Gas prices drive many to ditch cars, ride bus

Chara Williams stepped out of her 1996 Mitsubishi Galant early Thursday morning and watched her husband drive off, leaving her to wait for an Express bus to arrive at the Super Kmart in North Charleston.

These days, the Ridgeville couple often carpools, or she takes mass transit to work to save on paying for gas. They have a 2002 Jeep Liberty, but they stopped driving their gas guzzler when pump prices hit $3 a gallon.

"That's when we said enough is enough," Williams said.

Nationally, gas prices are about $3.62 a gallon on average, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. South Carolinians are paying about $3.48 a gallon, up 34 cents from the state average recorded just a month ago.

The Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority is seeing record ridership as pump prices continue to soar, largely because more penny-pinched people like Williams are hopping aboard Express buses instead of driving to work.

Ridership counts from October through February surpassed levels from 2001, when the transit system last saw its highest ridership levels before running into financial issues and eventually having to drastically cut service.

From January to March, overall ridership counts rose from about 296,000 trips to nearly 313,000 trips.

The commuter-friendly Express bus service is growing in popularity, as nearly twice as many trips were recorded in February as compared to the same time a year ago when the service launched.

Read more in tomorrow's editions of The Post and Courier.