A recent decrease in Virginia Railway Express ridership has some questioning the future of commuter rail. I had to offer my two cents on the issue at the transportation blog on washingtonpost.com.

In addition to my comments there, the importance of building projects that meet demand and are convenient to use cannot be overstated. Metro is popular. Metrobus is not. But the free Bethesda 8 bus is a great success. Transit needs to take people where they want to go. It needs to get them there quickly and on schedule. The onboard conditions must be pleasant, comfortable, safe, and clean. In some cases, it should be free of charge. And it needs to come to the citizen. If people have to walk far or take more than one bus to access the system, they're not going to use it.

I have higher ridership standards than other mass transit proponents, because I acknowledge that the car is the American form of transportation. We'll never stop driving, no matter how expensive gas is or how long it takes to get there. After 9/11 and the age of terror threat levels, cars have never been more important as a personal transit system. But well thought out projects that meet the above qualifications will get significant numbers of people to utilize them. You might call it MPR, Maximum Possible Ridership. It's the realistic number, and while it's lower than the idealists' number, we have yet to reach it. Not even close. But with my transportation plan, we can.