While a majority of all trips in California are made by private automobile, public transit is rarely credited for the vital role that it plays in reducing congestion and providing mobility for the state's urban and suburban population. More than twelve million state residents aren't even licensed to drive, and public transit has become a necessity for a large segment of the state's elderly and lower-income populations. Public transit carries over 1.2 billion passengers a year in California, seven times the number of annual airline passengers at the state's 14 largest airports. In fact, Californians actually drive less than the average American, are less likely to have a driver's license than the average American, own fewer vehicles per person than the average American, and ride transit more than the average American.

TABLE 10: CALIFORNIA’S DEPENDENCE ON PUBLIC TRANSIT
ITEM	United States	California	California’s Rank
Annual Miles Driven Per Capita	9,522	8,482	40th
Registered Vehicles Per Capita (per thousand)	754	745	32nd
Percent of Population Licensed to Drive	68.4	62.8	46th
Percent of Driving Age Population Licensed	88.8	83.1	45th
Source: 1998 Highway Statistics, Federal Highway Administration; American Public Transit Association.

Transit's Role in Reducing Congestion
While transit serves many purposes, one of the most important of which is to provide critical access and mobility for transit-dependent and lower-income residents statewide, it also reduces the pressure on critical commute corridors by offering a convenient alternative to driving alone. Indeed, travel corridors where public transportation is a reliable option during peak hours are extremely popular: transit carries 38 percent of all trips in the San Francisco Bay Bridge corridor, 30 percent of all trips into central Los Angeles, and 18 percent of trips into San Diego. While Bay Area traffic is already notorious for its backups, residents got a taste of what life would be like without BART when a systemwide strike in 1997 literally ground the area's freeways to a halt. Another recent study found that without transit, Los Angeles would have to build 1,400 new freeway lane-miles to handle the traffic, the San Francisco Bay Area would need to increase its freeway capacity by 50 percent, and San Diego would see an additional 35,000 cars on the road.

While the debate over the success of the state's HOV lane program continues unabated, a tremendously cost-effective public transit option lies in the utilization of the state's existing 925-mile HOV lane network by express commuter buses that could provide reliable and convenient service while bypassing traffic tie-ups. A new study of the potential for express buses in the Bay Area, combined with other transit improvements and economic incentives, concluded that such a package could result in an annual increase of 110 million transit trips and a concurrent 20 percent decrease in traffic congestion.