Trevor O’Driscoll, a teacher at The Wheeler School, in Providence, commutes to school by bike, while his wife, Vanessa, also a teacher at the school, walks the mile and a half from home to Wheeler.

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The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

Kim Stoddard, of Providence, was searching the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority Web site for bus schedules to Newport when she found a link to help people set up carpools.

Stoddard, who sells insurance, gave it a try, and now has two regular passengers who help pay her gasoline costs and provide good company.

A program manager at Brown University has given his gas-guzzling Mercedes SUV to his parents and started driving their Volkswagen Beetle to work. It uses “far less gas,” says Bradford L. Briggs. When his office moves to a more convenient location in Providence, he plans to take a bus.

Trevor and Vanessa O’Driscoll decided to stop using their car to commute to their teaching jobs at The Wheeler School in Providence. She walks and he rides a bike. Both said the exercise makes them feel better.

So many more people have switched to riding the state’s commuter buses, particularly on long runs from Newport and South Kingstown, that some trips have been standing-room only in recent weeks.

More and more Rhode Islanders, faced with historically high gasoline prices, are finding ways to get to work or school without using their cars.

RIPTA has seen its ridership soar by 34 percent since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina helped prod gas prices above $3 a gallon. Total ridership in 2004 was slightly more than 20 million. In fiscal year 2007, it was nearly 26 million.

The latest gasoline price surge has caused another spike of 24,604 additional passengers in the first 23 days of April, compared with the same time frame in March.

“Usually ridership is lower in April, because there’s the school break and a lot of people take the week off to go on vacation,” said Mark Therrien, assistant general manager for planning at RIPTA. But cash receipts on the buses were up by more than $30,000 in three weeks — an 18-percent surge in revenues.

The runs from Newport to Providence have seen big increases, and RIPTA’s Newport superintendent has been seeking information packets for new riders, Therrien said.

How great a bargain is the bus service between Newport and Providence? If your car consumes about two gallons of gasoline one way, you are paying more than $7 just for gasoline. The bus fare is $1.50.

“I think people are fed up with traffic,” says Karen Mensel, RIPTA’s director of marketing. “Some realize what a deal commuter bus service is. Some care about the environment. It’s a lot of things driving up ridership.”

You’d think the recent ridership increases at RIPTA would have bus line officials cheering.

But the fact the ridership increase is prompted by rising fuel prices means the consequences for RIPTA are mixed.

The bus service expects to pay $1 million more this year for fuel.

And while new fares are bringing in more money, RIPTA is losing some of the revenues it derives from the state gasoline tax because gasoline sales have dropped. RIPTA gets 6.75 cents in tax on every gallon of gasoline sold in Rhode Island.

“We should be doing gangbusters,” said Mensel. “But fares only cover about a quarter of our costs. Most people have no idea how public transit is funded.”

LLOYD ALBERT, spokesman for the local chapter of the American Automobile Association, said AAA recently surveyed local members and found that 58 percent said that rising gas prices would force them to look for less-expensive vacation options.

He said another 9 percent said they planned to vacation closer to home, and 33 percent said they didn’t plan to change their vacation plans.

In previous years, he said, gas-price hikes have had differing effects on local vacation preferences. Sometimes more people vacation locally, which could help Rhode Island. In other years, gas-price hikes have caused people to vacation less, which could hurt Rhode Island.

AAA’s only advice to motorists is to improve their vehicles’ mileage by tuning engines, properly inflating tires and removing roof racks and any extra weight.

Motorists are definitely downsizing their vehicles, Albert said. He said a national survey showed auto sales down 8 percent for the first three months of the year.

Particularly hard hit are vehicles with low mileage. Sales of pickup trucks are down 15 percent, SUVs are down 24.5 percent and minivans are down 20 percent, Albert said.

The only bright spot: sales of so-called “budget-class” cars such as Kias, are up 33.6 percent, he said.

The New Public Transit Alliance, a local coalition of public health advocates, environmentalists and business groups, see the gas prices as fostering support for its efforts to upgrade mass transit.

James Celenza, head of the Rhode Island Committee on Occupational Safety and Health and a coalition member, said current conditions support the coalition’s goals of encouraging more use of public transit and making it more efficient and accessible.

“There’s a tremendous amount of discussion in the planning and architectural communities about the impacts of cars and the price of gas,” Celenza said. “We’re all working on public transit; it’s the key to improving our communities.

“Just like companies adopt highways, we’re trying to get them to adopt bus lines.”

Celenza says he has friends who are carpooling to save gas, but roughly 86 percent of commuters continue driving to work alone.

STODDARD, THE Providence insurance broker, decided to set up a carpool to reduce her weekly driving expenses and to “help the environment a little bit.”

She now has two riders and says she would “highly recommend carpooling.”

“Talk to the other person before you agree to make an arrangement,” said Stoddard. “Be creative. And just realize that there are things that you can do to get a carpool going.

“I see the same cars on the road every day and I just think to myself there’s got to be a way for people to get together with each other to figure out how to make it easier on yourself and the environment. Obviously, gas prices aren’t going to go down anytime soon.”

The O’Driscolls, who live a mile and a half from Wheeler, decided to minimize driving at the start of the school year. That led to them getting rid of one of their two vehicles. The other needs gas only about once a month.

They previously lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., so they were used to getting by without driving.

“It makes me more awake when I get here in the morning,” says Trevor.

“It started not so much as an ecological thing, but because I hate parallel parking,” laughed Vanessa. “But as gas prices climb and climb and climb, it just seems like a smart way to try to save money and save the environment.”

For information on bus schedules and ride sharing go to www.ripta.com. To learn about the New Public Transit Alliance go to http://www.ri.sierraclub.org/NuPTA%20Platform.pdf.

Bike to Work Day in Rhode Island is scheduled for Friday, May 16, rain or shine. For more information on that and on bike routes throughout the state, go to/ www.dot.state.ri.us/bikeri.

plord@projo.com