Over the past few months, there has been mounting media coverage but only modest public anguish over the Port Authority of Allegheny County's latest fiscal crisis. The situation has become an annual event, like changing our clocks for daylight savings time -- necessary, but requiring only a perfunctory response.

Local media have done a good job reporting the more obvious negative consequences that may result from this year's crisis: proposed personnel cutbacks, service reductions and fare hikes -- in addition, of course, to potentially severe passenger inconveniences.

I'm wondering whether anyone besides me feels we've seen and heard this all before. I suspect that, if we retrieved media coverage from last year (or any of the past few years), we'd see the same transit administrators, government officials, riders and advocacy groups doing and saying exactly the same things.

I think it's about time for us to get a handle on the broader implications of this issue and quickly find a way to deal with it, for now and with an eye to the longer term. I believe that we're missing the bus in this situation, particularly as it relates to the more severe consequences of continued inadequate public transit funding on our region's economic infrastructure.

Put simply, our ability to sustain or improve public transportation affects all of us -- whether or not we actually ever board a public transit vehicle. Access to convenient and reliable public transportation is essential for the region's economic health and prosperity for many reasons, some of which aren't typically considered. For example:

Public transit helps maintain the city's central business district and suburban retail centers.

Across the region, public transportation connects workers to jobs, and -- much more often than most people realize -- customers to businesses. (Among those workers in our own area are thousands of "welfare to work" employees who depend on public transit to get to work, job training, education, child care and life necessities like food stores and doctors' offices.)

Public transit reduces traffic congestion, fuel consumption and air pollution.

Public transit supports and often stimulates business development around transit centers. In some cases we've developed businesses and later scrambled to retrofit public transportation solutions in order to draw customers and workers (think of The Waterfront in Homestead and McKeesport's EchoStar developments). In other cases, existing transit connections have actually attracted business (like PNC's FirstSide development).

Not having a long-term public transportation funding commitment means the state sacrifices significant federal funding -- plus hundreds of direct and indirect job opportunities -- for Allegheny County-based projects like the North Shore light-rail extension ($290 million). Without state matches, we also forfeit funds from JARC, the federal Job Access and Reverse Commute program (more than $5 million annually). Particularly in geographically isolated areas, where many public housing communities are sited, it is JARC-funded initiatives that have enabled residents to get and hold jobs.

Additionally, the public transit routes now fed by JARC-funded community transit solutions will -- without JARC -- suffer reduced ridership, making previously efficient routes much more costly to operate.

Based on national statistics, more than 8 percent of Allegheny County's active work force relies on public transportation -- significantly more than in areas like Baltimore, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Portland and Seattle, to name a few. Compared with many other northeastern U.S. states, Pennsylvania's $66.62 per capita expenditure for public transit is modest -- considerably less than in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Delaware, for instance.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation in its 2001 National Household Travel Survey, "households with an annual income of less than $25,000 are almost nine times as likely to be a zero-vehicle household than households with incomes greater than $25,000."

Clearly, for many families living in low-income communities -- about 80 such communities in Allegheny County -- public transportation is a lifeline and not a matter of choice. The same is true for our senior and physically disabled populations. In our moderate and upper-income communities, using public transit is a choice -- a lifestyle choice. In either case, it's a compelling quality-of-life issue and, in both cases, it impacts the economic vitality of our region.

Bottom line: As citizens of Allegheny County, we should be greatly concerned about continued talk -- without action -- on these critical public transportation issues. If the talkathon continues, it will impair the ability of thousands of people to obtain or maintain employment, consume goods and services and otherwise live productive lives.

We'll be ineligible for millions of federal dollars. We'll see our welfare caseloads grow again, jeopardizing our ability to meet federal benchmarks -- and placing still more federal funding at risk. Our efforts to attract business to the area will be ineffective because we'll have to say, "Sure, we have a work force ... but, sorry, we can't get them to you."

It's time to stop talking and start acting. It's time for our state government to assure reliable and dedicated funding of our public transit system, to match federal funding opportunities like JARC, and embrace major expansion projects like the North Shore extension. Otherwise, Allegheny County -- whose economic health is now precarious -- will very probably find itself in an economic death-spiral.