A few months ago, my girlfriend noticed something: At a bus stop on South Dallas Avenue, just a block from our house in Point Breeze, someone had posted a bus schedule.

The "schedule" was only a strip of paper, printed on a standard computer printer and cropped with ordinary scissors. It listed only a letter (signifying which bus) and a time (when the bus passed this stop). A stranger, probably one of our neighbors, pasted this timetable to a "no parking" sign with Scotch tape.

Total cost: about 10 cents.

Total worth: priceless.

The Port Authority has long been threatening drastic cutbacks, the kind that would effectively turn Pittsburgh into a ghost town. Full-time riders like me are grateful for the bus; our livelihoods depend on its existence. We understand the budgetary problems, the need for drink taxes and higher fares. We're just grateful that lines still run to work and home and the 28X still takes us to the airport. We've enjoyed the various marketing campaigns, such as the multilingual "Welcome to the Neighborhood" proclamations on the buses.

But our public transit is still an awkward business, and the Port Authority often resorts to odd solutions.

In Point Breeze, the 71 and 67 lines are usually on time; when I lived in Lawrenceville, the 91A was always late, if it came at all. Most bus lines fall in the middle -- generally late but mostly dependable.

The real issue is that new bus-riders never know when the next bus is scheduled to arrive, nor how the routes work. There is no table posted, no paper-schedule dispenser for waiting travelers, no explanatory map. If you call the Port Authority (412-442-2000), you may wait 10 minutes for someone to pick up. The authority's call center is understaffed; one operator once told me that there were only five of them at work. Although they're friendly and helpful, the bus may arrive before one of them has a chance to pick up.

The Port Authority has sometimes teamed with technicians at Carnegie Mellon, who have experimented with the "Let's Go" automated service and, currently, a text-based schedule-finder for cell phones. Voice recognition software is a remarkable technology, but the service was mostly relevant only to Oakland riders. And I, for one, have never gotten the text service to work. These projects are interesting, but they feel like an afterthought -- a whimsical student project instead of a foolproof solution.

The Port Authority insists that every schedule is offered on their Web site (portauthority.org), but most riders using public transit don't carry BlackBerrys wherever they go. In my experience, the Port Authority's Web site often crashes, citing a "server error," so even if you have taken the time to look up your particular route (and only a seasoned rider can efficiently track this down), the system might not even work.

For regular riders, this is frustrating, but for visitors from out of town, using the bus is an impossible task. The call numbers make no sense; maps and schedules are nonexistent; drivers can be friendly and helpful, but they aren't always.

This wouldn't be so embarrassing if other cities weren't so easy: It takes about 1 minute to figure out the Washington Metro system. New York's subway might seem loud and chaotic, but it's fast and logical and runs 24 hours. The real kicker: Los Angeles has a remarkable public bus system, which is simple to figure out, runs every 15 minutes, and travels everywhere. If Los Angeles can offer quality mass transit, facile even for tourists, why can't Pittsburgh?

We can cut routes and dig "T" tunnels as much as we want, but the faster a new rider can learn how to use the bus, the better the Port Authority will look. And the best solutions are the simplest: Post schedules at enclosed bus stops. Create maps that detail a route's destination. I know that times are tough, but why can't the budget be shifted to hire more phone operators, so that when rookies call for suggestions and schedules, they get to a human more quickly?

Thanks to the mysterious schedule on South Dallas, I always knew when the bus was slated to arrive. Even when the bus was tardy, the schedule was calming, because at least I knew it was late. There was no reason to call or search for a wireless connection.

Pittsburgh will always have trouble with mass transit, because the high hills, the tiny neighborhoods and the tangled highways will forever pose problems.

Again, I'm grateful the bus system exists at all. But the Port Authority doesn't need invasive surgery, just a few stitches. The less helpless riders feel, the more they'll want to ride, and that's good for everybody.