County Metrolink Ridership Up 30%

Ridership continued to grow on Ventura County’s Metrolink trains to downtown Los Angeles and has now increased about 30% since commuters began their mass return to work Monday.

And the trend looks like it will continue at least until some of the earthquake damage to Los Angeles-area freeways is repaired, county transportation officials said.

“The first day they were all buying a single round trip,” said planner Steve DeGeorge, who assisted customers at the Simi Valley station Tuesday morning. “Today they were either buying 10-trip packages or monthly passes.”

Ridership from the Moorpark and Simi Valley stations was about 600 trips per day before the earthquake but is now about 780, said county transportation Manager Mary Travis.

She said she hopes county residents who have changed their commuting habits will stay on trains even after quake-caused freeway snarls disappear.

To that end, transportation agencies Tuesday hustled to fix problems such as overloaded trains at the Burbank and Glendale stations that caused confusion during Monday’s evening rush hour, Travis said.

Both the Ventura County and Santa Clarita Metrolink lines share stops in those two cities, and problems were created by the crush of commuters to Santa Clarita, she said.

“Generally they were crowding the platform and making it difficult for Ventura County commuters to get to their trains,” she said. “And we were having people get on the wrong trains.”

More advisers were added Tuesday to direct new passengers to the right trains, she said.

Ventura County’s four morning trains into Los Angeles are still running well below capacity and riders getting on in Simi Valley and Moorpark get seats, Travis said, although it is harder to get seats for the evening return from Union Station.

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Commuters who stayed on the freeways said they again had surprisingly few problems Tuesday morning despite the full-scale return of workers to downtown Los Angeles and the reopening of most Los Angeles schools.

“It was normal. Just like it was before the earthquake,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said of his 20-mile, 40-minute commute to Northridge.

Despite a terrible two-hour creep home Monday evening in the rain, Thousand Oaks resident Ken Bauer said his Tuesday morning commute to downtown Los Angeles took less than an hour.

Brian Thiele, a Thousand Oaks resident and manager of the Bank of America transportation program in Los Angeles, said bank employees have reported few problems with commutes this week.

“I don’t think it’s a horror story, and I’m quite surprised by it,” said Thiele, whose own commutes have been quicker than normal. Workers who have switched from cars to trains and buses report an increase of only 10 or 15 minutes in commuting time, he said.