Denise Blackwell walked out of her Prospect Terrace apartment at 7:57 Friday morning carrying her sleepy son.

The WorkLink van was due in three minutes and she had to get De'Sean, 2, to day care so she could get to work.

The WorkLink Community Van Service is the only form of public transportation that goes near the Prospect Terrace public housing community in East Pittsburgh.

But without legislative action to approve $3.5 million in matching funds by June 30, $4 million in federal funding for van service to the region's poorest workers will go away.

A delay in the vote will eliminate the rides the poor need -- the average annual income for WorkLink riders is $18,711 -- to get out of remotely located housing not serviced by the Port Authority of Allegheny County.

Prospect Terrace is a perfect example of the public housing erected in the 1950s, said Bob Grom, the executive director of the Heritage Health Foundation which contracts for the Worklink van. The only way a full-sized Port Authority bus can serve the isolated community, built high on a hill at the end of a twisting road, is to be airlifted in.

The van service runs throughout Allegheny, Butler, Beaver, Indiana and Washington counties using federal transit money through the Job Access and Reverse Commute grant program. While some of the rides allow people to reach public transit from their homes, others, such as the ACTA shuttles in Robinson, allow riders to get from public transportation to their jobs in Robinson Towne Centre.

"When I first moved up here, we didn't have WorkLink," Ms. Blackwell said. She would carry her groceries up a long flight of steps after getting off the bus on the Tri-Boro Expressway.

The programs provide a million individual rides a year.

One of those rides last week, was to get Shiree Johnson's 1-year-old son, Allen Stevens-Johnson, to the pediatrician. Allen was not breathing well when his grandmother, Dottie Johnson, called her daughter at work. Shiree Johnson called the pediatrician in Turtle Creek who said to bring him right in. Ms. Johnson realized the WorkLink van would be coming through soon and told her mother to grab Allen and jump on the van.

By the time the boy reached the pediatrician his asthma had gotten so bad he was sent by ambulance to Children's Hospital where he stayed for three days.

Shiree Johnson, who also suffers from asthma, said she can't climb the hill to her house.

She works for the Urban League in the emergency feeding program and uses the van every morning to reach the East Busway and get to work Downtown.

"I won't be able to get to work. I'll be stuck like chuck," she said. "It's like being in confinement on that mountain. It's a nice little community, it's just that we need the WorkLink."

The desperation of the van riders is nothing unusual to state Rep. Joseph Markosek, D-Monroeville, who chairs the House Committee on transportation.

"We have lots and lots of problems with funding various things," he said.

He said he is trying to pull together a plan that will save transportation for the 1.2 million people who take public transportation every day in the state, and for those who drive over the 6,000 bridges in dire need of being repaired.

He said if something isn't done to save the Port Authority, there won't be buses for people to take when they hop off the vans. He couldn't promise it would be resolved before the June 30 deadline for the job access program.

"This is a huge, huge problem, if we don't solve this it won't be much longer before each and every family in Pennsylvania is effected," he said.