I dont care how much money it takes. If we are improving public transportation and reducing environmental exposure to pollutants, then we're doing a great thing and Trax & FrontRunner are a great step in the right direction.

Great job to everyone at UTA!

If only trans-state travel by rail were better. The United States has to play a lot of catch up when it comes to rail travel.

To If Only: Amen to that. Traveling in Europe, and even in the eastern seaboard part of this country is exceptionally easy by train.

To Proud of UTA: Also, amen to that. I also like the use of existing infrastructure.

To UTA: More please.

To Voters: More yea votes to mass transit please!

Let me preface this by saying I've taken the bus my whole career and plan or riding FrontRunner. I think it's great too.

But "I don't care how much money it takes"--this is just foolishness. Everything has a price that is too high if only because there might be other options that would have the same effect for less money. This is the underlying problem with the green movement. They don't care how much money it takes.

Mass transit costs money, yes. But on a person per mile basis, it is the cheapest form of transportation subsidy. Providing more pavement with tax dollars is very expensive. So is providing airports with our tax dollars, so for-profit airlines can make money. Having ridden trains in other countries, I am overjoyed that America is getting back to the future of transportation. My grandmother used to reminisce about taking the Bamberger Express from Cache Valley to Salt Lake City to buy the latest fashions. Was this the 1930s, or the 2010s?

I am all for mass transit, trax, and front runner. I have ridden the bus everyday for seventeen years to work and back. But the automobile is a fixture definately here to stay. Even Europeans can't give up on the car. The last time I was in the Netherlands freeways were being expanded and new ones built. All this freeway building was happening even though the Dutch have one of the best rail systems, very high taxes on gasoline and cars and drivers cannot even get a license to drive until a much older age than the U.S. The point is not to denigrade mass transit but to realize people all over the world have a love affair with cars and this is not going to end.

I love the trains in Europe, It's the only way to travel over there. Here in the western US it's just not practical. I would much rather take an hour and a half flight to Denver than take a 6 or 7 hour train ride. No doubt the train ride would be spectacular but the distances covered between major cities in the west are much greater than those in europe or the Northeast.

I am excited! Right now in my Land Rover round trip to SLC from Logan is $50. I'm thrilled that I'll only need to drive as far as Ogden and board the train to take the remainder of the trip.

Message for UTA: Please explain why you want to charge $150 for a monthly pass to ride the FrontRunner; I should think that $50 dollars would be a more reasonable Charge, or even $75.

With the projected cost of gas being $5 a gallon this summer, this will actually be a wonderful option for environmental and economic reasons. Right now $150 is about 4 fill-ups at the pump.

To Utah Resident:
I think they want to keep off the riff-raff, if you know what I mean.

Let me get this straight. Right now it takes me about 45 minutes to drive my little car from my home in Ogden to my office in the government complex on west North Temple. If I switch to Front Runner it will take an hour just to get to downtown SLC, where I'll have to catch a bus for an additional half hour ride to my office. All adding up to about 12 hours away from home per day. Then, if I have to go anywhere during the day I either call a cab or take a bus. And we call that progress? Lets put our millions of public subsidies into developing an alternative to the internal combustion engine in its current form.

I'm glad the leaders at the time were far sighted enough to buy the right of way from the Union Pacific.

I hope todays leaders will be far sighted enough to improve education, not jump over a dollar to save a nickle.

In Woods Cross, there is a lot of land used for the parking lot, but the land is used very inefficiently. There will not be many people that will be able to park there.

Who ever designed the parking lot did a poor job. No doubt it will have to be redone.

I car pool to work in Downtown SLC with three other people. It makes sense to continue doing than at $150 per person. I am told that corporations with large numbers of employees get a discount on the price. Why not small employers too?

The one bad thing about this is that they stop running the trains at 11pm also why not run 1 every 2 hours on Sunday. It seems to be shooting tourism in the foot to not run one on Sunday. Granted it is the greater belief in this state that no one should do anything on Sunday doesn't mean the rest of us should also.

UTA promised the cost would be slightly over the cost of bus fare.

Frontrunner is a SPRAWL PUMP. It makes it easy for people to buy bigger spreads in distant counties. It is nice to con and force the car-driving public to pay the many hundreds of million$ for a small number of yuppies who will benefit most from inter-county trips.

These are dirty-diesel electric trains. They burn 1.6 million gallons of-diesel yearly. Even TIER 2 emission contols on locomotives are dozens of times dirtier, per passenger-mile, than todays cars.

They will add 200 tons of NOx annually to our air; net increase about160 tons. This will add much harmful pollution to the air in and near new communities being built at the stations. Critical pollution increases!

This is an easy calculation to do. Calculate annual locomotive mileage from the round trip length of 45 miles and multiply by 2 gallons a mile fuel consumption and by 109 NOx-grams per gallon burned. Convert back to pounds and tons.

UTA lied in their EIS, claiming it would cut NOx by 12 tons a year. This was cynically calculated on a form UTA knew was faulty, New-Starts Environmental Benefits Template 6.

In telling how to calculate Frontrunner NOx, I inadvertantly used the one-way distance. The actual round trip distance is 90 miles. Also, figure on 260 equivalent fulldays of use a year.

Re: Plain Trains and UTA Fraud. Thanks for the insomnia curing diatribe, Michael. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...

You are welcome, Zzzzzzzzz.

UTA is only going to get $17 billion in the Salt Lake Ogden area from car users in taxes. Add another $2 billion down MAG/Utah county way. Going into, possibly, the worst recession in half a century, while ignorantly trucking billions over to UTA, is not exactly good stewardship.

We wouldn't want any outsiders to think anyone along the Wasatch Front was informed or numerate on transportation issues, would we?

Go back to sleep. You are obviously good at it.

Do you know how much emmisions cars will give off in the same time period factoring in growth? i don't and am interested in comparing the train to cars and if there is a possibility that if enough people ride the train it would be better for the enviornment.

You spelled my name wrong... not enough Z's.

But seriously, re-read your comment. Your diatribe could put a double pocket protected scientist to sleep. I doubt anyone was able to read the whole thing without nodding off.

Mr. Packard, you are a tough nut to crack. You don't have a job, so you spend every waking moment trying to say as many bad things about UTA as possible. Yet you use public transportation yourself. No one understands what your points are whenever you have the floor during public comment. Just notice about 30 seconds into speaking, your audience's eyes glaze over. This is because they are forced to listen, but you make no sense. Here's an idea. Come up with 3 main points, and present it the next time you get up to speak. Better yet, take a public speaking class to help sort out all the issues that you think are relevant and practice before you "preach". Or take up a hobby.

What UTA should do is fullfill their promise in finishing the abandoned railline as a bycicle/running and walking path thru Weber county that they were going to use for the Frontrunner. Then we all could walk, run or bike to work for FREE and all we would be spending is fat and extra calories that we don't need. Boogity, boogity, boogity boy lets go bikin'.