Study Finds Less Stress in Drivers : Transportation: A regional report says county commuters are more likely to perceive freeway traffic as good.

The percentage of Ventura County commuters who drive alone to work remains high, but a new survey indicates that county commuters spend less time on the road and are less stressed than other Southern Californians.

Ventura County commuters are also less likely to complain about their drive to work and more likely to perceive freeway traffic as always or sometimes good, according to the fourth annual State of the Commute, compiled by Commuter Transportation Services Inc. and released Tuesday.

A total of 2,512 commuters living in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties participated in the telephone survey conducted last fall by the nonprofit consulting firm funded by the California Department of Transportation.

The purpose of the survey is to help Caltrans develop ways to increase the number of ride-sharing programs in the region, said Jim Sims, president of Commuter Transportation Services.

“In working to change the commute habits of Southern Californians, employers, transit providers and policy-makers must seek to create travel modes and work schedule options to meet the needs of a diverse market,” Sims said.

Of the 500 Ventura County commuters questioned, 80% said they drive alone to work on a regular basis, compared to 82% polled the year before, said Cheryl Collier, a research specialist who worked on the survey. In the five-county region, 77% drive alone. Los Angeles County had the fewest solo drivers, 75%, while Orange County had the most, 85%.

The margin of error for the survey is estimated at plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The average travel time for Ventura County commuters is 30 minutes to work and 30 minutes home, with an average one-way commute of 17.7 miles, the study showed. Of those surveyed, 20% said they worked in Los Angeles, with the remainder working in Ventura County.

The average commute time per day regionwide is 76 minutes, with an average one-way commute of 16.6 miles. Travel time was highest among commuters in Los Angeles and Riverside counties at 79 minutes.

Ventura County commuters said they were most likely to use freeways to get to work. Also, county commuters were more willing to consider car-pooling and van-pooling as alternative modes of transportation, the survey found.

Ventura County commuters tied with San Bernardino for the least amount of stress associated with their commutes.

A key discovery in the latest survey is that a significant slice of the commuting public--as many as 35% of those interviewed in Ventura County--is willing to join a car pool once or twice a week, while still relying on their own cars to get to work most of the time. This arrangement gives them the convenience of a private car when they have errands to run or appointments to keep, but reduces congestion on days that they leave their cars at home.

Sims said this is particularly significant because these “part-time ride-sharers” usually are managers, lawyers and other white-collar professionals who until recently were written off as “hard-core drive-alones.”

“These are the people who once said, ‘You’ll never catch me in a car pool,’ ” Sims said. “As traffic gets worse and driving alone gets less convenient, they’re beginning to realize that it makes sense to share a ride once or twice a week.”

Fourteen percent of the Ventura County respondents said they would consider taking a bus once or twice a week.

Mary Travis, manager of transit programs for the Ventura County Transportation Commission, said the reason that the majority of county commuters surveyed continue to drive alone to work is because there is little mass transit available to them.

“But we’re working to change that,” she said. “In the future, we are going to be operating new services that will make it easier for people” to use mass transit.

Travis said the commission is conducting several studies to determine how best to expand and improve bus service countywide. She said that the studies should be completed by September and that the commission hopes to begin implementing some of the recommended proposals by the end of the year.

Travis said new commuter train service, which will link Simi Valley and Moorpark with downtown Los Angeles beginning Oct. 26, will also help reduce the number of commuters driving alone to work.

“That is going to be a real nice alternative for those people driving on the Simi Valley Freeway or the Ventura Freeway,” Travis said. “That will definitely entice them to get out of their cars.”

Travis said new air pollution rules requiring large employers, including government agencies, to reduce the number of workers driving alone to work will also encourage more people to use mass transit in the future.