UTA's wish list includes rail grant

The Utah Transit Authority is getting ready to send Congress its wish list, which this year includes commuter rail funding to the tune of $204 million.

That's about half of what's needed to build a commuter rail line from Salt Lake City to northern Weber County. To have commuter trains running there by 2007, as UTA hopes, the $204 million grant in 2004 is crucial to keeping the project on track. Funds are needed now to complete the environmental studies this year and to begin by 2005, according to the UTA.

"That's a rough estimate of what we need from the feds to get this project started," said UTA marketing director Andrea Packer.

At the beginning of each year, UTA submits a list of requests for federal grants to help expand or maintain Utah's transit systems. The list is sent to the Federal Transportation Administration and is then included among other lists by other transit and transportation agencies across the nation to be put into the Omnibus Transportation Bill that Congress must vote on to approve the overall federal budget.

"This is basically a renewal for our grant every year," said UTA spokesman Justin Jones.

The grants come in two parts. One part is a standard grant, which is allocated to transit agencies calculated on ridership, route miles and population density. Such funds can be used for maintenance and improvements.

The second type of grant is for new starts and really has no limit. If there is anything comparable to sending a letter to Santa in the government grant world, this is it.

Other special requests for new start funding include $586,861 to purchase several new Rideshare vans, which are leased from UTA by commuter groups, and $644,100 to install new equipment on TRAX trains to count riders. In order to gauge TRAX ridership now, Jones said UTA has had to put someone on board to manually count people.

About $2 million is also being asked to help purchase 29 used light-rail cars from San Jose, which UTA will refurbish to expand light-rail service. The $2 million will pay only part of the $18 million needed to purchase and update the cars. Packer pointed out federal regulations only allow new projects and programs to be funded up to 50 percent.

In addition to these projects, UTA expects to get its standard annual grant.

"We're estimating that we're going to get the same amount that we got last year," Jones said. This comes to about $30 million.

Slightly more than $5 million will be used to buy 25 new 30-foot buses.