Quake Fuels Only a Brief Affair With Mass Transit : Commuting: Time-consuming problems dash hopes that damage would sever Angelenos’ romance with cars.

After the earthquake snapped the freeways, Phyllis Solomon switched to public transportation.

Door to door, her one-way train-and-bus commute from Palmdale to Century City sometimes took more than four hours. Finally, she gave up this week and drove--cutting her commute time in half.

“Public transportation is just not worth it to me,” said Solomon, 49, a legal secretary.

Transportation officials hoped that agonizingly long drives around quake-damaged freeways would succeed where advertising campaigns had failed and force thousands of Angelenos like Solomon to give up their cars in favor of mass transit.

In the days after the Jan. 17 earthquake, the number of passengers riding commuter trains soared to an all-time high. But only two weeks later, ridership on the Metrolink line most affected--the Santa Clarita route--dropped more than 50% as many passengers decided once again to drive.

Raising this question: If a magnitude 6.8 quake will not permanently change solo driving habits, then what will?

The answer, experts say, has less to do with improving mass transit than making driving so odious that Southern Californians would find it easier to take trains and buses. That, they believe, would require a slew of politically unpopular moves, effectively stripping the automobile of many of the unnoticed government subsidies that it has enjoyed.

It would mean eliminating free parking at places such as shopping malls and libraries. Or instituting an odd/even policy so people drive only every other day. Or charging motorists a fee for using freeways during rush hours just as the telephone company charges higher rates for calls during business hours.

Such measures could level the playing field, making mass transit an acceptable alternative, experts say.

“People drive not because habits are hard to break but because it’s more rational for them to do so--it takes less time and money,” said Martin Wachs, professor of urban planning at UCLA. “The auto goes any place you want at any hour.”

Technology exists that allows cars to be equipped with a device that monitors the time of day the car operates and whether it is on a congested roadway. In such a scheme, which would most likely have to be government-sanctioned, motorists on empty country roads would not be charged, but those on Interstate 5 during rush hour would receive monthly bills.

“Congestion pricing is very unpopular but we know it works from the airlines because people do stay over Saturday nights to get cheaper fares,” said Wachs, who added that the method would be more effective than a gas tax in penalizing those using crowded roads during peak hours.

In the United States, the relatively low price of operating automobiles encourages people to drive, said Don Shoup, professor of architecture and urban planning at UCLA. Gasoline and vehicle registration fees are about three times more expensive in Europe, where about 20% of people use mass transit. By contrast, about 3% of Southern Californians use buses and trains.

Forcing Angelenos off jammed roads would mean “increasing the cost of using your car to unimaginable high levels,” Shoup said. “Maybe we would have to quadruple the cost of using the car to double transit use.”

Charging for parking at many public places would force people to plan excursions more carefully, driving less so they would pay fewer fees, Shoup said.

According to a recent Metrolink survey, free workplace parking was a key factor in whether drivers rode the train or drove, said Richard Stanger, executive director of Metrolink.

“The biggest problem is that so many workers get free parking at their employment,” he said.

While setting up a system to discourage drivers, transportation officials would have to simultaneously improve mass transit, experts said. This could mean offering more coordinated and frequent service on buses and trains as well as adding an option: vans that offered door-to-door shared-ride services. These vans would be cheaper but run less direct routes than taxis, and they would be more convenient than standard buses.

“We need things that are more appropriate to the way people travel . . . shuttles can serve the dispersed (commuting) patterns that we have,” said Genevieve Giuliano, associate professor of urban and regional planning at USC.

If the shattered freeways are restored without taking steps to modify behavior, urban planners say, Angelenos will soon return to their cars, relishing the days when traffic delays are caused by a mere SigAlert.

“Fundamentally, people are not going to change,” said Jim Moore, associate professor of urban and regional planning at USC.

Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena and transit officials disagree, saying that at long last Angelenos are ready to welcome mass transit. Southern Californians, even more than their San Francisco counterparts, will embrace public transportation because people commute longer distances here, Pena has said.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, ridership on the Bay Area Rapid Transit also reached record highs, increasing from 218,000 a day to a peak of 357,000 before the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened. But once roads were reopened, BART won only a 10% increase in passengers, said Michael Bernick, vice chairman of the BART board. In Los Angeles, the vast majority of all workers--79%--drive to work alone, according to a 1993 survey commissioned by state transit officials. Even if transportation officials tripled the number of people riding the rails, the impact on congested freeways would scarcely be noticeable, they say.

“If you are running a transit system, having even 15% more passengers helps you pay the bills,” said Charles Lave, professor of economics at UC Irvine. “But if you are trying to solve the transportation problems of Los Angeles, and you add 15% to a transit mode that doesn’t carry a lot in the first place, it doesn’t do a lot for you.”

For transportation officials, the Northridge earthquake posed a unique opportunity to introduce mass transit to people, such as Solomon, who had never used it before. In the days after the quake, the 1-year-old Metrolink got more publicity than the commuter train line could ever buy. There was footage of happy commuters boarding periwinkle blue and white trains slapped up against vistas of motorists snarled in traffic jams for hours.

Plenty of commuters, such as Gary Arlt, sung Metrolink’s praises. Arlt, 44, took the 5:22 a.m. Santa Clarita train, leaving about two hours earlier than during pre-quake days when he drove to his Glendale office.

“It beats sitting in the car for three hours,” Arlt said.

The earthquake transformed Solomon’s typical 90-minute drive into a four-hour odyssey on public transportation. After the earthquake, Solomon decided to try riding the train rather than driving on the crippled freeways. She left her Palmdale home each weekday morning at 4 a.m., drove to Santa Clarita to catch a commuter train Downtown, then hopped a bus to Century City. Finally, she walked four blocks to reach her office.

In rain and cold, the walk was miserable. Sometimes the bus was late and Solomon would miss her evening train home. Because of the infrequency of trains running to Palmdale, Solomon frequently ended up getting home at 11 p.m. Exhausted, she would skip dinner and only eat a piece of fruit. She would go to bed 30 minutes after getting home so she could get up in time the next morning.

Too fatigued to cope with chores, she hired a housekeeper.

“I haven’t seen my husband at all; it’s killed my home life,” Solomon said. “On weekends, I’m tired all the time.”

Meanwhile, Caltrans was opening improved detours, allowing more cars to travel faster around battered freeways. Solomon was experiencing a crucial flaw in the Southland’s public transportation system: having to rely on buses to hook up with trains.

“The more time people have to spend standing at bus stops, the less likely they are to ride,” planning expert Giuliano said. “Fare is not as critical as the service provided. For people who are not transit-dependent, for people who have a choice, the biggest issue is convenience.”

And so back to the car went Solomon, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Yesterday I left work at 4:50 and got home at 6:20. If I’d taken the train the earliest I would have gotten home would have been 8 o’clock,” she said Friday. “I think people aren’t going to give up their cars. They like being able to go when they want.”