The mass transit boom

From 2000 to 2005, fewer than 5 percent of Americans used mass transit to commute, compared with about 50 percent in Japan and Europe. But that may be changing.

More U.S. commuters than ever are taking buses, subways or light rail to work instead of driving cars. Americans took nearly 85 million more mass-transit trips in the first three months of 2008 than they did in the same period in 2007, according to a recent study by the American Public Transportation Association. Ridership in 2007 was the highest in 50 years.

Why is this happening?

It's not rocket science. For many, a round trip bus or metro fare is easier to stomach than gas prices that in some places have climbed to $4.79 per gallon. Three-quarters of Americans now believe more money should be spent on developing and improving mass transit systems, and cities are responding. Expansion and renovation projects are in the works for southern California, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Europe, meanwhile, is taking transit to the next level: Paris, which has been updating its light-rail network, is installing energy-efficient trains on several Metro lines, while London plans to increase its system's overall capacity by 50 percent by 2022.

Shorter commutes

Worry about rising gas prices has encouraged workers to move closer to their jobs to cut costs and find alternate ways of traveling to work. And for many of those who still drive, less-packed roads are producing shorter commutes.

While the change is by no means uniform, in some of the most congested areas of southern California, the average commute time has reportedly fallen by 5 or 6 minutes. (That could make for a sunnier Los Angeles, by the way: a 2006 paper in Science found that people with shorter commutes tend to be happier.)