Your May 1 editorial "Few riders on Metrolink" hit the mark when it stated that attracting new riders has proved challenging to Metrolink. Ridership is down 13% on the Ventura County line, and 6% on the Antelope Valley line, the two routes that serve Burbank. However, the same edition of your paper reported that office vacancies in Burbank had gone up from 6% to 20%, so there is some correlation caused by the recession.
Nevertheless, Metrolink has failed in many respects to tap into other segments of the huge travel market in its five-county area. The original narrow focus of the operating plan was based on Los Angeles-centric thinking. True, this is the largest single market in the region, but it should not be concentrated on to the exclusion of all the other journeys that could be made by train instead of car.
Send a reporter to Los Angeles on a weekday morning to stand on one of the freeway bridges downtown and observe the traffic; he or she will see that more cars go through downtown than take any of the exits.
