Mass transit ridership surges

NEW YORK, May 10 (UPI) -- U.S. commuters increasingly are abandoning their vehicles and crowding onto mass transit as gas prices approach $4 per gallon, transportation experts say.

Park-and-ride lots are overflowing and lines to board buses and trains are getting longer around the United States as commuters turn to long-neglected mass transit options to cope with soaring gas prices, The New York Times reported Saturday.

"In almost every transit system I talk to, we're seeing very high rates of growth the last few months," William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, told the newspaper. "It's very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas."

While big cities such as New York and Boston have seen public transit ridership jump 5 percent this year, the biggest ridership surges have been happening in smaller western and southern cities that have seen increases of 10 percent to 15 percent or more in recent months.

In Denver, the Times said, there has been an 8 percent jump in transit ridership, while cities with fewer than 100,000 residents have also seen large increases in bus ridership.