NOW IT'S TIME TO DO SOMETHING

What seems an eternity has passed since the Cape Girardeau County Commission decided to look into a way to coordinate public transportation in the county so that everyone -- city and rural dwellers alike -- can find a way to get where they need to go when they want to go.

Since County Commission members began entertaining complaints from rural dwellers about a lack of public transportation services in rural areas some three years ago, the issue has been studied to death. Yet there still is no public transportation system of any kind available to everyone in Cape Girardeau County.

Now, both the newly appointed Transit Advisory Committee and Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority have pretty well echoed the suggestion made a long time ago by a County Commission-appointed ad-hoc committee that said all of the agencies that provide transportation services for specific groups need to better coordinate their services. The advisory committee and transit authority went further, in separate meetings this week, to suggest that the county hire a transit director and spend more money, although it didn't say what the money should be spent on.

The purpose of the advisory committee is to advise the five-member Transit Authority on how to proceed. According to one advisory committee member, formation of the Transit Authority will allow the county to get additional transportation funding, which the committee member said is essential to improve and expand transit services.

The Transit Authority Thursday decided to ask that the county fund a transit director. That is well and good if that's what it is going to take to get the ball rolling, but it would be a shame if progress is delayed any longer during any kind of exhaustive search for a director or while money is sought elsewhere to hire one.

The Transit Authority may find there is no perfect transportation plan within the county's means. But it has the authority to put one together with or without a director, and it is time to do so.

Any plan, after all, is worth trying when there is no plan at all.