Nearly $50M for public transit in Utah

The federal government has disbursed another round of stimulus funding — $49.4 million for the Utah Transit Authority and St. George's public transit service, SunTran.

UTA received the bulk of the money, $48.3 million, which comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

About $24.8 million will be used to remodel a former ZCMI warehouse at 2100 S. 900 West for a TRAX car maintenance center. It will be called the Jordan River Service Center, UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter said.

UTA has a similar facility, the Lovendahl Rail Service Center, in Midvale. It services 69 light-rail cars and will stay open. UTA is building 70 miles of light rail and commuter rail and plans to open the new service center by 2015.

"We'll be adding another 77 light-rail vehicles over the next few years with the introduction of the new lines, so the existing service center would not have been large enough to handle all of the necessary service requirements of the increased fleet," Carpenter said.

UTA will also receive $15 million for preventative maintenance of the bus fleet, $8 million for about 17 new buses and $483,000 to improve security on buses and trains, he said.

In St. George, SunTran received $1.1 million to replace some buses and to build an operations building, said SunTran administrator Ryan Marshall.

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