Their anger, disbelief and dread have been heard this week in Oakland and Downtown, the South Side, Mon-roeville and McKeesport. Their words will echo at hearings in McKeesport and Moon, in Harmar and West View and Castle Shannon.

They are the pleas of Port Authority riders -- workers, students, the elderly, the carless -- many of whom will be stuck without alternatives by deep service cuts coming later this year. Their words should be heard in the offices of every lawmaker in Harrisburg.

"This was poorly thought through" ..."People are struggling to put food on the table and reliable transportation is needed" ..."Public transit should be treated like a public utility" ... "It's my only means of transportation" ... "Pittsburgh will be known as the city that was" ... "Politicians are the enemy."

Even so, state officials will unveil pet plans, as they usually do, for economic development in Pennsylvania. There will be grants and loans to spur this industry or that to expand production, add jobs, bolster the economy.

But it will be all for naught if one of the great unsung economic generators -- public transit -- is left to flounder in Pennsylvania. What stronger boost can state government give the economy than helping to get people to work, get students to class, get customers to businesses -- in short, give citizens cost-effective transportation around their communities?

Despite inefficiencies in the Port Authority, which only the agency can address, the Legislature has not done its part to give the dozens of Pennsylvania transit systems the stable and reliable funding they need to move into the future. Gov. Ed Rendell had to shift highway funds, not once but twice, to head off previous service cuts because the General Assembly could not come up with a new and steady funding formula for public transit.

Now the Port Authority (and other systems) must confront deficits by severing routes, laying off drivers and stranding passengers who have come to rely on a network of hopes and promises to get to work. What they will tell the boss we don't know.

What they should tell their state representatives is already playing loud and clear across Allegheny County.

The Port Authority is using this crisis to re-examine and restructure itself -- to wring out waste, right-size service and return employee compensation to the real world. Along the way, people are getting hurt.

But if Harrisburg would do its duty and deliver a dependable transit funding formula, the suffering could be diminished and Pennsylvania would score the biggest economic development coup of the decade, bar none.