Drivers turn to buses as gas prices climb

Area transit lines see increase in ridership, plan service upgrades

Katie Ploghoft stepped aboard Triangle Transit's Chapel Hill-Raleigh express for the first time Thursday. Right away, she knew she'd found a good thing.

"This is like my platinum gold, right here," said Ploghoft, a UNC-Chapel Hill law student, as she clutched her new bus pass.

Carpooling to Raleigh for her summer internship quickly proved too expensive. Each day she and a friend split $8 for parking and $10 for gas, and they knew the cost of fuel would only get worse.

"Every day we go by the gas station, it's up, it's up," said Ploghoft, 26.

The surge in gas prices this spring -- a 65-cent rise in two months to a record average of $3.92 per gallon for regular on Monday -- has driven Triangle commuters in unprecedented numbers to park their cars and board the buses.

Raleigh's Capital Area Transit hauled 50,000 more passengers in April than in the same month a year earlier, and transit agencies across the Triangle reported an average increase of 19 percent. CAT expects to end the fiscal year June 30 with 4.6 million bus riders, about 500,000 above last year's count.

"I don't think people thought we'd ever see it happen so rapidly," David Eatman, Raleigh transit administrator, said of gas prices and their effect on rising bus ridership.

As bus routes get busier and commuters clamor for better service, the Triangle's transit agencies are rolling out a few new routes and planning more improvements. At the same time, they're scrambling to cover their own sharply higher fuel bills.

A new express bus from Wake Forest to Raleigh is scheduled for launch in July. For a one-way fare of $2.50, commuters from Franklin County and northern Wake will have a new option to leave their cars at a park-and-ride lot in downtown Wake Forest. They'll let somebody else handle the hazards of Capital Boulevard traffic.

Fare-free circulator shuttle buses will start looping through downtown Raleigh in September and downtown Durham next spring. Wake Forest and the Wakefield community will begin sharing a new circulator bus in July.

Some commuters are surprised to find themselves boning up on bus schedules. The price of gas has forced Saba Tarley and his wife to park their cars during the week -- and to live in separate towns.

Tarley, 36, and his wife realized two months ago that they no longer could afford to drive each day from their Cary home to his job in Raleigh and her job near Chapel Hill.

"It costs $60 now to fill her tank," Tarley said last week as he waited for a bus at the Triangle Transit transfer center in Research Triangle Park. "And if she has to drive from Cary to Chapel Hill every day, then in less than three days we're out of gas."

Now his wife stays during the week at her parents' home in Durham. She rides the bus to work.

Saba Tarley catches a bus from Cary to work in Raleigh each morning. His son attends school a few blocks from the hair salon he owns on Hillsborough Street, and they ride the bus home together.

On weekends, the Tarleys are reunited in Cary with each other, and their cars.

"When the gas thing started getting crazy, we kind of planned it out this way," Tarley said. "It's not cheap, but it's reasonable for us. We'll try to wait it out."

Tarley said he and his wife are a little embarrassed about having to rely on public transportation. They declined to be photographed, and she didn't want to speak with a reporter.

But he said riding the bus has worked out better than he had expected.

"I didn't know it was great until I started doing it," Tarley said. "Before, I thought it was just a waste of time.