The Heavy Costs of Light Rail | Letters | Salt Lake City Weekly

The Heavy Costs of Light Rail 

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This would be a good time to review the success or failure of our Utah Transit Authority. I will start with TRAX. We have spent almost $1 billion, so far, on TRAX. The light-rail system kills a couple of people each year, costs taxpayers between $4.50 and $9 per ride and ridership is flat. UTA has been caught falsifying boarding numbers and costs have bankrupted the system. Failure: Shut it down!

FrontRunner costs the taxpayer $35 for each boarding, $1,600 per month per customer. FrontRunner averages 48 riders per one-way trip on a train designed to carry 400. FrontRunner burns 1.4 gallons of fuel per person per one-way trip (twice as much as a car). According to the Utah Department of Transportation’s Website, traffic on Interstate 15 actually increased after FrontRunner began operations. FrontRunner is a proven failure: Shut it down!

Now, UTA administration: Isn’t it amazing how the more incompetent a person is, the more we will pay them? My babysitter would do a better job running UTA. Failure after failure results in huge pay increases. Why don’t we just ... you guessed it: Shut it down!

Drew Chamberlain
Layton

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