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2nd Salt Lake County vote backs transit funding

As I understand it, this whole thing came up because the legislature wanted to fund roads while the council of governments and the public in general wanted to fund mass transit. This is just another example of how out-of-touch our legislators are with the people that elected them.

Over and over, the public has stressed that we want public transit, but the legislature seems bent on ignoring that and only funding roads. Maybe if we had term limits, we could get rid of some of the entrenched legislators that only care about their own special interests.

Salt Lake County is one of the smallest counties in Utah but we have almost 1 million people living here. Because of that population density transit can work here in ways that it can't anywhere else in Utah. That is why voters here constantly support transit. Legislators from other parts of the state need to understand that we have different problems and concerns than they do and stop telling us how to spend our local sales tax money.

Even our most densely populated area--the SLC "metro" area has a population density that is only 1/10th that of NYC and about 1/30th that of Paris. Too few of us live and work within walking distance of rail to make it convenient or cost effective.

When the new transit tax was put on the ballot the ads made clear that it would fund transit based--for the first time--on OBJECTIVE cost/benefit analysis.

On a cost per passenger mile basis, rail is much more expensive than roads. And the fact that the daily ridership costs of rail must be so heavily subsidized to attract riders is another evidence that most of us do not care to use rail transit.

We would be money ahead with less congestion to build needed roads and improve bus service. I know a great running bus routes and active van pools are quite as sexy to look at as a rail line through your city. But they get a lot more use and are far more cost effective.

The Destruction of The Bus System Light Rail is
moving full speed ahead, the destructruction of the
system has assumed alarming proportions. There have been many components to this process of destruction.
1. Bus Fare Increases
2. Service Cuts
There are many other Components.