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<p>The problem with this is that in SoCal, making us drive anywhere generally gets us to just drive wherever we want to go for convenience. It's all the hills and weird disjointed growth related to them. Especially in light of Metro's continued push to go green and attract even more commuters, that for many of us in the outer suburbs, that Metrolink station may be as much as half the total distance of our commute away, and buses are not always convenient - in my valley commuter buses are more expensive on a monthly basis than Metrolink, but more sensibly and conveniently routed. Additionally, SoCal commuters tend to be higher-income, meaning cost benefits have to be more significant to be enticing, given the cultural stigma around diesal engines vs how common hybrids and full electric cars already are. Until feeder services are improved, Metrolink will continue to face severe competition from more direct modes of transportation in many communities outside of Metro's service area. Almost everybody here owns a car, that's including adolescent and dependent adult children, so we overwhelmingly just drive. Buses are largely relegated to students, working-class folk, people with jobs directly on routes, riders of the commuter buses who need to get to the transit center to transfer, and seniors. Commuter trains are more heavily used by people who live physically closer to the actual stations, as far as I know, but are still not very popular. Metrolink's fare from SCV to SFV is $3; commuter buses are $2.75 to Warner Center, NoHo, UCLA, and Union Station. These are approximately competitive in price to driving, depending on current gas prices, but excepting the destinations directly served by those buses, unequivocally less convenient. Metrolink further south is even more expensive; transferring to Metro Bus to reach anywhere outside of a short walk from any of the stops on the aforementioned commuter lines takes even more time, as well as possibly money, depending on whether you have a commuter TAP pass; figuring out what sort of passes you'll need, making the purchases, figuring out the lines you'll take, all also take time; around here we'll just get in the car if we have that option. There's a reason even as Metro expands service within the actual metropolitan area, freeways are still receiving massive improvements. Public transportation infrastructure improvements in SoCal have one basic tenet: decrease automobile congestion.</p>
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