Rising Cost of Gas Drives Commuters to Metrolink

Tired of forking out $30 every other day for gas, Shawn Dailey left her thirsty Ford Explorer at home in Laguna Niguel on Tuesday and hopped aboard Metrolink for her daily commute to downtown Los Angeles.

“With prices the way they are, it’s really hard,” said Dailey, director of special events for the Center Theatre Group.

As gasoline prices soared, ridership on Metrolink trains shot up by 13% during the first 20 days of March, bringing the total number of long-distance rail commuters to its highest level in history, according to Metrolink.

Ridership this month reached 31,117 passengers, up from 27,491 during a similar period last year.

Dailey has been riding Metrolink part time for three years, but increasing gasoline prices have convinced her to ride the train five days a week. It’s just getting too expensive to drive, she said.

With gas approaching $2 a gallon, hundreds and possibly thousands of commuters are coming to the same conclusion as Dailey.

“I usually buy a 10-day pass, but now I am going to start buying monthly passes,” said Dailey, just before boarding the train at Union Station for the ride home to Orange County.

Passengers at Metrolink stations Tuesday said they didn’t need to be told about the statistics. Longtime riders said they have seen a lot of new faces in recent weeks. And new riders said they are grateful for an alternative to high prices at the gas pump.

“The people on the trains are saying the gas prices are going to keep them on the trains,” said Larry Merrill, a state Department of Consumer Affairs worker boarding the train in Santa Ana for the ride to his home in Riverside County.

Also in Santa Ana, Len Hayes, an Orange County marshal, said that more passengers have meant less room for regulars like him.

“They are going to have to add more cars, just because there are so many people on the trains,” Hayes said. “Now it’s standing room only.”

At Los Angeles Union Station, Richard Morrett, who uses the train to ease a 75-mile commute from his home in Palmdale, was among those who noticed the flock of new riders.

“You see new faces every day,” said Morrett, who works for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. “They are not part of the old clique or regular crowd, but they quickly fit in.”

Morrett has been riding Metrolink for five years.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not reporting a similar surge in ridership for buses and light rail. But agency officials said it may be too early to tell, because their passenger tallies for March are not in yet.

The MTA said experience from past price hikes shows that for every 25% increase in gasoline prices, there is an accompanying 3% increase in ridership.

Orange County Transportation Authority officials said they have been experiencing some of the heaviest boarding days ever this March. They cited heavy rain and gasoline prices as reasons.

“We could attribute it partly to gas prices,” said an authority spokesman, Dave Simpson. “Other factors may come into play: weather, time of year for school.”

The first shock waves from the gasoline price hikes were most likely felt on Metrolink because its average round-trip commute is 64 miles, meaning its passengers’ pocketbooks have taken a bigger hit than many others.

Metrolink, which operates 124 trains a day in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, found in an informal survey that a threshold of $1.85 a gallon had to be reached before commuters were willing to give up their cars and get on trains.

“When gas prices increase and it begins to affect the pocketbook, people rethink the way they commute,” said Peter Hidalgo, Metrolink spokesman. “We are sort of the silver lining in this otherwise dismal news to car-crazy Southern Californians.”

Based on earlier spikes in ridership, such as a 20% surge after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Metrolink expects to retain about 40% of its new riders once gasoline prices drop.

Hidalgo said that Metrolink ridership normally grows 1% a month. “We have seen almost a year’s worth of ridership increases in the last 20 days,” he said.

The high gasoline prices leave commuters like Eric Brooking, 39, of Thousand Oaks, adding up the pluses and minuses of giving up long drives in favor of Metrolink.

“I just stare at the gas price, going up and up,” said Brooking, who feels the pain of gas prices every time he fills up his V-10 Dodge truck. “It’s murder.”

Brooking said he spends about $100 a week commuting about 20 miles from Thousand Oaks to Chatsworth every day. Interviewed at the Chatsworth station, he said his round-trip ticket cost him about $8 a day or $40 a week. He could be saving about $60 a week, he said.

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Times correspondent Chris Ceballos and staff writer Megan Garvey in Orange County and staff writer Edgar Sandoval in the San Fernando Valley contributed to this report.