Stung at the Pumps, More Hop on a Bus

Ridership on Virginia Railway Express, which runs trains from Manassas and Fredericksburg to Union Station, is also increasing, jumping nearly 12 percent in April, according to spokesman Mark Roeber.

In anticipation of high demand this fall, VRE is adding five rail cars each month until October, when it will have 106 cars, up from 78, he said. That will mean 4,000 more seats. April's average weekday ridership was 15,312.

MARC ridership increased 6 percent in March over the previous year and trains are at capacity, according to a spokeswoman for the Maryland Transit Administration, which operates the Penn, Camden and Brunswick lines. Average weekday ridership in March was 31,943.

Some drivers made the switch to public transit months ago, when gas seemed expensive at $3 a gallon.

Paul Fickinger, who commutes between Severna Park and Chevy Chase, took a combination of the MARC train and Metrorail two or three days a week last summer instead of driving. Now it's more like four days, sometimes five.

"The tipping point was probably when [gas prices] hit $3," said Fickinger, head of property management at a real estate company.

Aletha Randolph also drove when she began her job in Crystal City three years ago. But the cost of commuting across the Potomac River from Cheverly grew too high. She started riding Metro in January.

"It takes a little bit more time, but as far as saving money . . . now, instead of filling up my car every week, week and a half, I now fill it up close to every three weeks," she said.

This month, weekday Metro ridership during peak periods was 509,533 trips.

If riders spread out their rush-hour trips, instead of crowding into the "peak of the peak," Metro could accommodate an additional 140,000 trips on the subway, Metro's Bottigheimer said.

One of the biggest obstacles to spreading out ridership is space at parking lots, which fill up quickly at suburban stations near the ends of the lines. One option, Bottigheimer said, would be to set aside spaces for carpoolers.

Philip Westcott of New Market, a transportation engineer, is an expert on how to get from point A to point B. But he still hasn't found a good rail or bus option for his commute to Baltimore. So he has had to suck it up at the pump, paying $60 to fill the tank of his Nissan Xterra. That lasts for four days of commuting.

If it gets much worse, he said, he and his wife will have to join carpools. "If gas prices get above $4.50 or something, that's the only option we have, really," he said.

Staff writers Mark Berman and Jennifer Buske and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.