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SALT LAKE CITY — Coast to coast, more and more Americans are ditching their car keys in favor of a light rail pass, and Salt Lake City is on board.
The Utah Transit Authority reports Salt Lake City had the nation's second biggest increase in ridership for light rail in the country in the first three months of 2012. Comparing the first quarter of this year to the same time frame a year ago, TRAX ridership was up 34.1 percent, second only to Memphis at 45.7 percent. The increase in Frontrunner ridership was in the top ten nationwide for commuter rail, at 8.5 percent, ninth in the country.
A new report from the American Public Transportation Association crunched the numbers for 27 light rail systems across the country. 25 of the 27 reported increased ridership. When you combine bus, light rail and commuter rail service, public transportation ridership jumped 5 percent in the first quarter of 2012 over the first three months of 2011. The combined service increase for UTA year over year was 7.5 percent.
The APTA believes gas prices are a large part of the reason behind the increase, and UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter agrees.
"With gas prices nearing four dollars a gallon, people are looking for alternatives to filling up their gas tank all the time," Carpenter said.
But gas prices don't entirely account for the extremely large growth in TRAX ridership locally, which has prompted UTA to add cars to trains during high traffic times and increase the number of trains running. He also attributes the two new TRAX lines which were added within the last year.
"The new configuration with the red, blue and green lines, and the higher frequency in the core areas between Murray and downtown have really increased our ridership overall on light rail," Carpenter said.
APTA's president and CEO, Michael Melaniphy, points out nearly 60 percent of trips taken on public transit are for work commutes.
"In some regions of our nation," Melaniphy said, "the local economy is rebounding and people are commuting to their new jobs by using public transportation."
Carpenter said UTA has tracked weekly gas prices going back more than ten years and can compare them to ridership numbers for the same times. Almost every time gas prices have spiked in the region, there has been a correlating increase in public transportation use. Typically, some of the new riders revert to their old commuting method once gas prices drop - but not all of them do, resulting in a net increase in ridership over time that continues to grow.
