Few of the 224 seats in Washington University’s sumptuous Whitaker Hall auditorium were empty Thursday, circumstantial evidence that public transit in the St. Louis region has a lot of support — among the region’s political class, at least.

Why else would a bevy of county and municipal officials and civic figures from throughout the region turn out on a muggy summer morning to hear talking heads at what was billed as a “Transit Summit”?

It could be argued that the summit, which was organized by the Metro transit agency, was a pep rally in support of a proposed half-cent sales tax increase to support the transit system. Earlier in the week, the St. Louis County Council approved putting the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.

But if it was a pep rally, it was short on pep. The message delivered at the summit was that public transit is now a “DIY” project: do it yourself. Federal and state governments were said to be out of the transit business; public transit could be sustained only if the local community musters the will and the dollars to do it.

Business and development leaders argue that the region has the financial ability to maintain and build a dynamic transit system, one that can support and create jobs, promote quality of life and help drive economic development. They say it’s in the region’s best interest to do so. Now the job is to make the case to voters.

Metro officials did some bragging about the MetroLink light rail system, citing growing ridership, high levels of rider satisfaction, keen public interest in extending the lines and better connections between buses and trains — all of which gain appeal in the era of $4-a-gallon gasoline.

James Simpson, head of the Federal Transit Administration, was on hand and called Metro a “great system” with “great ridership.”

Development officials from St. Louis County, the Metro East, and the Regional Chamber and Growth Association said transit projects had helped create hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment — projects ranging from the Express Scripts headquarters near the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus to a major “mixed use” project in the making in Maplewood to the first new housing built in East St. Louis in 30 years.

And that’s pretty much where the “pep” pooped out, and the bad news moved in.

By next year, Metro will face a $45 million shortfall in its $222 million operating budget, due in large part to building the Cross County MetroLink line without budgeting money to operate it. That was exacerbated by the $27 million Metro paid in legal costs and settlements after losing its lawsuit against the construction managers for the Cross County project.

The state of Missouri, already strapped for highway dollars, isn’t interested in spending more money on public transit. Missouri Department of Transportation Executive Director Pete Rahn cheerfully told attendees that if people aren’t depressed when he describes the resources available for transportation “either I didn’t explain it well, or they don’t understand it.”

At the federal level, the matching funds that were available for light rail construction 20 years ago have disappeared. With Americans driving less because of the high cost of gasoline — thus generating less money in federal fuel tax revenue — the Bush administration wants to borrow federal transit money to use for road projects.

Given the bad news, why should the St. Louis region underwrite a transit system by itself? Perhaps the best answer was suggested by Mike Jones, a senior policy advisor to St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley: “There are no successful urban areas that don’t have successful transit.”

St. Louis County voters will have the chance in November to declare whether they accept that premise.

(Pictured: Rhonda Scott of St. Louis uses the MetroLink to commute to her factory job making oxygen tanks in Shrewsbury on Thursday. Scott uses the combination of bus and train in a two-hour (each way) commute. She recently started using the public transportation to save on gas and also because she’s been having car trouble. It is also cheaper than carpooling, she says. Huy R. Mach | Post-Dispatch)