Philadelphia Daily News (PA)   January 7, 2005 Section: LOCAL Edition: 4STAR Page: 05 Memo:URBAN WARRIOR   RETHINKING PHILADELPHIA  The masses back transit NEW POLL FINDS MUCH OF PA. WANTS FUNDING CARLA ANDERSON URBAN WARRIOR   I'M STUNNED.   According to a new poll, two-thirds of people who live in Pennsylvania say they want state government to put more money into mass transit. They are, predictably, less supportive of paying for it, through new sales or local real-estate taxes, for instance, or by hiking gas taxes or automobile registration fees.   And it's also no surprise that support is highest in the Philadelphia region, where 76 percent of residents want new funding.   But still.   The number is huge.   A full 60 percent of people living in rural areas of the state - which means everything outside the regions around Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton - say they favor new funding for mass transit. Add in these urban areas, and the overall number rises to 69 percent.   So what if the ways we've talked about funding it face "significant opposition," as pollster Larry Hugick, chairman of Princeton Survey Research Associates International, has said?   I say this poll, which is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Economy League and the Pew Charitable Trusts, is a serious blow to conventional wisdom.   It suggests that Philadelphia mass-transit riders might have more allies than they realize.   These new allies may never have stepped foot in Philadelphia, or even know how to find their local train station.   They're people who live in this state's vast open stretches of working farms and wooded hillsides, and who hate watching their way of life being threatened by sprawl.   And they're catching on to the idea that making urban life easier and more user-friendly is actually in their own best interest.   Because the fact is, transportation has always shaped the way cities and their surroundings grow. And the lack of good mass transit is forcing a kind of growth onto the suburbs that residents there just hate.   "I think we're at a unique point, where people who live outside the cities are getting more and more frustrated, and recognizing that they pay a price for not having good mass transit, even if they never use it," said Marc Stier, founder of a new grass-roots movement to get Philadelphia's mass-transit riders politically organized.   "I got caught in rush-hour traffic on my way back to the city from Horsham the other day, and it was so terrible, and so maddening, I don't know how the people who live out there cope with it."   Are you part of this majority? Are you sick of sprawl, parking-lot highways and crappy options for public transportation? Do you want more and better mass transit in this state?   If the answer is yes, there's something you can do:   Log on to www.SaveTransit. org and contact state government's political leadership in Harrisburg.   Then log on to www.philly transit.com and join Marc Stier's effort to organize this region's 850,000 mass-transit riders so politicians in Harrisburg will be forced into listen. *   Got a city-dwellers' problem you can't solve? Call the Urban Warrior at 215-854-4810 or e-mail   urbanwarrior @phillynews.com.