Carpooling and bicycle riding are cheaper and better for the environment.

Thanks for the article. I hope many others will join you in utilizing public transportation.

Last Friday I ventured forth and rode the FrontRunner from Bountiful to Ogden to see the Viet Nam Memorial. I absolutely LOVED it! My son and I rode on the upper deck where the view was incredible. It was so relaxing to simply sit and visit, not even worrying one bit about the traffic. It was also fun to watch the little kids doing artwork on a nearby table. And it was so quiet.

Then we had to transfer to a bus. What a mistake. We waited for it to arrive. It took a round-about trip to the mall, stopping nearly every block, and waiting downtown before going again. It was crowded and incredibly loud. And we both decided it would be faster and easier to simply walk back to the FrontRunner on the way home.

Personally, I would love to ride the FrontRunner if it stopped where I want to go, but I can't say I'm a big fan of the bus. Perhaps they just need a better way to move people once they disembark from the train. (A Segeway would be fun!)

A lot of Utahns unfortunately believe public transportation is only for the poor and downtrodden (or worse yet, a form of socialism) and wouldn't be caught dead on a bus.

I've been using Frontrunner since the first of June. The days I do drive, it's a good feeling to see the needle closer to F than E. The downside is it takes an hour as opposed to 20 minutes. I still drive to the station (five minutes). Up until today there were no bike racks, so that was out. There is a bus stop at the end of the block, but that would require an hour an a half to reach either the Layton or Clearfield station on top of the hour to ride the train. When school starts, I will probably go back to driving. A monthly pass for three kids is still more than gas, and there is added piece of mind.

Not joining you on public transit. Bottom line: the time I save with driving cuts my commute by 2 hours. If i take buses and trax, just from Holladay to North Temple, my commute one-way is about 1 hour 15 minutes. Same thing coming home. If I drive, my commute is 20 minutes each way. Work in wait times for buses, late or early buses, and I'm saving 10 hours a weak by avoiding public transit. Though I would save about $100 a month with a bus pass, to me, 40 hours is worth well over $100.

Susan Dolemba from UTA told me three year that they had purchased the hardware to make taking bikes on the TRAX easier (I have to stand with it all the way from Sandy to SLC). She either hit a roadblock in getting that hardware installed or she fibbed to appease me. UTA wants you to use alternate transportation, ONLY if they are the alternate transportation. They are not very forgiving of bikes.

Hey, "Sin of Pride", transit is a truly great way to waste a lot of time. Only that portion of low income people who have absolutely no other alternative are forced to waste their time on transsit. Even low income people prefer cars to transit by 17 to one over tranit, according to the a study domne a few years ago. It also revealed what a fraud Frontrunner is with respect to providing trips for high income yuppies rather than for low income ridersw. You ought to read it.

Go to the Rutgers site an ddownload, "The socioeconomics of Urban Travel: Lessons from the 2001 NHTS" by Renne and Pucher

Most of UTA's efforts and money are focused on people who work in the CBD or attend cllleges.

BTW, Deseret News...what happened to my last post? ...The one that mentioned how poor this Cortez article was on transit.

This Cortez article was just a poorly researched pure opinion piece. Simply sloppy. No critical thinking.

Compare to the OpEd piece the Standard Examiner did a few weeks ago as they compared bus/train transit to alternatives. They did some thinking and some analysis.

This type of thing is why DN is hurting.

If you're whining that people aren't obeying the 55 mile an hour speed limit on the crowded corridors, maybe you should think that it makes more sense to go faster. If you have 50000 cars that need to go through a tight section of road in an hour and the speed limit only permits 50 cars per minute, you will have more fuel wasted as a result of being too close with traffic jams resulting; whereas a speed limit that would permit 100 cars per minute would allow cars to flow through and thus save tons of fuel in the long run (yeah going slower saves a little fuel, but it doesn't save a traffic jam's worth). Goodness, stop driving like such a Sunday driver and go to school, it's called fluid mechanics.

To: Sin of wasted time -
Take a bus trip.
Take ride on Trax.
Give a dollar to a pan-handler.
Help a person cross the street.
Do whatever you must to counter the human ego.

If you live ANYWHERE near bus stop. Which are located... Oh yeah, only in a few of the lower income areas of my city, NOWHERE near my home.

If you have LOTS of time you can use it. I can ride the bus which takes me an hour to walk to a stop where a bus will be along soon, then takes 17 minutes from there , or 10 minutes to get to a stop where a bus comes once an hour, but stops hours before I get off work, so it is only one way. But then I can ride a bike to work in a little over 20 minutes for free, and no waiting before hand.

Public Transportation is mostly for those of low income because no one else can afford the time of trouble.

Or should I call you Saint Francis. Your humility is truly instructive.

Although.... it is less instructive than your arrogance, innumeracy, and irrationality.

It is because I have ridden on buses and TRAX and have taken notes on the time taken, that I mention such things. I have encountered too many people and politicians who embrace the transit religion, without bothering to do the little things, like actually riding it , studying it and understanding its benefits and its shortcomings, but these same people insist it is wonderful for everyone(else) and everything(like the environment).

These politicians would not dream of riding the empty 346 Fastbus in Draper, where they insist on building a $1/4 billion TRAX extension. People in Sandy and Draper now have about 80% to 90% less bus service than before TRAX. These things matter.

From your pallid comments, you are likely pretty pale, anonyMOUSE. You should get out more and see what other parts of the Wasatch Front are enduring because there is not a good transit system for ALL of US, not just downtown.

By the way, you should also stay in and study, too. Some remedial math classes would help.

I'm surprised that the 'anymouse' poster didn't say something like "we peculiar people don't believe it is God's way to take a bus."

No shortage of lunatics in Utah.