This should be the crucial year for the Mon-Fayette Expressway and Southern Beltway. Not the year that these long-running toll-road projects will be finished, but the year it should be decided, once and for all, how to finance their completion.

If the Legislature, turnpike commission and other officials can't do that in 2006, then it will be time to pull the plug on all future work.

A report issued Tuesday by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Urban Land Institute said the cost of the two projects jumped by $1.4 billion in five years to $5.4 billion. That leaves in limbo the Mon-Fayette's forked, 24-mile stretch from Route 51 in Jefferson Hills to Monroeville and Pittsburgh.

Not only was the Mon-Fayette designed to provide fast transportation through the Mon Valley between Downtown and West Virginia, but it was also meant to be a speedy alternative to the interminable backups at the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. Also in jeopardy, if funds can't be found, is the Southern Beltway, which would be a rapid route along the Allegheny-Washington County border to the airport.

Twenty-one years after the Legislature transferred the task of building the Mon-Fayette Expressway from the state Department of Transportation to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, only 35 miles of the 70-mile toll road are open. The first 6.4 miles of the 30-mile Southern Beltway will be completed in the fall.

That much cost $1.9 billion. Finishing the rest will run another $3.5 billion. Highways don't come cheap, and this proves that if you drag out the timetable they only get more expensive.

East Liberty-based CONSAD Research Corp. compiled the report, which said the turnpike's bonding capacity is tapped out and "no other source of significant funding exists at the state or federal levels" to cover the rest of the work.

To make matters worse, Joe Brimmeier, the turnpike commission's CEO, said he agreed with "99.9 percent of the report."

That means it's up to the Legislature to decide if it wants to finish these highways -- and, if so, how. If it can't do that by year's end, Pennsylvania should lay these plans to rest.