Car thieves prowling TRAX parking lots

Every morning since it opened, Bruce Cutler would drive to the TRAX park-and-ride lot at the Midvale Fort Union Station, 7250 S. 180 West, to meet his carpool to work.

Each day, Cutler would park his 1991 Nissan two-wheel-drive pickup in the lot and hop into another car to travel to Utah County.

On Jan. 20, Cutler had just returned from work and said goodbye to the people in the carpool and then realized something wasn't right.

"I went to get my little pickup and it wasn't there," he said.

Cutler said he called his wife to ask if she had picked up the car at some point during the day. She told him she had not. Cutler then knew his car had been stolen.

"How could somebody do this?" was the thought going around in his head.

Cutler said he never would have guessed that an old pickup with no special features would be the target of car thieves. These days, he still goes to the park-and-ride lot to meet his carpool, but he has his wife drop him off.

"If they're going to steal something that old, they might steal something newer as well," he said of the decision not to park his other car in the lot.

Although car thefts are not an everyday problem at TRAX park-and-ride lots, both police and UTA officials are beefing up patrols and installing more security measures to deter potential burglars and car thieves.

In 2003, 53 vehicles were stolen from UTA's 11 TRAX park-and-ride lots. That's a relatively small number considering an average of 15,000 vehicles use the lots every day, said UTA spokesman Justin Jones.

A little less than half of those thefts were in Sandy. The Sandy Civic Center Station, 115 E. Sego Lily Drive (9800 South), had the most cars stolen in 2003 with 13. Second was the Historic Sandy Station, 165 E. 9000 South, with 10.

Part of the reason may be the size of the park-and-ride lots in Sandy.

The lot on Sego Lily has 1,185 parking spaces, more than double any other lot. An average of 787 vehicles park in that lot each weekday, according to UTA. Every other TRAX lot in Salt Lake County averages fewer than 270 cars each day, excluding weekends.

In addition, the Sego Lily parking lot is close to the South Towne Center, is in a low-traffic area and attracts thieves from both Utah and Salt Lake counties, said Sandy police Sgt. Michelle Burnette.

But Sandy has taken steps to reduce crime at its TRAX stations.

Of the 13 cars stolen from the Sego Lily lot in 2003, only three were taken in the last six months of the year. And of the 10 vehicles stolen at the Historic Sandy Station, just two were taken in the second half of the year.