Public Transit Ridership Rises as Gas Prices Soar

[Rose Siding]

Soaring gasoline prices are pushing more commuters to use public transportation, say officials at L.A. County's two biggest rail and bus operators.

Ridership on the Red Line subway jumped nearly 12% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. Boardings increased about 8% on the Green Line and 3% on the Blue Line, said Marc Littman, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the rail services.

Ridership on the three lines rose along with gas prices this winter, increasing 9% each month from January through March. "It's a pretty big jump," Littman said. "We attribute it to the surge in gas prices."

Bus boardings also rose 9% each month over the quarter, an increase that Littman said was particularly dramatic in light of the season's rainy weather, which typically keeps riders away. Year over year, however, bus ridership was up less than 1%, and might not be as reflective of fuel prices as train patronage, Littman said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-trains12apr12,1,4538098.story?coll=la-headlines-california

[Jo March]

1. Yep - I rode the bus for the first time today

The bus comes out to the racetrack near where I live. It can hold about 45 folks. There were maybe 10 empty seats.

[shanti]

2. this is what it's SUPPOSED to

be doing! maybe there is a silver lining behind the dark cloud of expensive gas.

[michaelhopewell]

3. Yes

I love it!!!!!!!

[oneold1-4u]

4. mass public transit

Should have been the most important agenda in the US 50 years ago with the government supporting and supplementing costs!
No! They promoted more private vehicles and raised atrocious fuel and highway taxes. It was, every family should boast at least 2 vehicles and every child of 16 needed their own!
They supported such good things as tobacco with subsidies for over 65 years along with many other pork barrel and military fiasco's, all still costing billions!
I rode a bus to school, rode a "nice clean" GH bus to visit family, out of town.(pre70s) School busses today are loading and dropping children 3 blocks from school and it is never full! The last GH excursion was filthy and reeked of alcohol, pot, and vomit, and cost more than train for same distance.
The trains have poor tracks (slow) and cannot make it against the highways which are costing untold billions to maintain full of ruts and potholes.

[cliss]

6. Here's another amazing factoid:

I read (I think it was last year) that there are more vehicles in the US than there are drivers.

That one puzzled me for a while. ....more cars than drivers? Do they drive themselves? I think it meant that there are more cars total (like junked cars) in the US.

Still, that's a shameful statistic.

[SoCalDem]

8. 50 years ago, the rubber.concrete and auto industries were

conspiring as fast as they could to DO AWAY with mass transit so they could cash in on the suburban migration.. There are places still today with old buses and trollies rusting away in the sun.. They were perfectly good and most were used widely, but they made cars "not quite as necessary:", so they had to go:(

[TommyO]

5. Used mass transit extensively

when I was in the San Diego suburb of Santee last summer. It was the only way I could get around and it worked out very well. Between the bus and trolley, I did everything I needed to do and only used cars when a friend and I went to to Disneyland.

[KamaAina]

7. Great in LA where there's underused capacity in the system

but what about all the places, from Boston to Honolulu, where transit is already bursting at the seams? A No. 3 bus came by my stop this morning, 3 miles from downtown, with the entire aisle already filled. The next step would have been to have people hanging off the sides of the bus like in India. (I take a different route, anyway, thank goodness -- and so did several rejected No. 3 passengers!)

Simple, just add more capacity, right? Tell it to Bush** and the repuke Congress, who are busily preparing to kill Amtrak. Maybe if we re-designated that route as the "3-Baghdad Green Zone"...

[renaissanceguy]

9. But it's a problem in Chicago

where our public transportation system is hiking their rates.

We get screwed both ways.

http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues.14744291

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. My experiences in both Portland and Minneapolis have convinced me that

it's not that people CAN'T take mass transit: it's that mass transit is not on their mental map.

Traveling out to my doctor in Portland, I'd be chugging along on light rail, while cars stood still on the freeway that ran parallel to it.

The bus system in Minneapolis is barely adequate, but it's not unusable, and from many parts of the city, taking the bus downtown makes much more sense than paying exorbitant parking fees, and yet people still drive. :shrug: