Dan Onorato traveled to Harrisburg last week, lobbying legislators to allow Allegheny County to keep, for public transit, a share of either state sales or gas taxes collected in the county.

The county executive wants up to $35 million a year so county money will no longer be needed to provide a local share to match funds from Harrisburg at the rate of $3 of state money for every $1 of county money.

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Currently, the county antes up about $25 million a year to help subsidize the authority, the largest line item in the county budget. That's already more than the county can afford and, Mr. Onorato said, not enough to avoid forfeiting badly needed state funding in the future under the subsidy formula.

While Gov. Ed Rendell and lawmakers argue about how to provide a long-term dedicated source of funding for public transit, Mr. Onorato's wish for local relief has the euphemistic "snowball's chance" of success.

There may be a better way -- an idea suggested, oddly enough, in the Pennsylvania Turnpike's response to Mr. Rendell's request for "expression of interest" to lease the toll road for 30 years in exchange for at least $11 billion to pay for road and bridge repairs.

It's is a "congestion fee," a vernacular for the "vehicle facility charge" specified in the turnpike's proposal.

What?

All vehicles would be assessed a $1 surcharge at turnpike interchanges in the Pittsburgh, Scranton, Harrisburg and Philadelphia regions. The folks who drew up the turnpike's submittal suggested the fee to help transit as part of a highway fund-raising pitch that would be politically palatable to rural as well as urban legislators.

"This funding mechanism could encourage use of mass transit while creating a stable and growing revenue stream for regional transit priorities," the turnpike's brain trust reasoned.

The turnpike's proposal to solve the state's transportation woes notwithstanding, a congestion fee may be an idea worth pursuing, even if it's only a one-way surcharge on vehicles exiting the turnpike at Allegheny County interchanges.

Turnpike statistics show 7,339,752 vehicles exited the toll road last year at the Pittsburgh/Monroeville interchange, 3,683,319 at Allegheny Valley and 3,059,113 at Butler Valley.

That's 14,081,184 vehicles. That's also $14,081,184 that the county could have applied to transit, not quite as much as Mr. Onorato would like but enough to make a dent in the county budget.

Maybe he won't have to kiss up to state lawmakers to introduce an idea tantamount to congestion-pricing strategies in place in the nation's most congested cities. Maybe he'll only need to go to the Turnpike Commission. Or to Allegheny County Council.

There's already local precedent for the "vehicle facility charge" concept.

An extra $4.50 is added to the price of tickets for people who fly out of Pittsburgh International Airport.

The money goes to pay off county debt for building and maintaining the airport.

It's called a "passenger facility charge."

Mae West Bend. Tom Kanhofer, of Shaler, says when PennDOT spent $15 million to reduce the curve and widen Route 8 in Etna and Shaler, "it made one heck of an improvement," but ... .

"It looks like one big, wide, concrete highway, not a four-lane road with turning lanes," he e-mailed. "The new lanes need lane-marker lines painted."

Mr. Kanhofer's assessment is correct; PennDOT acknowledges it.

"We have our contractor on standby awaiting favorable weather conditions to repaint the lines," said Jim Foringer, PennDOT's new assistant executive for construction.

Old buses, new home. The Antique Motor Coach Association of Pittsburgh, dedicated to preserving a piece of transportation history, was forced to vacate its McKeesport location last year.

The new "home" to the antique bus collection, parts and other stuff is Schneider Industrial Properties in Zelienople, "a building much cleaner and more accommodating than we ever thought possible," AMCAP reported in its newsletter.

Kudos to borough officials in Harmony for showing interest and helping to make the move possible.

Elsewhere. China has begun construction of a 2.7-mile, cable-suspended aerial monorail that will be able to transport more than 24,000 people a day across a bay, one of many transportation projects being built for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Plate du jour. While Carol Ferry, of Seven Fields, spotted the Pennsylvania personalized license plate GAS SIPR on a Toyota Prius in Cranberry, Rick Kelly, of Harrisburg, passed along ECO TRIP on a Prius seen near the capital.