Gas prices just hit another record high. Here’s what that means for Whatcom bus ridership
If record-high gas prices are forcing Whatcom County residents to drive less, the Whatcom Transportation Authority says it has yet to see it force more people to take the bus.
High gas prices the past two months have not yet had a significant impact on bus ridership within Whatcom County, WTA Planning Director Tim Wilder told The Bellingham Herald in an email Wednesday, May 11.
“We’ve tracked the relationship between boardings and gas prices since 2005, and there is not a strong correlation,” Wilder wrote. “Other factors are more impactful to ridership, such as: WWU attendance and the universal pass; the amount of service provided; high rates of vehicle ownership due to low auto interest rates; geographic spread of households to areas that have limited transit service, etc.”
Wilder reported that WTA’s ridership numbers still have not recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels yet, as increased telecommuting and concerns over safety during the pandemic have kept many people from riding.
During the months of March and April this year, WTA recorded a total of 508,653 boardings, Wilder reported.
While that was up from the 434,754 boardings in January and February, Wilder said March and April are typically higher ridership months for WTA, “so I wouldn’t read anything special in the increase.”
The numbers from March and April are only slightly more than half the 845,950 boardings WTA saw in March and April of 2019.
“Since we’re carrying only 50% of our pre-pandemic rides, we still have a lot of capacity on our vehicles, so we don’t anticipate needing additional service if boardings continue to increase,” Wilder wrote.
WTA’s ridership numbers related to high gas prices is similar to what national studies have found, Wilder reported, adding “only when prices are very high, do they have a significant impact on ridership.”
But gas prices have never been higher, according to the latest data from AAA. The national average price for regular gasoline hit $4.40 per gallon on Wednesday, May 11, seven cents more than the all-time high set earlier this year in March — that’s an 18 cent jump in the past week.
“It’s really jumped in just the last month, and we kind of saw it dip a little bit, but now as we get closer to summer driving season with the increase in demand, we’re seeing that go back up,” said AAA Texas spokesperson Daniel Armbruster. The volatility comes from the price of crude oil, which remains high at more than $100 a barrel, amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. On May 7, the European Union announced a proposal to impose a gradual embargo on Russian oil. That’s already having an impact on global crude markets.
California, Hawaii, Nevada, Washington and Oregon are the most expensive states to fill up, according to AAA.
As of Wednesday, AAA reported average gas prices in Washington state were $4.89 per gallon — nearly a half dollar more than the national average. Prices in Bellingham were only slightly lower at $4.87 per gallon, according to AAA, which was up two cents from a day earlier, 18 cents from a week ago, 26 cents from a month earlier and $1.36 from a year ago.
