Caren Glotfelty is director of the Heinz Endowments' Environment Program.

Gasoline prices spike above $3 a gallon; American Society of Civil Engineers issues a "D" grade on condition of Pennsylvania's roads and bridges; state and federal budgets for new highways shrinking.

Pick up any newspaper or catch any news broadcast in our region these days and you're bound to get sobering headlines like these. All those barrels of cheap oil, wide-open highways and that pedal-to-the-metal sense of freedom that southwestern Pennsylvanians find in their cars are all just dots in the rearview mirror.

We are now paying more for using our cars and complaining about the ever-lengthening traffic jams, road-construction detours. We are wondering what has happened to the quality of our daily lives.

Please forgive a Public Transit True Believer for saying so, but we couldn't be happier with this spate of depressing motor vehicle news. It's perfect timing to shift all the cocktail-party grousing and water-cooler conversations about car ownership onto a more positive track.

On Friday, a new "Transit Vision" -- long in the waiting but very thoroughly done and full of promise for a better quality of life for all of us in southwestern Pennsylvania -- was released by some leading authorities responsible for planning and public transportation issues for the 10 counties around Pittsburgh.

The 147-page report has enough detail on public transportation issues, ridership statistics and demographic data to make even the most wonkish transit official giddy. But the basic message it delivers to the people of this region -- all residents, not just those who have made taking the bus a regular routine -- is that an integrated system throughout the region that calls for adherence to smart-growth principles is the wave of the future.

The transit study report -- "A Regional Strategic Vision for Public Transportation Serving Southwestern Pennsylvania" -- is what the people of southwestern Pennsylvania need to aspire to achieve. Public transit is the framework for the study, but more individual freedom, not less; and a better quality of life for the region, not less, are the promises inherent in this new transit vision.

As an example, it was not by accident that the setting for the report's release was this year's Smart-Growth Conference attended by hundreds of regional nonprofit and business groups at the Omni William Penn in Pittsburgh.

Thanks to scores of news reports and studies -- the 2003 Brookings Institution report chief among them -- we know that southwestern Pennsylvania has one of the slowest growth rates but fastest sprawl rates of any region in the country. Our increasing decentralization is diminishing the quality of our lives and making us less economically competitive with other regions of the country. As we spread out ever wider, our public transportation systems strain to accommodate and all the infrastructure tied to automobile use becomes more expensive.

Regions around Boston and Chicago have concluded that public transit is an essential component for keeping healthy urban cores, saving people money, having cleaner air and staying competitive economically with other regions where transit is seen as essential to the "good life," not as just an add-on for people who can't afford cars.

It is heartening that our grantees in this study -- the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and the Port Authority of Allegheny County -- are among those who believe this transit vision is the best way to begin a regional discussion on a seamless public transit system that will deliver impressive quality-of-life benefits.

If this vision is integrated into our regional land use and transportation planning, those in the urban core of Pittsburgh, those in the oldest first-ring suburbs and those in communities that extend to the borders of our 10-county region will all benefit.

The transit vision underscores how critically important it is for the region to have a public transportation system that is integrated with development so that it is attractive in terms of cost and environment, and efficient in terms of getting people to where they need to go.

But let's not kid ourselves. Despite all the wailing over higher gas prices and higher gas taxes, most residents of this region are still primarily motorists. Single-driver commuting in Pennsylvania has risen steadily since the 1960s -- at a faster rate than for any state except for California.

Nationally, despite months of rising gas prices, demand is still very strong: 9.1 million barrels a day recorded for last month, a 2 percent increase since January 2004 when oil prices first began to rise.

Our new transit vision strives to win over the gas guzzlers. To do so, eight principles behind the vision have been developed to get us all to appreciate the wisdom of smart growth -- of getting the conversation about world-class public transportation for the region into the fast lane.

The cost of this effort will require a huge regional commitment -- the transit study estimates $9.5 billion if all aspects of the vision are implemented. But the continuation of largely independent transit systems serving low-density developments and the anticipation of business-as-usual development practices that increase sprawl, can only bring greater costs in the long term.

One of the most important principles subscribed to in the report is how much a world-class public transportation system stands to boost this region's economic fortunes. (You can read a summary on three Web sites: www.heinz.org, www.spcregion.org and www.portauthority.org).

The transit vision promises that economic independence can be as freeing a feeling as breezing down the highway with the top down.