Most people prefer to drive it they can afford it; for many trips driving is faster, even with congestion; and most jobs and housing are not convenient enough to transit, including Metrolink, to allow a one-seat ride. As with most transit - if you have to change modes or make a transfer, it's not competitive with driving, regardless of cost. Plus, transit can't offer the raw capacity needed to substitute for the majority of travel demand in a corridor, with rare exceptions, due to facility and funding constraints. Transit is still useful, because it takes some percentage of travelers off the freeway who otherwise would make the congestion even worse. Transit also offers an alternative for those who don't have a car, though long-distance commuter trains like Metrolink are not major players in that market.

Some planning now uses the concept of "transit-susceptible" trips - those for which transit can compete with car travel - as a target for transit capacity and usage. That recognizes that transit cannot cover all trip destinations and types regardless of how well it's funded. Transit's market share should be measured by how well it captures the transit-susceptible trips, not all trips.

Interesting that Metrolink was forced to open the Palmdale-Lancaster line several years earlier than they had planned. The Northridge earthquake did a number on 14, especially at the interchange with 5, which took a while to fix, and the road alternatives were minimal. The railroad, however, took little damage and was available immediately (even in 1971, when the railroad *did* get damaged, it was much less than the freeways and was repaired in a couple of weeks - had to get some bits of collapsed freeway off of it). Trains started running to temporary stations and handled nearly the entire commute traffic until the freeway was repaired, after which the trains' market share dropped to a normal level.