MTA’s Ridership Up With Gas Prices

Soaring gas prices have prompted a higher number of commuters to use Metro buses and trains, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Monday.

From January through March, ridership rose more than 11% on Metro trains and 7% on buses compared with the same period last year, the MTA said.

Citing past experience and statistics, the agency linked the increases to high gas prices, MTA spokesman Dave Sotero said.

“It does correlate with the increasing gas prices. We’ve seen that over several occasions,” he said. “We’re making an assumption that ridership gains are parallel with rising gas prices.”

The MTA also has anecdotal evidence, he said: Metro parking lots are filling up earlier, and traffic on the MTA’s website rose by 10% in March.

A $3 MTA day pass allows unlimited rides on Metro buses and rail lines. “When the price for a single gallon of gasoline equals that of a day pass, it becomes much more affordable for people,” Sotero said of public transit in Los Angeles.

The Metro Red Line subway, which runs between North Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, experienced the highest gains, with ridership up nearly 14% to 3.4 million average monthly boardings, during the January through March period.

The Metro Blue and Orange lines also saw significant growth. Ridership on Blue Line trains, which run between Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles, rose almost 11%, and the San Fernando Valley’s Orange Line busway’s 18,000 weekday passengers are about triple first-year ridership projections, the MTA said. The busway opened in October.