Reader comments
FrontRunner lot in Layton is too small

The higher than expected ridership is good news. It may be neccessary to conside the construction of multi-level parking for the park and ride lots. That would encourage even greater ridership, whch is, after all, the goal.

Wait, wait, wait.

Like they say, "Don't just do something, stand there!"

Aren't the chances quite good that the automobile won't be playing the same role in our lives in 2015 that it is today?

How many plans do we want to make for e-z car life? In 5-10 years, maybe there will be a bigger need for apartments or light manufacturing or local retail at the Layton lot, with parked cars a distant memory.

"Higher than expected ridership" is often misleading. It marks UTA's ability to pass off costs from the rider to third parties like employers or universities. This artificially inflates early ridership. It makes a train, like TRAX look, in the beginning, to be "very successful".

That early faux-success has long term consequences. It helps UTA con the public into massive new taxes, while there is still no money for long overdue major road investemtns for the 99% of us traveling on roads. Yes, you read it correctly, UTA's marketshare for its service area is still 1% of all trips.

It is road user-taxes that pay 100% of costs to build trains and over 80% of maintenance costs, (from national gas tax money) and 70% of operating costs. Transit users demand massive subsidies of their, mostly CBD, trips.

TRAX has turned out to be a failure at increasing ridership.

TRAX ridership is dropping slightly going back to 2005. It is down from 2007 and 2007 was 0.6 million more than 2005.

This has critical negative impacts on the wisdom of such huge investments in trains and on the entire Long Range Tansportation plans at our metro planning organizations.

Wake up UTAH!

Hey Michael, where are you getting your facts? The local/state portion of Front Runner construction was paid for 100% by a sales tax increase that was passed on the ballot in 98. It is currently illegal for gas tax to be used for transit. All Transit is paid for by property and sales tax revenues, for example, the new SL County sales tax increase that was voted on to increase Sales Tax for more transit.

So if you take into account the sales tax revenues that go into building transit options and people complain that they NEVER pay for themselves in the long run. Hmmm thats an interesting point of view. How much does I-15 maintenance and expansion cost? Well at least transit re-coups some of it's costs through rider fares. I don't remember having to pay to use I-15, or hearing that I-15 got itself a job to pay for itself.

WAKE UP. Welcome to the 21st Century, transportation is changing. It's about getting more people to the same destinations without each of us requiring 2 tons of steal to get there.

HURRAH for Frontrunner! I love it. It's so much nicer riding the train to work than driving on I-15.

you can always build parking up - parking garage anyone?

I am completely disappointed in the FrontRunner, in both schedule planning and construction. The Layton station is an awful mess, and poorly designed for access to the station from remote parking lots. In addition, the commute to Davis County is inundated with in the middle of the track stops, just to wait for a train to pass... every single time. Can you look into what a 5 minute offset may provide?

As a daily commuter on UTA, I find this means of transportation lacking insight, foresight, and usability for the majority of its patrons.

I find it very amusing looking at the UTA commercial with the cowboys on horses trying to catch the train, but fails... should have ended with them trying one more time finding the train stopped waiting for another train, or taking several minutes to get to an reasonable speed.

Enough venting... UTA.. make it worth it.