While the vast majority of Americans are car bound, rising numbers are getting on board with public transit, commuter and light rail, trolleys and buses.

Those riding the rails and buses took 10.7 billion trips on public transportation in 2008, a 4 percent increase over the number of trips taken in 2007, according to a ridership report by the American Public Transportation Association.

During the same period, the number of vehicle miles traveled on roadways declined by 3.6 percent, the group reported, citing the U.S. Department of Transportation.

While the road miles driven could simply reflect fewer people commuting to work combined with lower driving levels resulting from last summer’s soaring gas prices, the APTA sees the increase in ridership as a continuation of a longer term trend.

“Public transportation use is up 38% percent since 1995, a figure that is almost triple the growth rate of the population (14 percent) and up substantially over the growth rate for the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on our nation’s highways (21%) for that same period,” the association explained in a news statement released Monday.

In sheer numbers, the 2008 ridership was the greatest since 1956; though today’s higher population means the percentage of riders is still much less than it was at that time.

APTA president William W. Millar noted that those switching to public transit can save themselves more than $8,000 a year in gasoline and car maintenance costs, as well as helping lessen their carbon footprint.

“Now, more than ever, the value of public transportation is evident and the public has clearly demonstrated that they want and need more public transit services,” Millar said. “Public transportation is good for the economy, good for the environment and good for energy independence and now is the time for the federal government to increase its investment in public transportation.”

Light rail — which includes trolleys and modern street cars — saw the biggest percentage increases in ridership.

The city of Charlotte, with a light rail system that opened in late 2007, saw an 862 percent increase.

Charlotte was followed by New Orleans’ light rail system, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, with an annual increase of 218 percent.

You’ve heard the saying, “it’s easy being green.” Maybe sometimes. But not always, and not if you’re the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) agency, which finds itself tangling with a green dilemma.

DART, which serves Dallas and 11 other cities in the region, has been planning to replace its aging bus fleet with 537 shiny new buses. It’s a great opportunity to go green with the entire fleet.

But after taking bids this fall and updating the research, the agency members are locked in debate over what type of buses are “cleaner” and which ones make the most sense environmentally and economically. The answer is not readily apparent. Like potential car buyers on the threshold of a dealership showroom, the bus-buying members of DART find themselves puzzling over the new technologies and old perceptions.

They are comparing diesel buses against those that run on compressed natural gas (CNG) and also considering the newest buses on the block, diesel-electric hybrids.

The hybrids are clean machines, with the fewest greenhouse gas emissions. They’re also the smoothest riding — and by far the most expensive. The CNG buses, meanwhile, have a reputation for cleaner emissions than traditional diesel buses. But compared to newer diesels, those emissions differences may have gone up in smoke.

Despite the derailing economy, California voters got on board for reviving train service in their state November 4th by passing state proposition 1A — a $10 million bond to begin construction of a fully electric rail system running 220-mph trains between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and Union Station in Los Angeles.

The bond is a vote of confidence from the public and a down payment on the $40 billion-plus project that plans to run high-speed trains from Sacramento to San Diego. The plan’s boosters say it will create jobs, relieve air and highway congestion, and help the state meet its legislative mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Slideshow: California’s High-Speed Railway Plan

While detractors like the San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial board said California’s budget woes make spending billions of dollars on a massive transportation project not only ill-advised, but “potentially the biggest boondoggle in California history”, proponents called the victory a landmark for high-speed rail nationwide.

Amtrak spokesperson Vernae Graham said Amtrak, which supports the plan, is likely to benefit from the high-speed rail project’s test track, which she said could increase Amtrak’s track speed through California’s Central Valley. In the past year, Amtrak has seen ridership grow more than 30 percent over the Capitol Corridor – one of its Northern California routes – and achieve double-digit growth on two other California routes that stand to connect up with the high-speed trains. Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner from Los Angeles to San Diego, the second most popular train in the entire Amtrak system, carries more than 2.5 million people a year.

According to the California High Speed Rail Authority’s business plan, the $33 billion cost of that San Francisco to Los Angeles backbone link will be shared among the State of California, the federal government, local and regional governments and private sector investors. The $10 billion down payment passed by voters to develop the system cannot be spent until matching federal, local and private funding is also secured.

It’s no surprise this plan could give fiscal conservatives, and even fiscal realists, pause in a state that just completed the longest state budget impasse in history. But on this one, former Massachusetts governor, presidential candidate and Amtrak board member Michael Dukakis told Wired Magazine, “people are way ahead of the government. They want a rail system that works.”

There’s no doubt electric rail is greener than just about any transportation alternative for the routes in question. “I don’t know of any transportation system which matches high-speed rail for reducing tainted emissions, improving air quality, and reducing dependence on foreign oil,” said Judge Quentin Kopp, chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority and chief spokesman of the campaign to pass the transportation bill.

But how quantifiably green is the project? Kopp said by the time the entire 800-mile system is completed, it will reduce the state’s reliance on fossil fuel by 12.7 million barrels of oil per year and reduce the state’s CO2 emissions by about 12 million pounds annually. And energy consultant Navigant Consulting Inc. said the train system could run with zero emissions if renewable-energy sources are used to power it. The system is expected to use 3,380 Gigawatt hours a year of energy to transport 94 million passengers by 2030. According to Navigant’s findings, generating this amount of energy from renewable sources is “well within the capabilities of the state.” This amount represents one percent of the state’s electrical load, or about three and a half days worth of electricity consumed throughout the state.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s business plan calculates high-speed trains will “alleviate the need to spend nearly $100 billion to build about 3,000 miles of new freeway plus five airport runways and 90 departure gates over the next two decades,” Quentin Kopp said.

High-speed rail could not only take a few polluting airliners’ out of California’s skies. It could also help airlines focus on what they do best: long-distance flights. That’s according to Robert Crandall, the Former Chairman, President and CEO of AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines. Crandall said in a speech to the Wings Club in June 2008 that short-haul flights of less than 300 miles, which are not generally profitable for airlines, could be readily replaced by high-speed rail. Crandall said high-speed rail and aviation could work together. “We could increase long-haul aviation capacity to and from our major cities by linking nearby airports to those cities with high-speed rail links,” Crandall said.

It’s refreshing in these days of gas and environmental calamities, not to mention lending and budget crises, to hear about something that’s chugging along in a positive direction.

That’s the story of Amtrak, or nearly so, at this junction. Ridership on the American passenger rail service is up a healthy 14 percent compared to this time last year, and is on pace to hit an all-time annual record of 28 million passengers in fiscal 2008.

Trains are whisking folks around in the busiest “Northeast Corridor” (DC to Boston) faster than ever, and people across the nation are flocking to inter-city train travel, a mode of transportation less polluting per passenger than both cars and planes. Amtrak seems right for the times and primed for expansion.

“Ridership is through the roof! Let’s get on with it,” announced Amtrak CEO Alexander Kummant at a transportation summit in Irving, Texas, last week, where he came well prepared to make the case for more Amtrak.

Tossing up a series of charts and graphs during a presentation to fellow transportation officials and business leaders, he showed the audience that train travel spirals upward in an almost dead even correlation with gas prices. Yes, our pain is Amtrak’s gain, and one can reasonably conclude that if high gas prices stick with us, as predicted, train ridership will boom.

And as more people wiggle out of their personal gasoline predicaments, trains could become ever more popular, given the leap to trains preceded gasoline hitting $4 a gallon, Kummant noted.

Furthermore, a review of the ridership shows that it is not just straining the tracks in the busy rail-savvy “Northeast Corridor,” but has increased nearly everywhere. July 2008 ridership figures show increases over July 2007 for the Texas Eagle’s San Antonio to Chicago route (up 30 percent); the Coast Starlight (Seattle to Los Angeles; up 28 percent); the Kansas City to St. Louis route (up 57 percent); and the Hiawatha (Chicago to Milwaukee; up 38 percent).

So it’s all good. Except that it’s not: Amtrak’s trains are full, but the national network is unprepared to handle more passengers.

Chronically under-funded to the point of near insolvency a few years ago, Amtrak is reaching a tipping point where it cannot take on new business because it lacks reserve cars to pull on line and also is hemmed in by lines it shares with freight trains.

Operating under tight budgets for years, and jeered by perennial critics who argue that the national train system (which traditionally operates in the red) should not even receive subsidies, Amtrak has been unable to refurbish retired cars or build new ones. The service’s infrastructure, including the depots and track that it largely shares with commercial railroads, badly needs modernizing. Many supporters believe that “double track” routes should be installed to allow Amtrak the ability to expand alongside existing lines and provide more flexible, rider-friendly service, but these lines would be expensive and subject to high local taxes.

And so, just as the demand for rail travel, ridership and gas prices conspire to create what Kummant terms a “perfect storm” of opportunity for Amtrak, the doppelganger of Amtrak Past haunts the future.

How to change that picture? Kummant cites one thing as absolutely necessary, both in his speech to transportation officials and in remarks afterward. He would desperately like Congress to give Amtrak multi-year funding, instead of piecemeal year-by-year appropriations, so it can hire, plan and strategize like any other business.

His ask is moderate compared to funding for other transportation: $1 billion a year for each of the next 10 years.

He asked this year, but was denied. “A bitter pill,” he says, in face of the potential.

“It’s incredibly easy to argue that Amtrak should double in size over the next 10 years, given everything that’s going on,” he says.

And possibly incredibly hard to make that happen. Whether Congress is letting American train potential go unrealized because it doesn’t care, is procedurally balled up (Kummant’s view) or is just better geared to subsidizing plane and car travel, has become almost academic. The bottom line is that public policy since Amtrak’s inception in 1970 is clear, the system is on a short leash — or as its supporters see it, riding a vicious cycle of too-little funding that causes it to be less profitable, which creates an argument for less funding.

Let’s face it: Solo car commuters increase both traffic congestion and a city’s carbon footprint.

In San Francisco, those gas-hogging lone drivers soon will be get a clear message to switch to greener forms of transportation, such as buses, train transit and van pools. Earlier this month, the city preliminarily approved a commuter measure requiring medium- and large-size city employers to promote — or even pay for — public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees.

It’s likely that many more American cities will follow San Francisco’s lead, particularly those cities that have signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (USCPA), and pledged to reduce global warming pollution in their cities by 7 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. They will likely be scrambling to usher commuters from their cars and SUV’s and onto mass transit lines, an immediate and proven way of reducing urban smog.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was an early adopter of the USCPA and the city has an ambitious climate action plan, so it’s no surprise that on August 5, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a commuter measure that would require many city employers to promote public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees. The Commuter Benefits ordinance, introduced by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, would give San Francisco employers with more than 20 workers three options: pay for employees’ transit passes or vanpools; provide door-to-door shuttle or vanpools, or tap into the federal Commuter Checks program, which allows employees to create pretax commuter accounts.

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce senior vice president Jim Lazarus said the chamber is not always in favor of city-imposed mandates on businesses, but said it backs the latest commuter proposal. “The good thing about the mandate is that it has a net no-cost alternative for employers,” he said. Employers would save on their payroll taxes by implementing option three of the proposal, pre-tax employee commuter accounts. “There’s flexibility and that’s a positive thing,” Lazarus said.

The Commuter Benefits plan aims to extend the same mass transit benefit that most municipal employees receive through programs like the federal Commuter Checks to the private sector, Mirkarimi said. Municipal employees can already avail themselves of employer-subsidized transit discounts, and the Commerce’s Lazarus said many do.

A city-mandated downtown plan for 55 new high rise buildings requiring employers to educate employees about non-car transit options resulted in 92% worker participation in Commuter Checks: 3,000 employees traveling to work in some way other than a single-occupancy vehicle.

But the federal pretax benefits program is “not well utilized in the private sector,” Mirkarimi said. “Our city’s workforce use of this benefit pales in comparison to how many could be using it.”

With gas averaging well over $4 in San Francisco, the potential numbers of transit benefits users could be big. Jared Blumenfeld, who heads the city’s Department of Environment, estimates another 50,000 to 75,000 transit riders may enroll for commuter benefits.

The federal program works like this: The employer buys Commuter Checks – vouchers used to pay for public transit or vanpooling – and either gives them to employees free of charge as an employee benefit, or allows employees to purchase them using a pre-tax payroll deduction. Because the amount employees spend on transit or vanpooling, up to $115 a month, can be deducted from their paychecks before taxes, their yearly taxable income is reduced by the value of vouchers purchased. That can translate to a savings of up to 40% on transit costs.

Mass transit commuters save even more than that, however, through the direct and immediate savings on gasoline and car maintenance. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) estimates that with a gallon of gasoline at $3.90, a person can save about $8,000 a year by switching to mass transit, according to a July report by the APTA.

And that’s not even accounting for greenhouse gas savings.

”It really goes beyond saving a few dollars for employers and employees; it’s a city response to an energy crisis and also to the global environmental crisis,” San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said. The measure was approved by a final vote of the board yesterday but must be signed by the mayor to take effect.

Employers don’t have to wait for a mandate to offer commuter benefits to their workers. Businesses nationwide are taking initiative to offer sometimes-innovative commuting options. Siegel and Strain, an Emeryville, California architecture firm, reimburses its employees at the current federal automobile rate of 58.5 cents per mile for bicycling to off-site meetings.

Compare that to the state of California rate of 4 cents per mile for state workers who bike on government business, or even The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s suggested 10 cents per mile reimbursement rate, and you have a nice incentive, and even “a scone at the bakery on the way back to recharge,” said Siegel and Strain associate Marjorie Smith.

Smith said that while it’s nice to be reimbursed for wear and tear on the bike and calories expended, what she really likes about the program is that it institutionalizes bicycling as transportation. “Having the support of the organization behind it acknowledges that bicycling is a valid way to get around,” she said.

This type of program is a win-win for both employers and employees looking to reduce their environmental impact and improve their health. “We’ve been looking at ways to further green our business,” said Nancy Malone, a principal at the firm. “One of things we’ve been looking at is transportation. The idea came from someone relatively new who asked if we reimbursed for bicycle riding to the job site.” The firm decided to go with the auto reimbursement rate because the distances ridden “won’t be huge”, and if employees drove, the firm would have had to pay the same amount.

“Most of the people that ride their bikes really are dedicated to it and really enjoy it. If people are happier doing that it’s certainly a plus for everybody,” Malone said.

Siegel and Strain, with 18 employees, will make a relatively small impact on the planet by supporting carbon-free travel. But the trend includes much bigger companies too. The League of American Bicyclists, which recognizes municipalities for actively supporting bicycling, has a new plan to give awards to bicycle-friendly businesses. The applications are still being reviewed, but director Bill Nesper mentioned a couple of companies in the running:

• Calvert -- The Washington, D.C. investment company reimburses up to $500 for the (one time) purchase of a bicycle and reimburses up to $120 annually for the purchase of shoes for those employees who walk to work.

• Google – Provides on-site bike repair, a fleet of company bicycles for on-campus and off-site meeting commuting on its Mountain View, CA campus, and, free, company-branded bikes for some employees in its Europe, Middle East, and Africa offices. The company also makes a donation to charity for every day that an employee gets to work under his or her own power (biking, skateboarding etc.) A Google spokesperson says that more than 2,500 employees participate in the Self-Powered Commuters (SPC) program worldwide.
  

Many other programs and resources support city-backed climate plans, and public transit and bicycle commuting, including:

• Cool Cities — In this Sierra Club-Sponsored program, Cool Cities are cities that have made a commitment to stopping global warming by signing the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. Begun in 2005, the Cool Cities campaign empowers city residents and local leaders to join and encourage their cities to start smart energy solutions to save money and build a cleaner, safer future.

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Best Workplaces for Commuters — As it says, this is a list of employers with commuter-friendly policies.

• Seattle Climate Action Plan — Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels initiated the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, and Seattle’s Climate plan is the model for cities nationwide. The campaign provides online tools and tips for getting started on climate action.

• The City of Seattle website provides a good explanation of commuter benefit programs and also offers a page of links to transportation resources for those who want to find carpool programs or find out more about city bus and train options across the country.

• American Public Transportation Association’s Public Transportation Savings Calculator lets you see for yourself how taking transport saves you money.

• San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Employers Commuting Guide helps employers decide which commuting options they could offer, based on location, number of employees and other factors.

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