The biggest fireworks display in city history Saturday night helped launch a two-month, activity-filled 250th birthday celebration.

The Downtown sky show was expected to end in the usual way: jammed buses, trolleys, parking facilities and highways such as the Parkway East, a main traffic artery where vehicles often move as slow as horses plodding along the Forbes Trail in 1758.

Add detours, construction restrictions, one-way streets, relocated bus stops, poorly coordinated traffic lights, jaywalkers, surly cops and a convoluted, confusing grid of city streets and outdated PennDOT routes like 30, 51 and 65.

Getting around and adapting are part of the transportation challenge in an old, topographically unique city with more bridges and tunnels than anywhere else in the United States.

When possible, smart people converging on Point State Park and other vantage points walked, bicycled or rode the light-rail system. Naive visitors paid up to $25 to private parking lot owners, who ripped them off and sent the wrong message, "Party elsewhere next time."

There's a theme for Pittsburgh's birthday: "Imagine what you can do here."

Imagine what you could have done if it were not for some politicians with big egos and poor vision.

You could have ridden during this historic weekend on the nation's first automated, elevated, rubber-tire Skybus vehicles in a town that became the center of a new industry, designing and building people-movers for airports and transit systems around the world. But a former mayor and a county commissioner quashed the plan in court.

You could have joined the celebration from points south on a Mon-Fayette Expressway that originally was to have been completed by now and could be helping revitalize old Monongahela River steel communities from Hazelwood to Monessen. But three former mayors and a number of City Council cohorts have turned one of the nation's biggest highway projects into a dead-end.

You could have driven to and from the North Shore, Bigelow Boulevard and I-579 on a half-dozen interstate ramps PennDOT was forced to drop from construction plans in the early 1980s. A former mayor blocked the original design.

You could have come Downtown from Squirrel Hill, Oakland, SoHo, the Hill and Uptown on a just-completed "Spine Line" light-rail extension. But when three county commissioners said no, a former mayor failed to fight for the ambitious project that had already moved well along in the federal approval process.

The town that was once a transportation leader has missed opportunities despite the fact that none of the projects would have directly cost city taxpayers a cent.

All has not been lost, however. Despite their own well-known financial difficulties, PennDOT and the Port Authority have stepped up and helped to sustain Pittsburgh as the economic, educational, entertainment and cultural center of Western Pennsylvania.

Over the past 25 years, PennDOT has built the Parkway North/I-279, rebuilt the Parkway East and Parkway West, rehabilitated the major tunnels and bridges and continues to improve key places including the West End Circle, Route 28 from the North Side to Millvale and a new Oakland/Boulevard of the Allies "gateway."

Over the past 25 years, the Port Authority has added the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway, the West Busway and a subway envisioned by city leaders as far back as 1906. The underground light-rail system is currently being extended to the North Shore to link Downtown to new development and regional attractions.

Over the past 25 years, the city has converted Fort Duquesne Boulevard into a tree-lined thoroughfare and expanded biking-walking trails. But the most noteworthy transportation achievement taking place piece-by-piece and making a collective impact has been adding parking garages and parking lots.

The city's parking authority has built the First Avenue, Boulevard of Allies, Oliver and Second Avenue Plaza garages, or more than 3,000 spaces. Last week, it added another 1,000 spaces with the opening of the Grant Street Transportation Center where the only transportation mode besides cars are Greyhound buses.

The city-affiliated Sports and Exhibition Authority has built the North Shore, Convention Center and West General Robinson Street garages, totaling nearly 3,000 spaces.

New parking garages have also been built at the Cultural District, Mellon Financial Center, South Side Works and the Cork Factory and are under construction for the Pittsburgh Technology Center, new Penguins arena and elsewhere.

Not to mention the biggest parking monstrosity in Pennsylvania -- a 10-story, 3,800-space garage for the new gambling casino on the North Shore.

The added parking spaces give people about 15,000 more reasons -- not including Oakland -- to jump in cars and drive, despite high gas prices, some of the nation's highest parking prices, empty bus seats, continued traffic congestion and a "growing green" campaign.

"Where are you going with this column?" a PG editor interrupted Mr. Know-it-All. "You've lost your focus."

Maybe that's the point.

After 250 years, when it comes to transportation, Pittsburgh has lost its focus.