PORTLAND, Ore. — Every morning, Martha Duncan routinely accomplishes a task that is impossible for San Antonians: She rides a train to work instead of driving a car.

“It's so much easier,” said Duncan, an office manager who commutes on the MAX light-rail system that runs through Portland, Ore., and its suburbs. “I concentrate on the day, rather than sit in traffic.”

About 1,700 miles away, in San Antonio, Adam Reyes has a very different commute.

He starts his days getting dressed in the glow of TV traffic reports and stays tuned to radio updates in the car. His 23-mile ride to Day One Physical Therapy & Wellness is a 45-minute slog during the school year and includes stop-and-go traffic on U.S. 281 and Interstate 35.

For Reyes, who recently got rid of his Toyota 4Runner because his gas bill was “just too much,” light rail is a vague notion.

“I would consider it,” he mused one morning. “It would probably be experimental at first. I guess we just need to know more about it.”

San Antonio voters rejected a light-rail plan eight years ago, and activists blocked an earlier effort 15 years ago.

But after gas prices veered near a benchmark of $4 a gallon this summer, and with many experts saying the price of oil will remain volatile, has the equation changed for car-centric cities such as San Antonio? Could Portland's light-rail cars be a good fit here?

Many local leaders, infused with urgency, say it's time to find out.

County Judge Nelson Wolff and Mayor Phil Hardberger formed a committee in June to chart the city's transportation future and told the group to study public transit. Soon after, Wolff dusted off a 1993 idea to put passenger trains on old freight tracks from Southtown to The Rim shopping center.

The tracks could be used for a light-rail starter line, the two leaders say.

“We just believe this ought to be looked at,” Wolff said. “Most of us believe we're in for a fundamental change in how we view transportation.”

How deep the changes go depends on the impact of the energy crunch, and whether government and private interests work to transform a sprawling city into a more compact place where walking and transit can curb driving.

Reducing driving is a federal environmental goal that a city consultant said San Antonio should consider to prepare for scarcer energy supplies. But it won't be easy to pull off in a city where cars and trucks rule.

“I don't think South Texas is going to be as aggressive in guiding and manipulating things,” former Mayor Bill Thornton cautioned the transportation task force, which he chairs. “The reality is, we're in South Texas, we have to realize where we are.”

To assess the pros and cons of light rail, the San Antonio Express-News reviewed studies, talked to experts and government officials and visited Portland, which was one of the first cities in the country to build a modern light-rail system.

In the 1970s, Portland did what is unthinkable for many in San Antonio. Residents and politicians, worried that neighborhoods would be razed or split by a proposed freeway, rejected the plan and used the money to build light rail.

The first line was built in the 1980s, and the city eventually expanded the system to 44 miles, running some tracks on streets and other routes in separate rights of way along highways and farmland.

Portland's critics point out that the city and its suburbs still suffer from congestion, despite hefty investments in light rail. But while commuter delays increased from 1982 to 2005, they rose faster in San Antonio, which has more roads and freeways, according to the Texas Transportation Institute.

Portland residents — in an urban area similar in size to San Antonio but with more people packed in — drive 16 miles per person a day on major roads, five less than San Antonians, the TTI report says. And they ride transit more than twice as much.

“In big Texas cities, you can move around faster than you can in Portland, but you also have to go more miles to get to where you're going,” co-author Tim Lomax said.

At this year's average of $3.50 a gallon for gas, a typical San Antonio resident pays almost a dollar a day more than those in Portland. The difference adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year in extra fuel.

“We drive an extraordinary amount,” said Bill Barker, a former VIA Metropolitan Transit planning director who's on the transportation task force. “I believe that's largely to do with our development patterns.”

With volatile gas prices expected to reach new highs in coming years, a seismic shift is occurring worldwide, San Antonio mayoral assistant Larry Zinn recently told the transportation task force.

“Energy's becoming scarcer and more expensive,” he said. “Cities that are not prepared are cities that will not succeed in the global economy.”

The nation already may have missed a critical window to start making up for looming fuel shortages, said Robert Hirsch, a Washington-based energy consultant.

Switching to electric and fuel-efficient vehicles and stepping up production of fossil fuels will take two decades to cover the gap, he warned in a seminal 2005 report for the U.S. Energy Department. The cost will be trillions of dollars.

“We've got a terrible, severe problem coming, and it's going to alter our lives in major ways,” he said.

Cities such as San Antonio that gorged on cheap land to build sprawling subdivisions where driving is necessary could be hit hardest, Hirsch said.

High gas prices already have pinched Americans, who last year cut back driving for the first time since 1980, according to the Federal Highway Administration. In August, motorists logged the largest monthly drop on record.

With more people parking their cars, San Antonio's VIA bus ridership soared 11 percent from October 2007 through September.

A national migration to transit has favored light rail, which reaped 12 percent more riders in the second quarter, compared with 5 percent for buses.

Light rail's appeal is a big factor for cities that want to broaden transit options.

“You've got to increase the mix of customers,” Wolff said. “It's got to stop being thought of as a last resort system that poor people ride. For whatever reason, there's been several studies on it, light rail appeals to folks more across the board.”

As gas prices climbed in March, two of three San Antonio motorists drove less, and four out of five residents said they'd consider riding rail, including 38 percent who were “very interested,” according to a Metropolitan Planning Organization survey.

Respondents also said they would consider using a rapid-bus system, indicating potential support for VIA's plan to build a $100 million rapid-bus route from downtown to the South Texas Medical Center.

While the energy crunch is hurting people who rely on cars, Portland commuters have another option.

Every day, thousands of students, computer programmers, bankers and other commuters in this metropolis of 2 million people rely on electric rail cars. They praise MAX for its convenience and its environmental benefits. Many have a sense of civic pride in the system.

On a recent evening in downtown Portland, Holly Hein, 38, stood at a well-lighted MAX stop, waiting for her ride home.

She rattled off benefits of the trains: MAX is fast and convenient. It saves her the headache of trying to find a parking spot downtown. She doesn't have to worry about paying for gas.

Cars have been a symbol of convenience and freedom in the United States. But when gas prices skyrocketed earlier this year, the MAX system offered Hein and other riders freedom from cars.

Not far from where she stood, people took turns swiping their credit or debit cards through an automated ticket machine. For about $2, an adult rider can buy a ticket for unlimited trips on MAX, anywhere in the city, for two hours. A monthly pass for unlimited trips costs $86. Trips in a designated area of downtown are free.

Were there any downsides to the MAX line?

“It doesn't always feel safe,” Hein replied.

As if on queue, a train arrived, Hein boarded, and she entered a chaotic scene. Loud teens were joking and jockeying with each other inside the train car.

Some kids started to leave the train but they hung out near the open doors, blocking the exit. Over an intercom, the train's operator warned the teens he wasn't playing games and ordered them off the train.

Hein stood patiently, like she had seen it all before.

The light-rail car was crowded. Plastic seats lined the interior, and overhead were metallic bars with hand straps for people who were standing. It felt like a roomy VIA bus.

“This is my stop,” Hein said after a few minutes.

Most passengers on trains aren't as rowdy as the teens on Hein's trip. But the local media raised questions recently about the safety of MAX passengers after several people were assaulted on trains and the station platforms.

Mary Fetsch, a spokeswoman for TriMet, which runs MAX, acknowledged crime has been a problem. But she emphasized that MAX averages only three incidents a day out of 300,000 daily trips. The incidents include minor and major crimes.

“People act out,” Fetsch said. “They act out on the city sidewalks, and they act out on the train.”

Portland's light-rail system has been widely studied, praised and criticized, and Fetsch often is the public face for MAX. Despite the bad publicity of recent assaults, Fetsch said the system remains popular. When she met a reporter downtown for coffee near a train stop, the noise of a jackhammer echoed down the street as workers built a new light-rail line.

“Light rail will not solve, by itself, every problem in a community related to transportation,” Fetsch said. “It's not intended to. It plays a role.”

When San Antonio tried to launch a light-rail system in 2000, voters torpedoed a $1.5 billion plan to build 54 miles of tracks. The first line was supposed to open this year.

The plan drew fire for being too complicated and for proposing to put trains in streets with cars rather than in separate rights of way, recalled Wolff, who led the failed effort. He also said scare tactics by critics played a role in the defeat.

Devastated by the loss, city and county leaders shied away from serious talk about light rail until recently. With no leadership on the issue, San Antonio fell further behind as cities across the country began building rail systems.

Since 2000, Dallas voters chose to expand their light-rail system, and Houston and Austin approved their first rail projects. When Austin's 32-mile commuter line opens in March, San Antonio will be the largest Texas city without local passenger trains.

Today, about three-dozen U.S. cities have some form of local passenger rail. San Antonio is the fifth-largest metropolitan area without rail service.

Wolff led a 2004 campaign to raise VIA's sales tax by a quarter-cent. Half of the money went to roads, which choked off the ability to fund rail later without a change in state law. VIA in turn dropped rail plans and began pursuing the rapid-bus project, starting with a line along Fredericksburg Road.

The agency's plan to spiff up buses and give them their own road lanes so they look, feel and run more like rail will cost about $12 million per mile, much less than the $45 million per mile Houston and Dallas spent on light rail.

VIA's 8-mile rapid-bus route, using diesel-electric hybrid buses that are longer than today's vehicles and bend in the middle, is set to open in 2012. A dedicated lane part of the way and traffic-signal controls will speed travel times.

But with recent news that Union Pacific in a few years will vacate an 18-mile track paralleling Fredericksburg Road, a shadow has been cast over VIA's rapid buses. Local leaders sense a possible bargain to start light rail on a line that bypasses congested streets.

VIA last month put its rapid-bus plan on hold for three months while it studies the light-rail idea.

“We do have an opportunity that we shouldn't let pass without at least giving it a thorough investigation,” Hardberger said.

While the cost of starting and operating the line is unknown, it's sure to reach tens of millions of dollars. Rail opponents typically criticize those kinds of subsidies for light rail.

But supporters note that government subsidizes transit in all forms, including bus systems. And billions are spent on highway construction to relieve congestion.

The Texas Department of Transportation spent $1.1 billion to build 176 miles of lanes on major highways in San Antonio since 2000, which amounts to $6.25 million a mile.

Wolff and other rail advocates say there's a limit to what asphalt can do. Interstate 10 already is double-decked near downtown, and the cost of parking keeps increasing.

University of Texas at San Antonio President Ricardo Romo, a light-rail fan, said a new parking lot at the Loop 1604 campus would cost about $10 million, or $15,000 per space.

He said most of the 6,000 students at the downtown campus commute daily to the Loop 1604 campus, creating built-in demand for rail.

“We're not going to build too many more parking lots,” he said. “It's not just gasoline, it's the cost of parking, which we cannot expand.”

Wolff's rail proposal has some of the same problems as 15 years ago, when neighborhood activists thrashed the idea because they felt the line was too far from major destinations such as the Medical Center, USAA and UTSA.

The tracks wind past an array of commercial strips, homes, fields studded with live oaks, warehouses, boarded buildings and weeded lots. The possibilities of adding passenger rail on the route continue to bewilder as well as excite.

“That's crazy,” Ricardo Guajardo said as he sat in his Ram 2500 on a recent afternoon and peered over a pile of trash and brush near the track at Hildebrand Avenue. “I don't know if that's going to help me.”

A block away, Alamo City Golf Carts owner Jimmy Martinez said bring it on, and put a rail station at Hildebrand.

“I'm excited,” he said. “It's going to bring a lot of people.”

Linking the line to the Medical Center and other activity hubs to the west is crucial, Wolff and other leaders say.

One solution is to run half a dozen miles or so of rapid-bus routes from the rail line to those centers, or even build tracks to them, they say, which would increase costs.

VIA recently started a two-month study to look at the track's condition, potential station locations and whether rail would conflict with or complement rapid buses. The transportation task force will piece together the funding puzzle.

“This couldn't have come at a better time,” said task force member James Lifshutz, a developer who hopes to transform a grain plant at the rail line's downtown terminus into a trendy mix of homes and businesses. “Why would we not study the opportunity?”

Among light rail's biggest payoffs is the fostering of denser, mixed-use neighborhoods around stations so it's easier to walk to stores, restaurants, jobs and homes.

Studies indicate each mile traveled on rail cuts 2 to 7 miles of driving, said Todd Litman, director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Canada.

“That kind of shift makes a huge difference,” he said. “It would be pointless to invest in high-quality rail transit if you didn't do these other things to create a walkable, transit-oriented community.”

Scores of underused or worn buildings in San Antonio's core beg for such redevelopment, said Barker, a former VIA planner. The structures, many spotted with graffiti, line Probandt, Commerce, Fredericksburg and other streets crossing the Union Pacific tracks.

“What's there now doesn't mean that's what will be there if there's a serious rail line. Things change,” Barker said.

To the north, old quarries and vast open tracts along the rail line offer chances to build tight-knit enclaves amid sprawling subdivisions, said Emil Moncivais, a former city planning director.

“They all have potential,” he said of the areas. “It's almost like a blank slate.”

Research shows compact neighborhoods reduce driving by about a third, and a third of homebuyers prefer places where they can do more with less driving, according to the recent Urban Land Institute book, “Growing Cooler.”

But building walkable communities isn't cheap, said Scott Polikov of Fort Worth-based Gateway Planning Group. A grid of ample sidewalks and streets, along with parks and plazas for civic activities, drives up development costs.

So tax incentives are needed, Polikov said. But he argues the mixed-used centers will prove to be sustainable by reinventing themselves over time.

“There's always a return on it if it's done right,” he said.

Polikov's firm designed Verano, an urban pocket planned around San Antonio's new Texas A&M University campus on the South Side. Officials hope to someday link it to a proposed commuter rail line to Austin.

An Austin-San Antonio Rail District study says capturing taxes on rising property values around 15 planned stations for the 112-mile commuter line could, over several decades, almost subsidize the $613 million startup cost.

VIA, too, is looking at creating financing zones around its proposed rapid-bus stations on Fredericksburg Road.

The ability of light rail to shape a neighborhood into a walker's haven has been closely watched at Portland's Orenco Station, which opened in 1998.

The development turned farmland into a town square and light-rail stop surrounded by brownstone condos with shops on the ground floor, cottages, parks, a clubhouse and a grocery store all within a 15-minute walk.

Five years later, 85 percent of residents relied less on cars, according to a Lewis and Clark College study. Many commuters still drove solo to work — three of four — but 69 percent used transit more than they did in their old neighborhoods.

A majority surveyed also said their new community was friendlier and more cohesive.

“We love it,” said John Irving, 68, who moved near Orenco Station four years ago.

He and his wife used to own two cars but downsized to one thanks to light rail. As seniors, they also pay cheaper fares.

“We like being able to get on the light rail, like we're doing now,” Irving said as a MAX train pulled up to Orenco Station. Moments later, he and his family were on their way.

As originally published, this story contained an error.

Tedesco reported from Portland.

Built for walking

Powered by feet

Facing challenges

Rail dreams

Portland rides on

Energy crunch