Higher fares, fewer routes

"I know we live in an age of spin, where if you have the right public-relations campaign, you can change reality," said Tibbetts. "But how can you go to people who are losing all service on their street and tell them service isn't being eliminated?"

Designing change

For people like Ray Stephens, a 60-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran, the changes appear like a loss in service. Stephens has poor eyesight because of diabetes and struggles to walk long distances. With the redesign, buses will no longer stop in front of his home on 100 South. They will instead run on 200 South, making it harder for him to get around.

In addition to his regular bus routes, Stephens said, the redesign will affect his route to the VA hospital in Salt Lake City. Buses now travel a loop inside the hospital complex, and veterans are dropped off near the hospital door.

Under the redesign, UTA will eliminate the hospital loop and drop off riders at a bus stop on Foothill Boulevard. Catching a bus from the VA hospital will require people to walk across Foothill Boulevard.

"I can understand them realigning the system, but the point of the system is that it serve the people, not the people serving the system," said Stephens.

In designing the route changes, UTA held meetings with several focus groups and hired a consultant to do a yearlong study of county demographics and attitudes toward transit. Ridership on routes was also reviewed, but UTA said that was not a key part of the process. No public hearings were held.

"Our directive was to erase all the lines on the map and build a bus system for Salt Lake County today — not Salt Lake County in 1970," said Jones. "Ridership was a final deciding factor in placing routes where they are currently proposed."

With the redesign, UTA is confident people will ride the bus more. Bus stops may be farther away, but service will be more frequent and route connections faster, said Inglish.

UTA says bus service in Salt Lake City's west-side communities will increase 40 percent. Downtown and Salt Lake County's west side will also see increases. Parts of the east side will lose service.

Reducing options?

Lurae Stuart, a senior program manager for the American Public Transportation Association, said transit agencies across the nation are changing how they run their bus systems in order to make riding easier and better serve population centers. This is done by cutting routes with low ridership or consolidating routes that overlap, she said.

With the redesign, UTA anticipates a 12 percent increase in ridership in three years. But there are gaps in the plan.