Here is what a transportation funding crisis looks like.

Residents of more than 50 Allegheny County towns and Pittsburgh neighborhoods have no bus service. Those who live in 60 other communities will have far less service than is available today. Bus riders will pay at least 25 cents more for each trip, while those on the Port Authority's Light Rail Transit line will pay $4 each way.

Roads leading into Downtown, where nearly half of the work force relies on transit, will be clogged with cars, stretching commuting times. The "full" sign will be out at many parking garages, where all-day rates could be jacked up.

This gloomy plan put together by the Port Authority of Allegheny County was necessary because the Legislature has failed to come up with an alternative to the revenue it projected would come from tolling Interstate 80. When the Federal Highway Administration rejected that idea, it blew a $472 million hole in statewide transportation funding, including $27 million that would have come to the Port Authority.

State Sen. Kim Ward, a Republican from Hempfield who says Pittsburgh and Philadelphia should solve their own transit problems, wants to turn the plight of the Port Authority into an us-versus-them battle. Not only is her view misguided, but it's also remarkable coming from someone whose township (pop. 40,000) mooches off the state for police protection.

Not long ago she might have had a point, but the authority has done plenty lately to get its financial affairs in order. It underwent a systemwide revamping to make service more efficient and less costly, and employees approved labor contracts that saved $93 million on pensions and health care. The county itself enacted a controversial drink and car-rental tax to provide its share of transit funding.

But there is only so much that can be done locally. The impact is obvious at the Port Authority now because it had to assemble its worst-case scenario to meet legal requirements for public notice in advance of any potential rate hikes and service cuts.

Funding for mass transit, though, is only one piece of this large puzzle. There is a need across Pennsylvania, in rural and urban areas, for everything from routine maintenance to complete rebuilds on hundreds of miles of roads and bridges. This is a statewide problem that demands a statewide solution, and it must come from lawmakers like Ms. Ward and others in Harrisburg.

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