As gas prices soar, more commuters hop buses, trains

DENVER — With the price of gasoline approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are leaving their cars at home and taking trains or buses.

Mass-transit systems nationwide are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats once were easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light-rail stations suddenly are overflowing with commuters in some towns.

"In almost every transit system I talk to, we're seeing very high rates of growth the last few months," said William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. "It's very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas."

Some cities with long-established public-transit systems, such as New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more in the past year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West, where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

The trend is reflected in the Puget Sound region.

Sound Transit ridership grew 12.3 percent in 2007, according to the agency.

In 2007, nearly 14 million riders boarded Sounder commuter rail, ST Express buses and Tacoma Link light-rail trains, according to the agency.

The biggest ridership increase among Sound Transit's three modes was on the Sounder commuter rail, with a 27.4 percent increase in 2007, according to the agency, the fourth-biggest commuter-rail ridership increase in the nation for 2007.

In Seattle, Metro ridership has grown 18 percent in the past three years, spokeswoman Linda Thielke said. She said that in the first three months this year, ridership was up 6 percent from the same time last year.

Community Transit reported a 10 percent ridership increase between 2006-07, and in the first three months this year, ridership was up 11 percent, said Tom Pearce, a spokesman for the Everett-based agency. In May, riders may pass 1 million, the largest for any single month, he said.

Transit systems in metropolitan areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Minneapolis and San Francisco reported similar jumps.

In cities such as Houston, Nashville, Tenn., Salt Lake City and Charlotte, N.C., commuters in growing numbers are taking advantage of new bus and train lines built or expanded in recent years.

The American Public Transportation Association reports that localities with fewer than 100,000 people also have experienced large increases in bus ridership.

The increase in transit use coincides with other signs that U.S. motorists are beginning to change their driving habits, including buying smaller vehicles. The Energy Department recently predicted Americans would consume slightly less gasoline this year than last, for the first yearly decline since 1991.

Oil prices broke another record Friday, climbing by $2.27, to $125.96 a barrel. The national average for regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.67 a gallon, up from $3.04 a year ago, according to AAA. In the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett metropolitan area, the price was $3.78, up from $3.51 a month ago.

But meeting the greater demand for mass transit is proving difficult. The cost of fuel and power for public transportation is about three times higher than four years ago, and the slowing economy means local sales-tax receipts are down, so there is less money available for transit services. Higher steel prices are making planned expansions more expensive.

Typically, mass-transit systems rely on fares to cover about one-third of their costs, so they depend on sales taxes and other government funding. Few states use gas-tax revenue for mass transit.

Other factors may be driving people to mass transit, too. Wireless computers turn travel time into productive work time (some Seattle buses offer Wi-Fi), and more companies are offering workers subsidies to take buses or trains. Traffic congestion is worsening in many cities, and parking is more expensive.

The sudden jump in ridership comes after several years of steady, gradual growth. Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, up 2.1 percent from 2006.

Transit managers are predicting growth of 5 percent or more this year, the largest increase in at least a decade.

"If we are in a recession or economic downturn, we should be seeing a stagnation or decrease in ridership, but we are not," said Daniel Grabauskas, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which serves the Boston area. "Fuel prices are without question the single most important factor that is driving people to public transportation."

Some cities are seeing spectacular gains. The Charlotte Area Transit System, which has a new light-rail line, reported it logged more than 2 million trips in February, up more than 34 percent from February 2007.

Caltrain, the commuter-rail line that serves the San Francisco Peninsula and the Santa Clara Valley, set a record for average weekday ridership in February of 36,993, a 9.3 increase from 2007, according to its most recent public calculation.

The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which operates a commuter-rail system from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, carried more than 20 percent additional riders this March and April as monthly ridership climbed to 350,000.

"Nobody believed that people would actually give up their cars to ride public transportation," said executive director Joseph Giulietti, executive director of the authority.

"But in the last year, and last several months in particular, we have seen exactly that."

Seattle Times reporter Susan Gilmore contributed to this report.