While the Utah Transit Authority is overhauling its entire system of Salt Lake County bus routes, the agency also is proposing several significant fare hikes.

Together, those two actions will have a significant impact on Utah's low-income and disabled communities, activists say.

"You do things like that together, and you will encourage people to stop riding buses altogether," said Bill Tibbitts with the Anti-hunger Action Committee.

Tibbitts attended an open house Monday that was held by UTA to get public comment about the redesign. He had sent out a notice earlier, encouraging the public to come and comment about both the redesign and rate hikes. However, UTA focused on the redesign Monday and is holding public comment at the end of this month about the rate hikes for bus, TRAX light rail, and commuter rail.

Tibbitts and other activists — including Barbara Toomer with the Disabled Rights Action Committee — say that the rate hikes will adversely affect the very people UTA is supposed to serve: disabled and low-income people who can't afford to drive a car or are physically unable.

"They don't seem to realize what they consider an itty-bitty raise does to people on very limited incomes," Toomer said Monday.

By 2009, UTA is proposing to raise the one-way rate for disabled riders from 75 cents to $1.00. The monthly pass would increase from $25 to $33.50.

Riders who use UTA's special paratransit service would see an increase of 45 cents for a one-way ride, to $2.50, and then a change in how their monthly passes are administered. Instead of an unlimited monthly pass, riders would have to purchase a 30- or 60-trip punch card.

Other changes to UTA's fare structure include a proposal that would make the base fare for FrontRunner commuter rail $2.50, then 50-cents more for each station a rider passes. The cost for a one-way ride on commuter rail would be $5.50 from Salt Lake City to Pleasant View in Weber County.

The charge for a monthly pass to ride FrontRunner would begin at $145 in 2008 and then increase to $162 in 2009.

Several Davis and Weber County commuters, when notified of the proposed fares, thought they were much too high. Ray Isaacson, who travels from his home in Roy to his job in Sandy each day, said it costs him about $10 a day to drive.

Taking commuter rail would cost him $11 dollars a day, plus the added cost of having to transfer to TRAX and then a bus to get to his job, Isaacson said.

"That seems a little expensive to me," he said. "If I had to pay exactly the same as I do now, I'm much less inclined to use it. I just hope everyone else uses it to clear off the freeways."

Brad Larson, who lives in Layton and commutes to Cottonwood Heights, said the same: "My initial reaction is that I might as well drive," he said.