Commuters Driven to Metrolink by Rising Price of Gas

With a gas-guzzling 1997 Ford pickup, letter carrier Bob Flores didn’t need the latest round of gasoline hikes to convince him to start using Metrolink to commute from his home in Walnut to downtown Los Angeles.

“Now, it’s cheaper to ride the train than drive my truck,” he said.

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

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.

Passengers at Metrolink stations Tuesday said they didn’t need to be told about the statistics. Long-time 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 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 the Metrolink for five years.

Shawn Dailey, director of special events for the Center Theatre Group, has been riding the Metrolink part time for three years. but the soaring gasoline prices are convincing her to ride the train five days a week.

“With prices the way they are, it’s really hard,” Dailey said, just before boarding the train at Union Station for a ride to her home in Laguna Niguel in Orange county. “I usually buy a 10-day pass, but now I am going to start buying monthly passes.”

Dailey said she had been driving her Ford Explorer in about three days a week.

“It’s almost $30 to fill up, and I have to fill it every third day. It adds up.”

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 who depend on their cars.”

B2 eased on earlier spikes in ridership, such as a 20% surge after the 1994 Northridge