Train in Vain

No room on the bus
One of those places is Washington, D.C., where officials of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, serving the nation's capital and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, are studying contingency plans to deal with weekday ridership that is up during every part of the day over this time last year.

The authority's subway system, already under pressure from riders to add a fifth line, recorded an 8.5 percent increase in ridership in April over last year. Transit officials project that a fifth line could swell ridership by another 40 percent in Maryland.

Washington-area bus riders, meanwhile, complain of standing-room-only buses at any time of the day or night, while buses are so full in Indianapolis that would-be riders are often refused entry, left to watch as buses drive off without them.

"I was standing there for about an hour," said Ryan Taber, who rides the Fishers Express bus from his home in Hamilton County to his job in downtown Indianapolis.

"No buses ever came by, so finally we stopped a bus going to Carmel and said, 'What's the deal?' And the driver said, 'The buses were full, so they didn't even come by this stop,'" Taber said.

Likewise in Austin, Texas, where "some of our operators are telling us that sometimes the buses are so full that they have to tell passengers to wait for the next bus," said Misty Whited, a spokeswoman for Capital Metro Transit.

More riders mean lower tax revenue
Mass transit is supposed to get cars off the road, and it's working: For the first time since 1980, the number of miles driven fell last year, from 3.014 trillion to 3.003 trillion, according to the Federal Highway Administration. The drop continued by another 2.3 percent in the first quarter of this year, the FHA said.

Meanwhile, 61 percent of drivers said in a poll by Quinnipiac University last month that they had cut back significantly on how much they drove because of high gas prices.

In the San Francisco Bay area, one of the most congested regions in the country, traffic has decreased while ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit, ferries and buses has risen, said Bijan Sartipi, a district director for California Transportation Department.

"We see a relationship between gas prices and mass transit ridership," Sartipi said.

Steve Taubenkibel, a spokesman for Washington Metro, said, "Any time you can get more people off the roads, highways and on mass transit, it's a win-win for everybody."