Pop quiz: What do you get when you mix a continual traffic jam with record high gasoline prices?
Answer: a train or bus ride.
At least that’s what transit officials hope, especially Sound Transit, which has struggled to find riders for its $385 million Everett-to-Seattle commuter train.
Michael V. Martina / The Herald
The number of Sounder riders has climbed steadily since June, when a second Sounder train was added to the Everett-Seattle route. June also happens to be when gasoline prices started their record climb to more than $3 a gallon in some areas.
“There’s anecdotal evidence that it might be related to the spike in gas prices, but we did add a second train,” said Lee Somerstein, a Sound Transit spokesman.
Sounder was averaging about 300 boardings per week with one train. That total has gradually climbed to about 585 boardings per week with the addition of a second train.
The high gas prices – an average $2.88 a gallon in the Everett-Seattle-Bellevue area on Tuesday – have turned Joe Hamelin of Edmonds into a mass transit user.
“I’ve been slowly getting my schedule early enough so that I can take Sounder,” Hamelin said. “I will start next week.”
Bus use at both Sound Transit and Community Transit is up significantly over 2004, but there isn’t any data in yet for September, so it’s hard to tell if the climb is related to gas prices.
A complicated formula that AAA uses to compute the cost of driving your own vehicle puts the cost at 50 cents a mile, but all the costs associated with owning a car are included, not just the price of gas. Those include depreciation, insurance and maintenance.
The cost is actually significantly higher than 50 cents a mile, because the formula was put together before gas prices shot up, and AAA based it on gasoline prices of about $2 per gallon.
“It makes sense that people would turn to mass transit when prices get too high,” said Janet Ray, a spokeswoman for AAA in Bellevue.
Still, she said she wasn’t sure that paying $3 at the pump was high enough for that, explaining that lots of other factors weigh in, including ease of access to public transit.
“High prices will not cause me to change my driving habits, mainly because there is no other choice,” Teri Anne Beauchamp said. “I live in downtown Everett and work nights. Bus service for someone having to be at work late at night is almost nonexistent. “
Somerstein said Sounder’s biggest problem has been and continues to be its lack of train times – something Sound Transit hopes to address by adding two more trains by the end of 2007.
Still, for those who can commute by train, it continues to be a low-stress alternative.
“This is an excellent time for people to try Sounder on for size,” Somerstein said. “Park your car, plug in your laptop and look at the mountains. What’s that worth in dollars and cents?”
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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