Cut, cut, cut. It's what Port Authority officials plan to do, and have to do, to end the yearly budget crisis, a ritual that threatens fare increases and service cuts and lays the blame on just about everyone.

		Related story Full house expected for first transit hearings

The always highly charged public hearings begin tomorrow on the biggest changes yet, a proposal to eliminate 124 of 213 bus routes and stave off a record $80 million budget deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Harrisburg pols do not have that kind of money sitting around for the type of emergency bailouts that have put off fare increases and service reductions twice since 2003 and-- surprise! --until after the last election.

What the state gives to Pittsburgh, it has to give to Philadelphia. Even passing long-sought dedicated funding will fall way short of the nearly $1 billion in "needs" that transit administrators say is necessary to maintain the status quo in fares and service of 70 systems statewide.

Another temporary solution would only postpone the problem for another day, and it would be a much bigger problem than one transit already faces. People, many who can ill afford it, will pay the price again for bureaucratic bungles.

In the end, a handful of targeted routes will be saved or modified. But, as local officials have already warned, drastic cuts will be for real this time and Allegheny County will no longer have the nation's 15th-largest transit agency.

Elsewhere in today's PG, I wrote an article about the overwhelming public reaction to changes and how the proposals might be modified before the authority's county-appointed, nine-member board votes on a plan in March.

At the end of the article, instead of writing about the worst performing bus routes, I compiled a list of the Top 10 based on November ridership results.

Then it hit me.

Average weekday ridership for the Top 10 bus routes was 64,790.

Then I looked at light-rail, where the average weekday ridership for the two main routes was 24,092.

That came to 88,882 rides, or 37.1 percent of 239,405 total rides a day.

Wow! If only 10 bus and two light-rail routes can provide 37 percent of all ridership, why is the Port Authority keeping the other 206 routes?

Besides, the Top 10 bus routes serve some of the poorest neighborhoods and communities while the T serves Downtown, Station Square and the South Hills.

I took the notion a step further.

If every rider paid a flat, one-way $2 fare, as has been proposed, the authority would collect $46.2 million a year from weekday ridership alone. With 50 percent matching state money, weekend service could be free and the Port Authority would be solvent.

Allegheny County could pocket its $25 million annual subsidy to the authority and use the single largest item in its budget for other purposes.

I know what you're thinking.

Has Mr. Know-it-all gone completely out of his mind? Is he off his rocker? Over the hill?

The numbers are enlightening, if for no other reason than they suggest how poorly many of the other 206 routes are performing by comparison.

Tomorrow's first two of nine public hearings on the Port Authority's route-gutting proposals gets under way at 10 a.m. at the Pittsburgh Hilton Hotel. You're more than welcome to listen in.

But come by bus, trolley, incline or paratransit.

Catch 'em while you can.

Losing propositions. Or, I'm having a bad hair day.

Some of the people yapping about losing $290 million in "free" casino money to build a Penguins/multipurpose arena are the same ones who want to turn down $420 million in state and federal money to extend the light-rail system to the North Shore. You can't win in Pittsburgh.

The "scorecard" he helped develop for decision-making eliminates Port Authority CEO Steve Bland's own bus, the 13J Franklin Park, which he often rides to his Downtown office. The 13J averaged 213 people a day in November on 25 in-and-out trips, or fewer than nine riders a bus. Get rid of it.

Although the Port Authority has an emergency evacuation plan drawn up and rehearsed with city police and emergency responders, City Council has voted to waste $589,327 for a consultant to create yet another plan in the event of a crisis. Be prepared to leave by foot, not by bus.

Believe it. A National Safety Council survey found the most common items found in vehicles are an ice scraper (71 percent), flashlight (63 percent), gloves or hat (48 percent), blanket (45 percent) and bottled water (27 percent).

Elsewhere. Toronto officials have consolidated several public transit operations into a regional system called the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority.

Plate du jour. Wanda Shirk, of Ulysses, Potter County, has the Pennsylvania personalized license plate THK 4YSF on her car. Even a cop who wrote a speeding ticket liked it, but she still had to pay, she said.