to $2.50, Feb. 1 and make massive cuts in buses, trolleys, the ACCESS paratransit system and Mon Incline on March 6.

It claims the moves are necessary to satisfy a $30 million shortfall in this year's operating budget and to start addressing a projected $45 million shortfall for the 2005-06 fiscal year that starts eight months from now.

Consequently, the Port Authority, along with small transit agencies and the Philadelphia-based Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority are calling upon the state Legislature to approve long-term, dedicated funding. They say it must be done by the end of the month when the present two-year legislative session of the General Assembly concludes.

"We have only until midnight Nov. 30 to get our lazy and indifferent lawmakers to secure the dedicated funding that public transit needs," said Stephen Donahue, an organizer of Save Our Transit, an activist group that sponsored a Downtown rally and march to the hearing.

"It's Crunch Time" read fliers distributed by the small but feisty group. "For years, public transit has been bleeding to death and our lawmakers have done absolutely nothing."

Port Authority Chief Executive Officer Paul Skoutelas and several veteran board members heard pretty much what they expected. They heard similar complaints when fares were increased in 2001 and 2002, and again in May 2003 when a $10 million, one-time special state subsidy postponed what would have been the third fare increase in a row.

"This is a difficult day for all of us and, most of all, for our customers," Skoutelas said. "Rather than having to reduce service, we should be holding hearings on how to expand public transportation."

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Members of "Save Our Transit" march up Third Avenue Downtown on their way from the State Office Building to the Sheraton Station Square for the Port Authority hearing. Click photo for larger image.

Here is a sampling of what other people said during the oral presentations, which will be combined with letters, e-mails and private testimony to create a public record about the impact of higher fares and reduced bus-trolley service:

Ed Nassan, president of Local 57, Hotel-Restaurant Employees, said 90 percent of the union's members depend on transit to get to and from their jobs, night and day, weekdays and weekends. "This will be devastating."

Barbara McNees, president and CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, said she and representatives of her organizations will be in Harrisburg every day that lawmakers are there for the rest of the month, helping the Port Authority lobby for fixed funding. "Now is the time to provide for mass transit needs, not with stop-gap solutions," she testified.

Dr. Charles Blocksidge, vice president, Community College of Allegheny County, said service cuts would mean fewer students would have access to its four campus and seven college centers, hurting enrollment and finances when CCAC already faces its own funding problems. "Transit is indispensable" for many of its 30,000 students, about 1,800 of whom are disabled or have special needs, with no other way to get to class without buses, trolleys and paratransit.

Alik Widge, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate student in robotics, spoke on behalf of 3,000 colleagues, staff and workers whose classes and work take them beyond 9 p.m. weekdays and who are at school Saturday and Sunday. "We can't afford to lose any more young people," he said.

Patrick McMahon, president-business agent, Local 85, Amalgamated Transit Union, representing 2,700 bus-trolley workers. "It's time for our political leaders to address this growing crisis," he said. "We must abandon year-to-year Band-aids for a problem that needs a permanent solution."

Tim Stevens, president of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP, said many people would have difficulty getting to work if the proposed cuts and fare increases are implemented. He suggested the proposals might encourage the working poor to move to the welfare rolls. Local and state officials "must find a way to solve the current fiscal crisis," he testified. "Mass transit is not a privilege; it is a public right."

Becky Burrell and her boyfriend, Brad Kost, who both have spina bifida, held hands as they sat in the back of the room in their wheelchairs. They said they would not be able to see each other regularly if the proposed cuts are made. They both use ACCESS, the Port Authority's door-to-door, advanced reservation paratransit service.

Jim and Linda Davis, both with special needs, talked of hardships they'll face. "I haven't heard about any concession from Port Authority workers," Jim Davis said. "I hear it every day with US Airways employees."

George Pry, president of the Art Institute, which has been in Pittsburgh for 85 years, said 2,800 of its 4,800 students attended the Downtown campus. "Most cannot afford to buy cars or the daily parking," he said. "The long- and short-term effects are scary. Prospective students will choose other cities."