As Expenses Climb, MetroLink Ridership Growth Is Sluggish

Despite die-hard supporters, steady federal funding and ambitious plans for expansion, MetroLink’s Ventura County Line has won merely sluggish ridership growth since its launch almost five years ago, while its cost has continued to rise.

The annual operating cost of the Ventura County Line has risen 143% during that period, to a projected $11.64 million this year, as MetroLink stretched its daily service from Los Angeles out to Oxnard and added extra runs in a bid to attract more riders.

But since start-up in October 1992, ticket purchases by Ventura County commuters have not even doubled in response:

The railway’s trackside surveys show that about 480 people were boarding MetroLink trains in Moorpark and Simi Valley in December 1993, two months after service began.

By December 1996--even after four of the 10 trains per day were extended to Camarillo and Oxnard after the Northridge earthquake--ridership on L.A.-bound morning and midday runs had risen only to about 725 boardings per day.

That is a mere fraction of the 61,244 Ventura County residents who the 1990 U.S. Census estimates are commuting to out-of-county jobs.

Meanwhile, Ventura County’s share of the line’s total annual operating cost has swelled to a projected $2.7 million this fiscal year, up from barely $1.34 million in the 1992-93 fiscal year.

And the line continues to lag behind nearly every other MetroLink line--except the year-old Inland Empire Line--in fare box returns that help pay the bills.

MetroLink’s supporters say the Ventura County Line--which serves such Los Angeles County areas as Burbank, Glendale and Chatsworth as well as the Ventura County cities of Moorpark, Simi Valley, Camarillo and Oxnard--is a necessary investment that will only grow cheaper as more riders discover it.

The gleaming white and cobalt-blue trains have snagged a devoted corps of regulars who relish the smooth, low-stress trip into Los Angeles, the extra time to read, socialize and catch up on work while avoiding the hassles of a freeway commute.

But critics are starting to wonder whether the Ventura County Line is worth all this expense, just to take a few hundred drivers and their cars off the road during rush hour.

“As I’ve said from time to time, it’s a wonderful service and the only question is whether it makes economic sense,” said county Public Works Director Art Goulet.

“It takes $300,000 to $400,000 of local transportation fund money which would otherwise be available for buses and/or streets and roads,” said Goulet, whose department maintains county roads. “It’s a very expensive service.”

Taxpayer advocates such as Jere Robings agree:

“I mean, it’s nice to get the cars off the highway and reduce the congestion and reduce the air pollution, but that’s a pretty expensive way to do it,” said Robings, head of the Ventura County Alliance of Taxpayers. “If it’s federal or state funds, it all comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets.”

What’s more, not all of Ventura County’s cities benefit, said Supervisor Frank Schillo, a member of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, which administers the line.

“We have Port Hueneme, Thousand Oaks, Ojai--those cities are not on the rail,” he said. “If we could find a way to have it go all the way through our county, that would be great.”

Extending the Line

The line is scheduled to grow.

MetroLink already plans to extend the midday train past its Moorpark end point to Oxnard. Officials also are seeking funding to stretch the entire line past its Oxnard terminus to Ventura.

And the Transportation Commission spent $8.6 million to buy 42 miles of track between Ventura and Santa Clarita; this spur could carry light-rail cars from the end of the Ventura County line up the Santa Clara Valley, past Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru, to link up with the Santa Clarita Line.

But some doubt that the MetroLink system will ever pay for itself.

MetroLink is doing the best job it can to provide an alternative to the freeway rush-hour grind, but new commuter rail service will probably never be cost-effective, said USC professor Genevieve Giuliano, who teaches urban planning.

“If you raise the fares, you can’t get any passengers,” she said. “And if you keep the fares low, you’ll have enormous subsidies to pay.”

On one hand, the Ventura County Line has leveraged itself up to a profitability nearing the national average for transit systems. The average U.S. transit system earns 37% to 39% of its costs back through the fare box, while MetroLink’s Ventura County Line is earning about 36%, transit officials estimate.

On the other, the bulk of the line continues to survive on massive federal and state subsidies.

And Goulet and others worry that if the subsidies are cut, Ventura County will be left with the bill to keep the trains rolling.

“I think so long as the federal funds flow, it won’t shut down,” Goulet said. “But you never know what the federal government’s going to do. They’ve cut other operating assistance for transportation.”

And some fear MetroLink will go the way of the ill-fated CalTrain. The Oxnard-to-Los Angeles commuter rail service was launched in 1982, only to sink in a tide of red ink barely five months later with only one-tenth its projected daily ridership of 1,300 commuters.

But MetroLink’s staunch advocates express firm faith in their line’s future.

They predict that costs will shrink as ridership grows. And they urge Ventura County to invest in the railway now to save money and salt away more mass-transit options for the future.

“On paper right now, it’s a loser, absolutely,” said Bill Davis, chairman of the Ventura County Transportation Commission and vice chair of the MetroLink regional board.

But Davis said that shortsighted critics are ignoring the long-term benefits.

Once the hardware is in place, MetroLink trains cost 53 cents per passenger per mile to run, while buses cost $4.62 per passenger mile, Davis said.

MetroLink is already easing traffic and cleaning up the air in Ventura County, he said. And it offers motorists a more efficient and pleasant morning commute that will only grow more popular as more people try it.

“Is [ridership] increasing by leaps and bounds? No,” Davis said. “But it is coming up. As long as the federal dollars are there, we should not worry about it.”

Much of the line’s subsidy is earmarked solely for rail systems, said Ginger Gherardi, the commission’s executive director.

“The growth in our county [share] has been very modest in terms of cost, around $200,000 between ’95 and ‘96,” Gherardi said.

“We don’t expect it to go up at all next year,” even with plans to extend the midday train to Oxnard, she said.

“The future of the line really depends on what the people in the county want,” Gherardi said.

Common wisdom says that if you add daily trains to the schedule to give commuters more options on departure and arrival times, then more people will give up the relative freedom of point-to-point travel by car.

There are also plans to restore shuttle bus service--eliminated during budget cuts by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation--that once carried commuters from MetroLink stations to work places in the San Fernando Valley, Gherardi said.

And MetroLink could be doing a better job of advertising, she said.

“We did some targeted marketing along the corridors, and we should probably do that again periodically,” she said. “One thing we get a very good response to is where people get extra free tickets to try the train, or bring a friend for free. We need to plan more of those.”

Meanwhile, the Ventura County Line’s trains are steadily--if slowly--luring more drivers out of their polluting, freeway-clogging cars and onto the trains, she said.

Longtime customers such as Phil Pratt, 50, hopped on the first MetroLink trains in Simi Valley five years ago and never looked back.

Glad to be free of the expense, worry and hassle of the commuting life, Pratt figures he has ridden MetroLink nearly every workday to his job in downtown Los Angeles at the California Department of Insurance.

“My biggest complaint is they’re crowding the cars,” Pratt said. “I wish they would add another car on some of the trains, [but] I think it’s here to stay. I can’t imagine it ever being discontinued.”

New riders such as Paul Bullock, 29-year-old vice president of an herbal tea company, are just discovering the Ventura County Line.

Steaming tea mug in hand, Bullock boarded MetroLink in Moorpark for the first time last week with a battered skateboard to carry him from the Burbank train station to his office.

“I’m sick and tired of driving down to Burbank every day,” said Bullock, who plans to drive the 25 miles a day from home in Santa Paula daily to the Moorpark station just to ride the train.

“It’s expensive--$10 per day,” he said. “But I guess if you think about the wear and tear on your car, it’s a pretty good deal.”

Fares are steep; some complain that a monthly pass costs $240 from Oxnard, $144 from Simi Valley.

But in the same breath, riders describe the alternative: Spending the same money on car costs for the dubious privilege of driving door-to-door and the unpleasant near-certainty of arriving stressed out, late and behind on work they could have done on the train.

Aboard the Ventura County Line at rush hour last week, riders pecked at laptop computers, scribbled letters and flipped through newspapers in the gently rocking train.

Traveling Community

They talked of celebrating birthdays, promotions and farewells on the trains, of the traveling community they have knit together over months and years of rush-hour runs on the Ventura County Line.

“People have to get used to getting away from a car,” said longtime rider Roy Totten, 51, of Newbury Park, as the rugged Santa Susanas rocketed past outside the window. “The rewards far outweigh anything you have to give up.”

In the end, critics and supporters grudgingly agree, the arguments over MetroLink may be philosophical.

Critics say the Ventura County Line is not cost-effective, and probably never will pay for itself. But perhaps it is worth it, they say.

“Obviously, the freeways are crowded now, and you project that out another 20, 25 years and we’re looking at some real serious problems,” said Robings, the taxpayers’ advocate. “Then, mass transit of whatever kind is going to be worth it. I think you have to plan for the long run, and that’s where this thing may make sense.”

The key to the Ventura County Line’s success will be attracting more riders by offering more options, said Richard Stanger, MetroLink’s executive director.

“What you really need to make the service work is the combination of more peak-period trains,” Stanger said. “People don’t like to have just two options, they like to have four options. And they always like the ability to go back halfway through the day in case they get sick or there’s an emergency. The combination of more robust peak service and midday service to Oxnard would help.”

But Giuliano, of USC’s School of Urban Affairs, says that a commuter railway such as MetroLink may always be doomed to the perpetual struggle of prying Southern Californians out of their cars.

“It’s extremely difficult to compete with the convenience, the cost, the speed of a private automobile,” Giuliano said. “And that’s why rail commuting is so expensive: because there’s no market.”