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Despite Cheaper Gas, Public Transit Ridership Is Up, Trade Group Reports

Ibsa Idris, 29, a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota who is originally from Ethiopia, riding a Green Line train into downtown Minneapolis last summer.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA — David Needham thought he would need to buy a car when he moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul from San Francisco in February 2013, but was pleasantly surprised to find that his adopted city has an extended transit system that meets all of his business and social needs, allowing him and his family to remain car-free.

Mr. Needham, 29, a website developer for nonprofits and small businesses, lives a five-minute walk from a new light-rail system that runs every 10 minutes and takes him into downtown Minneapolis in about 30 minutes for a fare of about $2.

“When we moved here to St. Paul, we realized that we lived on the route of a new light-rail system and a major bus thoroughfare, and we really didn’t need a vehicle,” Mr. Needham said. He said he, his wife Alyscia, and their 18-month-old daughter have been without a car for about a year.

Mr. Needham rides the 11-mile Green Line, which since opening in June has attracted around 36,000 riders on a typical weekday, a number that is already approaching the 41,000 projected for the line by 2030, said Drew Kerr, a spokesman for Metro Transit, the city’s transportation agency. The line cost $957 million to build, half of which was funded by the federal government, Mr. Kerr said.

Riders like Mr. Needham get a lot of value from public transportation, as do people in many other cities where investment in transit is leading to record-high ridership rates and persuading more people to leave their cars at home despite the latest plunge in gasoline prices.

The American Public Transportation Association said Wednesday that about 2.7 billion passenger trips were taken on transit systems in the third quarter of 2014 — an increase of 1.8 percent, or about 48 million trips, over the year-ago period — the highest third-quarter number since the trade group’s records began in 1974.

Cities with increased ridership include San Francisco, Chicago and New York, all of which reported annual increases in the number of riders for the both the latest quarter and the first nine months of 2014.

The national increase, which follows a 57-year high in ridership for all of 2013, reflects improvements in the reach, trip frequency and quality of public transportation, and weakens a traditional link between gas prices and transit use, said Michael Melaniphy, president of the association.

While previous spikes in transit use resulted from increased gasoline prices, and people would typically get back in their cars when gas prices retreated, that relationship is unraveling as transit services improve, Mr. Melaniphy said.

The latest evidence of a break in the link is an increase in ridership at a time when retail gasoline prices have fallen to their lowest in more than four years, he said.

“People are saying, ‘I came because of fuel prices; I’m staying because of the experience,’ ” he said.

With 60 percent of transit trips made by people commuting to work, the increased ridership is also fueled by a strengthening economic recovery that generates more jobs, and by improvements such as more frequent service and the availability of apps that offer users real-time updates on transit services.

In Philadelphia, Kara Sarvey takes commuter rail to her job downtown from her home in suburban Conshohocken, about 15 miles from the city center, and said she never considered driving to work, although she does own a car.

Ms. Sarvey, 26, a marketing professional for a publisher of medical textbooks, said that taking the train operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority saves her both money and time compared with driving along a notoriously congested highway.

“It was never even a thought to drive to work,” she said. “I just would not want to be in jam-packed traffic every day.”

In Boston, where transit ridership rose to a record-high 37.2 million passenger trips in October despite a 5 percent fare increase three months earlier, the use of buses, trains and subways partly reflects improvements to the existing system rather than additions to it, said Beverly Scott, chief executive of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

Upgrades, costing about $1 billion over the last two years, have included the start in March of late-night services on Fridays and Saturdays, the rehabilitation of some commuter rail stations, and the availability of mobile tickets that can be activated through riders’ cellphones, Ms. Scott said.

Ridership is now nearing a record average of 1.4 million passenger trips a day, she said.

Increased transit use also reflects an increasingly urban lifestyle by younger residents who demand more walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly communities, Ms. Scott said.

More transit use is one sign of a shift away from a suburban lifestyle that characterized a previous generation but may not be compatible with newer ones, Ms. Scott said.

“It’s not sustainable, and people know it now,” she said. “It’s a picture of what America was 30, 40 years ago. We’re painting a new picture in terms of where we’re going, and it’s very consistent with providing quality transit.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Despite Cheaper Gas, Public Transit Ridership Is Up, Trade Group Reports. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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