Comments about ‘2000s: The First Decade — 10 years of heavy traffic’

to the highway god. The State of Utah is $200 million in debt, but UDOT mysteriously finds $1.1 billion (that's $1,100 million) in savings on over-bid projects and cost cutting elsewhere so they can expand their horizon and improve the road between Spanish Fork and Provo. They could balance the budget if UDOT only fixed 20 miles instead of 25 miles. The children of Israel lost their birthright because they worshipped a golden cow. We are much cheaper to buy - we worship one made out of ashpalt and concrete - but the result will be the same.

Legacy Parkway is the best. Saves about a total of an hour per day for me considering driving in both directions.
I "heart" Legacy.

They must have had to work to get a photo of that many people getting on the train at once.

Better transportation keeps the economy moving. It is not a false God; stop being so dramatic "pay homage."

UDOT needs to builds Mountain View Corridor as it was originally planned; a 5-lane freeway with HOV lanes. Instead they are going to build a Bangerter Highway twin and then spend millions later to modify it. Highways with lights and 50 mph do not work!

While I applaud your efforts to talk about the role of alternatives in transportation, the praise for a car-centric society worries me. Yes, people can use roads to get to work but "need" more roads? That is a stretch. If there is one constant in transportation it is congestion -- and it's only a matter of time before the new construction has the same congestion it did before. Also, roads are not the determining factor in the health of an economy. If this were true, LA's gridlock would be the Mecca of industry. Very few politicians I am aware of want to attach their names to the lane closures that are necessary to properly maintain a road. The fancy new projects are their bread and butter yet they tease UDOT every year for funding just to maintain what we already have. I understand the flow of trucks is critical and that is why I am happy to see us finally embracing alternatives to free up that capacity. Now if only we'd stop building more highways until we have a continuous and stable funding source like a higher gas tax instead of several vague general tax sources.

RE: Jim
I live in Ogden and I work in SLC. I take the train everyday. It is great. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I love it.

It is rare not to see that many people get on the train during peak hours. It's packed in the mornings and the afternoons/evenings.

Why dont we let the decade retire before we start commenting on it. Noone starts counting with 0, we start with 1. 2000 was the last year of the 20th century and 2010 is the last year of the first decade of the 21st century. Much has happened but it's not over yet!!!

Dan, you are absolutely right. This is why we shouldn't trust everything the media spits out at us. They can't even get the basic facts right.

The beginning of the end occurred when Obama was elected.

Mass transit is a black hole for money that NEVER returns enough on the investment.

It is obscenely expensive to build in relation to the capacity.

Been to NY recently? Subway is overcrowded and nearly bankrupt. The entire system looks like it has been abandoned for decades. The city is in gridlock despite mass transit being "the answer" accoring to those who listen to the environmentalists.

I know roads are not the end all be all but at least you do not have to ride around in a urine/feces stench like the NY subway system.

It is no mystery why people want to stay in their own vehicles.

UTA has got to have something on everyone, how else could they get away with lying about ridership numbers to collect bonuses? UTA is the only entity around who somehow grows and grows despite losing millions of dollars every year. Someone needs to stand up to them and stop this racket!

Clearly you think New York would be better off without mass transit. Driven in Los Angeles before?

The subway in New York isn't nearly as bad as you want it to be, and it's very nice in many cities around the world, although I don't know why we're discussing this - the article didn't talk about why we should build a subway in SLC did it?

Re: "Along the Wasatch Front, planners have said they want a comprehensive transportation system that includes both road and rail."

Note that rail will NEVER be extended to me in Tooele County, nor to the residents of any of the other non-Wasatch Front counties.

So, why are we, in non-Wasatch Front counties, being forced to buy you a shiny new toy rail system we will never be invited to use? In fact, since it's only the effete elites along the Wasatch Front that use light rail, why are all the poor in Utah being asked to buy you a shiny new toy train?

Rail is too expensive. It's too inflexible. It affects too adversely travel by road. No wonder it's so unpopular that even UTA admits it's the mose expensive form of mass transit.

Rail is dead. The legislature needs to tell UTA to stop stinking up the state with a dead carcass that will never lead to efficient transportation.

As a person who has been to a few overseas cities (London,Paris,Rome,Munich) I can say with certainty that mass transit can be done right. The trains, buses, and subways were a pleasure to ride in those cities. They were on time, clean, and except for Rome crime free. UTA is stepping up but they're far from a perfect mass transit solution. The price for front runner is outrageous and the timeliness of all their lines is questionable in the good weather and downright awful in the bad weather. We're going the right direction but we're not there yet.

I start counting at zero and so do most computer scientists. Just because you don't know the logic behind a base 10 counting system doesn't mean that the decade isn't over and the media is trying to brainwash you.

Argument #1: The Gay Nineties do not include the year 1900. When the third digit changes, the decade changes.

Argument #2: If rail is properly done, it is a viable form of transportation. We cannot afford wall-to-wall, mountain-to-mountain asphalt and concrete, nor can we afford the air created by automobile exhaust. To put it mildly, we are California-izing Utah and creating the same problems here.

No one has yet shown (at least in America) that passenger rail can be properly done. It loses vast quantities of money, primarily because it takes people from where they don't live to where they don't want to go.

"We cannot afford wall-to-wall, mountain-to-mountain asphalt and concrete, nor can we afford the air created by automobile exhaust." We certainly can't afford wall-to-wall, mountain-to-mountain rail. And we still need roads to carry the goods (100%) and passengers (90%) that passenger rail cannot handle. We also need the roads to get people to and from the passenger rail.

Rail systems generate plenty of air pollution. in the case of Front Runner, there is diesel exhaust. And for electric-powered rail, there are the emissions at the power plants where the electricity is generated, plus the emissions from the cars taking people from their homes to and from passenger rail stations.

@Duh Dan:

How you count has no relevance to the discussion at hand. All that matters is how the people who invented our calendar system counted. And they counted from 1 BC to AD 1, with no zero in between.

And while they were counting retrospectively, meaning that the Julian calendar did not replace the ancient Roman calendar until hundreds of years after Christ's birth, that has no relevance to whether or not there was a zero year. There wasn't.

Rail systems are designed to be bulk-people-movers, and only work if you've got a supporting system to get them from the hubs where the train stops to their needed locations. UTA does a poor job of that outside of Salt Lake City (and a dubious job inside Salt Lake, sometimes). Because UTA has, effectively, a monopoly on transit contracts along the Wasatch Front, nobody else can step in and do it cheaper. Living in Davis County, I'm lucky enough to live within walking distance of a bus stop...but if I lived a couple of miles further west (where a lot of the new construction is taking place), it wouldn't be a viable option, especially in winter. UTA needs to get away from the Salt-Lake-as-sole-hub plan they've been running and set up smaller transit districts that can be more efficient at getting people to and from their homes and jobs. If buses could collect people from their neighborhoods and take them to the trains (at a reasonable price!!!), the whole transit system would be far more effective.