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Transportation: Road construction facing major cuts

Now the Governor wants to raise our registration fees to raise $50M for UDOT, additionally last week he divulged a plan to change the way they collect State gasoline tax from a cents per gallon methodology to a percentage based methodology in order to raise more money for UDOT road projects to offset their $4 billion dollar shortfall. It seems that while our Governor has proposed to reduce the UDOT budget by $200M this year he is not satisfied with that as he obviously doesn't want to reduce their budget at all given that he only wants to increase the tax burden upon his citizens so he can give UDOT more of what they want in these tough economic times. I think the State like its citizens should learn to stay within their budget and when their income takes a hit they should reduce their outgo as that is what their citizens have to do. It is disrespectful to raise the citizens taxes by $50M or 25% of the budget reduction for UDOT just to give UDOT back some of what they reduced already, it is just robbing Peter (our citizens) to pay Paul (UDOT).

Its about time these private contractors had a reality check. They come in with their low ball bids for these projects, then when nickel and dime the State for all they can get. The quality of the work leaves a lot to be desired. It is not the State's responsibility to keep these companies busy.

Huntsman is doing what Leavitt did...cut transportation heavily, over 20%, while helping to divert billions of car-user paid taxes into mass transit.

UTA only carries about 1% of all trips according to studies done by WFRC engineers. Yet, the Governor and valley Mayors have helped get billions of new tax increases for UTA to spend like drunken sailors.

Stop cutting road transportation funds! Instead, stop UTA"s crazy unjustifiable rail projects.

Numeracy seems scarce in the Huntsman Administration. This type of analysis isn't rocket science. It is just plain old well-researched economic analysis with good data to back it up. Check out some good critiques of UTA rails by economist Dr. Michael Ransom at BYU.

While the political establishment and media, continue placing infinite trust in UTA, it has been one of the worst transit agencies in the U.S. for deceiving the public with bad / junk data. Read the January 2008 Audit of UTA by legislative auditors.

UTA is Utah's ENRON!

But, we are on course to give them $20 billion in the MAG and WFRC Long Range Plans. Theoretically their overall share will skyrocket to 2% by 2030.

Stop the waste there before cutting UDOT another cent.