There are about 2.8 trillion vehicle miles of travel (vmt) for passenger cars and small trucks (SUVs & pick-ups). This is an average of 230 billion vmt per month.
Therefore, a 9.6 billion decline in this vmt (an estimated 15 billion decline in person-miles) for one month is about a 4% decrease.
The 10.3 billion annual public transit trips represent about 41 billion person-miles of travel. There are about 4.5 trillion person-miles of travel by car & small truck. Therefore, public transit accounts for about 1% of travel.
The 2.6 billion increase in public transit trips for the first three months of this year represents about 10.4 billion person-miles. Annualized, this is around 42 billion person-miles. While this is a 100% increase for transit ridership, it amounts to less than one percent of total travel. The monthly increase for transit is about 3.5 billion person-miles. So, transit doesn’t even absorb 25% of the decline in travel by automobiles (and SUV & pick-ups). Three-fourths of those who are giving up travel by car are doing something else besides switching to transit.
So, while high fuel prices are having an effect on travel choices, that effect is tiny when put into context.
The vast majority of people (~98%) continue to rely upon the automobile (and SUVs & pick-ups) for travel. The on-demand, non-stop, door-to-door, private transportation option offers a level of convenience, comfort and speed that cannot be matched by transit services that require walking, waiting, stopping and connecting to complete journeys.
Even this does not address the issue of cost-effectiveness. By way of illustrating this issue, gasoline prices would have to rise to the $50 (fifty dollars) per gallon range before light rail would be competitive on a total cost basis.
Public transit is (and will always be) a small factor in travel mobility for society. It is foolhardy to invest billions in the creation of the dedicated infrastructure required to provide this transit by trains, as many communities are doing. It makes far more sense to design a transit system that can share the same infrastructure that serves the automobiles that will continue to dominate travel choices for the foreseeable future.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. Consuption has gone down about 2% in the western US, and 4% in the eastern US. For the western states this is pretty good, given the distances involved and lack of alternatives.
However, how much energy people use is comprised of a lot of choices that are not easy to change instantly. If the price remains high for the next few years, people will continue to make choices based on high fuel prices, and begin to cut down significantly.