Here's how I saved the city from a transit shutdown. You can thank me later.

But first, a question: What would happen if you made a turducken with Tofurkey? Would all that meat and anti-meat cancel itself out and create a black hole in your oven? And what would you call it -- Tofurcken?

Anyway: Because of early print deadlines, I had to write my column way in advance. On the principle that if you want the phone to ring, you should get into the shower, I cleverly decided to write about the effects of a transit shutdown.

As you remember, a contract standoff between the Port Authority and its drivers threatened to halt bus and trolley service throughout the city.

I wrote and filed the transit apocalypse column.

By the time I got home, the shutdown had been averted.

Ta-daaaahh! You're welcome.

Still, with all the day-off penance I must do, there's no time to compose a completely different column. So consider this a warning of what could happen in the future -- like the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come in "A Christmas Carol." Hold on to my robe ...

Unless we solve our recurring transit worries, Pittsburgh's rush hour could start looking like Washington's. Except we still have to go to work when it snows.

Traffic is so dire in D.C. that commuters wait at bus stops for complete strangers to pick them up. The strangers will do this because passengers are their ticket to the HOV lanes. The risk of allowing an ax murderer into your car or putting your life in the hands of a tobacco lobbyist bows to the fundamental human need to get to the office before the boss notices you're not there.

Will we see this in Pittsburgh? Not right away. Depending on how long we are without public transit, we may have to work our way through the stages of grief to deal with the loss. We'll begin with denial.

We'll all just get into our cars, one to a vehicle, and converge on the city. The lots and garages will fill up by 6:30 a.m., and drivers will be rolling up to the homeless to ask for quarters.

The watercooler topic, when people finally get to work, will be how much traffic there is all of a sudden in a city whose population is supposedly shrinking.

Sensing increased volume on the roads, PennDOT will close as many as possible.

This will lead to anger.

Parking lots will erupt in hand-to-hand combat as commuters are double-parked, parked-in and, in one or two unfortunate incidents, parked on. Ticketing at yellow curbs, driveways, handicap spaces and within PNC Park will further aggravate a desperate public. Post-Gazette headline: "Garage rage ramp-age."

Sobered by fines, arrests and vicious keyings and seeing no end in sight, commuters will resort to bargaining.

"If I buy you snow tires for that bike, can I ride on the handlebars?"

"If I leave my house at 3 and park in Greensburg, I can take a Greyhound to work."

"I swear, when this is over and I don't have to car pool with Gropy McAshbreath anymore, I will never, ever mutter an insult at a trolley driver again."

By the second week, if the buses don't start running, depression will set in. The city will sink into a funk usually reserved for Steelers playoff losses.

Chartered barges will disgorge crowds of cold, disconsolate office workers at the Mon Wharf, docking beside the yachts of parking-lot magnates. Suburbanites will give up trying to get home during the week and, unable to afford Downtown luxury lofts, will rent lockers in self-storage facilities and literally store themselves.

But in the end, there will be acceptance, and coping. The busways will be opened to traffic. Point State Park will be renovated once again into Point State Parking, and the city will redevelop the Duquesne Incline as a commuter ski jump.

Oh, Spirit -- tell me these are the shadows not of what will be, but of what may be, only. I don't want to have to walk to work. I don't want to sleep on a bench in Market Square. I'd rather eat a pigeon.

Or even a Tofurcken.