Ridership increases 32 percent on HRT express buses

Quote: "Many bus routes will start and end at Tide stations. Easy: transfer from the bus. It'll bring you from your house to the train, then the train will take you into Downtown. Common sense and research people."

Okay...They will ride the bus to the station for the 7 mile max train ride. Then....why do we need a train? Why can the bus not continue the 7 miles and save us around $400M in construction cost, clogged up streets due to at grade crossings, train noise through town, and loss of street lanes? Busses are "mass transit". Light rail is basically nothing but a exponentially costlier "bus" mounted on a track instead of on tires.

I think its obvious why people are riding more mass transit. Just wait though, they will raise prices on that too and then everyone will be walking or riding bikes.

There's nothing like some economic pressure to get people to conserve resource. The problem is we should have started decades ago, and it's going to take a long time to build up a public transportation infrastructure. The cities should cut back on building roads and starting installing rails because gasoline demand is just going to keep going up. The fed needs to start working on interstate high speed rail to take the demand off the fuel hungry airlines.

Many bus routes will start and end at Tide stations. Easy: transfer from the bus. It'll bring you from your house to the train, then the train will take you into Downtown. Common sense and research people.

I ride the buses often and the ridership is increasingly growing! With the price of gas soaring, it is the best value in town for transportation. I am sure that you can transfer from a bus to the train with relative ease. I have heard so many times that people see buses with hardly anyone on them, but the people who ride the buses know that this is not true. Light-rail will be a huge success here thanks to Mr. Bush and his buddies.

Now if only the clown leadership in va beach would join in on the tide and take it to both the air station and the beach. I am certain this will happen beacause it has to happen. Light rail is a great solution, we just live in a close minded community. It is human nature to fear change even when the change is for the better.

Uh....gee there Mr. Fab....how will those people get to the train station to take a 7 mile max ride? By car you say? I think if 7 miles is all they have to go, they will just keep on driving and get there faster. It will take more than $4.00 / gal gas. Speaking of crow.....how are we doing on that budget and schedule? Ohh..hard to swallow.

With gas prices up everything related to it has also gone up which includes almost every bit of our daily lives. The sad part is that should gas go down the prices we currently pay for groceries and other items won't go back down. People will have gotten use to the higher price and retailers will keep the prices at a higher rate or as they are now.

Oh, no...no one will ever use that "choo choo to nowhere". We shall see. When the Tide opens in 2010 and gas is averaging $6 a gallon I suspect a few of you horse-and buggy folks will have a heaping plate of crow to eat.

they will come.