O.C. Riders Help Metrolink Top Growth Charts

They begin arriving before the sun rises. Leaving their cars in shadowy parking lots, they hustle through the pre-dawn mist toward sleek silver railroad cars.

“The traffic to L.A. is horrendous,” said Erinn Madden, 26, a lawyer who lives in Corona del Mar and catches the train in Irvine every day for the ride to her office in downtown Los Angeles. “This makes me a nicer person when I get there.”

Madden is among the burgeoning number of commuters on Metrolink, Southern California’s railroad serving six counties, who account for an average of 20,146 trips each day. In existence only since 1992, it has become the fastest growing commuter rail system in the United States.

The result: the beginning of what many transportation experts see as a potentially significant shift in the way people get around.

“It’s changing the culture of commuting in Southern California,” said Jim Sims, director of the Southern California Assn. of Government’s Rideshare Services, which encourages commuters to car-pool.

From 1993 to 1994, according to a survey by the American Public Transit Assn. in Washington, Metrolink’s ridership increased 119%, from 1.89 million to 4.13 million one-way trips, overtaking projections and prompting plans for leasing 15 more cars in the next six months while manufacturers scramble to build 24 new ones.

The second-largest increase was registered by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which grew by 15%.

And in Southern California, Metrolink officials say, the fastest growing line is the Oceanside-to-Los Angeles route, on which ridership from 1994 to 1995 increased by 40%, compared to 28% on the Riverside-to-Los Angeles line.

While Metrolink is still only a medium-sized system by national standards, Caltrans officials say that if everyone now riding the train got into their cars instead, the increased traffic would add 30 to 60 minutes to rush-hour commutes along most of the freeways paralleling the rail lines.

“It doesn’t take a lot to slow up traffic,” Caltrans spokesman Albert Miranda said, adding that the extra cars would fill additional lanes at some locations.

The significance goes well beyond the numbers, said Sims, citing studies showing that most of the new riders previously drove alone.

“What Metrolink is doing,” he said, “is attracting the die-hard drive-alones, people who said, ‘You’ll never get me out of my car.’ ”

And in Southern California, solo driving has been a way of life for generations.

In the early 1900s, Southern Californians were linked by the vast Pacific Electric rail system that connected 50 communities in four counties ranging as far south as Newport Beach and as far east as Redlands. In the 1930s and ‘40s, however, the system was abandoned to the region’s growing love affair with the automobile. Rail lines were replaced by freeways, and train stations gave way to drive-in restaurants.

But snarled traffic and smog has forced a reconsideration of the area’s commuting ethos in recent years. Surveys such as one conducted in 1990 at UC Irvine revealed a surprising number of people who said they would consider commuting by rail if such an option were available.

“What we consistently found is that if you built a rail system . . . people would use it,” said Mark Baldassare, chairman of the university’s Department of Urban Planning, which conducted the survey.

The Southern California Regional Rail Authority began operating Metrolink, centered at Los Angeles Union Station, in 1992. Two years later, it opened the system’s Orange County line. In October, the company added what was touted as the nation’s first suburb-to-suburb commuter rail line from Riverside to Irvine, and still on the drawing boards is a line linking Riverside, Fullerton and Los Angeles.

“We have always believed that Southern California needed an alternative to the freeway,” Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo said.

Today the system has 394 miles of track linking 44 stations through which 85 trains run daily between destinations as far flung as Oxnard, Lancaster, Oceanside and San Bernardino. “Our rail routes generally parallel significant freeways,” Hidalgo said. “We’re making the same trip that they’re making in bumper-to-bumper traffic.”

But critics describe Metrolink as an overly expensive system that can only make a small dent while it primarily benefits affluent commuters.

Charles Lave, an economics professor at UCI who specializes in transportation, said he believes that railroads will never offer serious competition to freeways in Southern California. While rail transit is indispensable in older cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia because they lack adequate road and parking space, in Southern California “there’s no reason for people to get out of their cars,” Lave said.

Brian Taylor, an assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA, tends to agree, describing Metrolink as a costly way of achieving relatively modest results.

“This is a time to give taxpayers more bang for the buck,” he said. “There are probably more cost-effective ways.”

And a lawsuit scheduled to be heard Jan. 23 in federal court accuses the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority of discriminating against poor and minority bus riders by funding Metrolink, which largely benefits suburban white commuters.

“That’s immoral and illegal,” said Eric Mann, director of the Labor Community Strategy Center which initiated the lawsuit. “We consider it a scandal of policy.”

Officials at Metrolink, where the average trip (about 35 miles) costs $5.50 and monthly passes sell for $144, concede that the system attracts largely high-income riders, primarily because they are the ones most likely to live some distance from work. A recent survey, in fact, placed the median personal income of Metrolink passengers at $47,200, far above the national and local average.

“Metrolink can’t discriminate on who is allowed to ride our trains,” Hidalgo said.

And by requiring an operating subsidy of about 24 cents per passenger per mile, experts say, the system is still the most expensive commuter rail system in the nation. The subsidy, paid by five of the counties it passes through, pays 58% of Metrolink’s costs, Hidalgo said.

“It’s because it’s brand new and the full ridership hasn’t yet developed,” said Terry Bronson, manager of statistics for the American Public Transit Assn.

Metrolink officials, of course, hope to lower their cost-per-rider by attracting more customers through a variety of promotions.

Four times a year, they publish a glossy 28-page magazine called the Link, 25,000 copies of which are left on Metrolink seats. Later this month, the railroad will host its first on-board weddings, both ceremonies being held on the same trip from San Bernardino to Los Angeles. And in 1997, when Metrolink gets its new cars, Hidalgo said, they will feature some theater-style, rather than all face-to-face, seating.

“We’ve found that some people have difficulty sitting in clusters of four because it invades their personal space,” he said. “Sometimes people just need their alone time.”

During a recent early-morning run from Oceanside to Los Angeles, in fact, no one spoke.

“It’s quiet because everyone is half asleep,” said Glori Ball, who rides the train several times a week from San Juan Capistrano to Santa Ana, where she keeps a second car for the trip to her Garden Grove office.

Deborah Innis, who lives in Irvine and works in Pasadena, said that riding the train has greatly reduced her stress.

“It’s much nicer than driving,” she said. “It’s a smooth ride, it’s real pleasant and it’s safe; you’re not going to swerve off the road and get hit by another driver.”

All of which pleases some transportation planners.

“If you look at the growth, you have to be impressed with the positive trend that is developing,” said Chip Bishop, a spokesman for the American Public Transit Assn. “You have to come to the conclusion that this is a new day for commuting in Southern California.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rail Revolution?

Are Southern Californians ready to abandon their cars? Metrolink, though far from the largest commuter rail system in the nation, has become the fastest-growing one. Thousands of 1994 riders and percentage change, 1993 to 1994:

*--*

Service area Riders Percentage change Southern California 4,130 119% Philadelphia (SEPTA) 22,440 15 Washington, D.C./Virginia 1,850 11 Boston 24,350 10 Newark (N.J.) 45,160 6 New York (MTA Metro-North) 61,990 5 New York (MTA Long Island) 96,330 4 Chicago 74,750 3 San Francisco 7,020 2 Northern Indiana/Chicago 3,280 2 Baltimore 4,920 0 Miami/Fort Lauderdale 2,910 0 New Haven (Conn.) 280 -1 Philadelphia (DOT) 70 -31*

*--*

* Service suspended for four months in 1994

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Growth Sources

Metrolink’s growth since last September has been fueled by ridership surges from Orange County, Riverside and San Bernardino. The average number of daily riders increased more than 3,100 between September 1994 and September 1995. About two-thirds of the total came from Orange County and San Bernardino:

Average Ridership Increases

Orange County: 32%

San Bernardino: 31%

Riverside: 22%

Santa Clarita: 12%

Ventura County: 3%

Sources: American Public Transit Assn., Metrolink

Researched by DAVID HALDANE / Los Angeles Times