17 ms·

Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021

316 points by ngngngng 8y ago

3Wq6xQ0hRc 8y ago
"Free" AKA paid for with your taxes.
- mozumder 8y ago
  Not if you're one of the many people that don't pay taxes! (retirees, children, the poor, etc..)
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    Most retirees pay taxes, including on social security.
    - loeg 8y ago
      Most of "the poor," too, unless you pick a particularly narrow definition.
  - jhare 8y ago
    ... people pay taxes their whole lives in order to have good income and retire securely. I bet you're a real gem
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't make a bad thread even worse by going into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Stupid poor. Always trying to get something for nothing. /end homer simpson
- eksu 8y ago
  It was a federal grant.
  - benkarst 8y ago
    lol
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    ... which is paid for by taxes.
- megablast 8y ago
  Like "free" roads then, or "free" police, or "free" non-polluted air.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not ideological boilerplate!
Mbioguy 8y ago
A deeply red/Republican and relatively low-density state might seem like a strange place to find a functional public transit system. Utah is an interesting place. The geography of the Wasatch Front lends itself to public transit in ways that less geographically-constrained places do not. The region is mostly a north-south corridor, with occasional off-shoots to the side, which is how the transit network has developed. There is a significant tech culture, from 'little silicon slopes' in Lehi to the significant student population. The valley has seasonal pollution problems caused by mountains to the east and west. This is made worse by the lake effect, which means energy solutions helpful elsewhere are less effective, like natural gas plants. What would otherwise be transient pollutants instead react with ammonia from the lake and persist in the atmosphere, further trapped by the mountains. Utah has a significant need for public transit, and getting students connected and using it is a great way for generational change to occur. Car culture still rules, and will for a long time, but this is a good thing to hear. Hopefully a Trax expansion or equivalent in Utah county will happen eventually. Until then, this seems the next best policy.
- jorblumesea 8y ago
  Utah is something like 60% Mormon, and Mormons are really big on community, helping others and many other "socialist" ideas. They are conservative in many ways but progressive in some.
- ngngngng 8y ago
  With our air quality here, eventually can't come soon enough. I'd love to have a single family car and use public transit daily, but for right now I sacrificed that to live out in the middle of nowhere but still be able to find software jobs easily.
- mmanfrin 8y ago
  I thing a larger factor is the Mormon Church/Mormon population. Utah has some strangely progressive economic policies like housing-first solutions to homelessness. Utah is a red state for sure, especially when it comes to social policies, but has the 'community' orientation that another commenter mentioned that public transit falls neatly in to.
gumby 8y ago
I don't understand why road taxes aren't used to pay for free public transport. The more people on public transport the more room for cars.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Because outside of hyper dense cities roads are "public transit." Making them free to use (if you've already paid the costs associated with a car) has benefits to all that are large enough that increasing cost beyond what it takes to upkeep them at some subsistence level is not in our best interest (except in a few dense cities).
  - mcny 8y ago
    But the upkeep is expensive. One example: Jewel Avenue and Van Wyk Expressway intersection > New York State Department of Transportation Acting Commissioner Cathy Calhoun said the bridge is set to get $13 million in repairs to enhance safety for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists. This is just one intersection and definitely not at the heart of the city. Jewel Avenue Q64 bus is probably symbolic of New York politics. It is frustrating to see no bus for half an hour and then see three buses come together at the same time. However, we can't have a train here even if we somehow we're able to create/take over the land we need.
    - maxsilver 8y ago
      Road upkeep is really cheap. (Cheap enough that Dominoes Pizza can fix roads for fun as a publicity stunt). The numbers seem high, if you aren't used to transit budgets -- but by those comparisons, roads are really cheap. A $13 million bridge repair sounds expensive. But to replace that bridge with a BRT line (as one example) has an initial upfront cost of ~$40 million, and has a higher per-day maintenance cost too. To replace that bridge with a real subway line (which is probably what NYC would need to best serve riders) could easily be $160 million or higher. Roads are the cheapest way to provide public transportation. Not necessarily the best way, but always the cheapest way.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
conroy 8y ago
As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic. Instead, we should be aiming to build more BRT like the Orange Line in Los Angeles[0], which operates completely in dedicated lanes. [0] https://www.metro.net/riding/paid_parking/orange-line/ https://www.metro.net/riding/paid_parking/orange-line/
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  For LA, separate bus lanes make a lot of sense. For Utah (really only SLC), it's really not necessary. When I was in SLC for work, "bad" traffic was when I had to tap the brakes on the freeway at 4pm.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    A good functioning bus lane will feel very wasteful only if it's working as intended and the buses are free-flowing. The entire point is that the buses flow quickly past traffic; you could open up the lane to HOV or cars, but then traffic times would just degrade. https://la.streetsblog.org/2014/07/08/balancing-cars-cash-and-congestion-metro-silver-line-brt-in-the-express-lanes/ https://la.streetsblog.org/2014/07/08/balancing-cars-cash-an... > In May 2014, Streetsblog L.A. began to receive tips that Silver Line BRT service along the 110 Freeway was experiencing some problems. So many drivers were taking the toll lanes to the point where the mix of buses, carpools and paying drivers resulted in congestion. > In some cases, traffic in the express lanes was moving slower than the rest of the 10 Freeway. This congestion impacts all the busway users including buses, carpools, and toll-paying drivers.
ProfBernardo 8y ago
Better public transportation means more bodies in the seats at church.
- mbillie1 8y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted, despite being a bit cynical this may well have been the pitch to the folks in Utah County.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  The LDS church has a church in every neighborhood out here. People don't take public transportation to get to them. They're literally as close as the bus stop for many people.
modells 8y ago
It often takes 2 hours to get by bus or light-rail from one end of Santa Clara county to the other, while driving typically takes an average of 20-25 minutes. Also, VTA is expensive for low-income folks with a minimum of $2 for a single ride, and it takes up to 4-5 rides to get somewhere each way, and so the daily passes are $7.. Which is also a lot. Yearly passes for kids and disabled are $330, $880 for adults and twice that $1760 for express buses. http://www.vta.org/getting-around/fares http://www.vta.org/getting-around/fares
- kennydude 8y ago
  Sounds like they need a "hopper" system like London has. London, weirdly, has the cheapest bus system in the UK.
omot 8y ago
Just thought to leave an aside for anyone considering working in Utah. I Lived in Orem, Utah for a long-time super interesting state. Everyone is super conservative, no doubt, but they are the nicest people I've ever met. They can be "accidentally" racist and bigoted but I attribute that for their ignorance as opposed to hate. The church itself governs and operates like a socialist country. Every church member in the world pays 10% of their income to the church, and that money in turn goes towards financing all three Brigham Young Universities - one in Provo Utah, one in Hawaii, and one in Idaho. So a student could get a private-school education for only $2000-5000 a year. The money also goes towards construction projects to build new temples and new churches. It goes towards relief for families that are struggling financially. The state also has some the best national parks in the countries, and probably the best slopes to ski on. I think people mentioned this but there is a pretty significant tech presence there as well. Some downsides, everyone is Mormon is not a lot of stuff is open on Sundays, and even if you're a devout atheist, you'll probably go to church a couple times, because everyone around you goes and you have nothing better to do. Very little diversity, racially, ethnically, politically, religiously, it's almost like living in Japan, where everyone is nice to you but you'll always be considered an outsider.
- pyromine 8y ago
  This is pretty spot on, moved from the Northeast to Utah for school, now done with school and I'm enjoying my time here because I'm in love with the mountains but I'm planning how to move out of the state because I know that I will never feel culturally secure here. Being part of the outdoor community I never find myself struggling to find like minded people, but I do feel like an outsider to society as a whole.
  - therealdrag0 8y ago
    Heard good things about Seattle or Boise and Colorado for outdoor culture.
- tntn 8y ago
  > It goes towards relief for families that are struggling financially. Sort of a technicality, but that money doesn't come from the 10% tithe. It comes from what is called "fast offerings" that is a separate offering associated with a monthly fast.
danschumann 8y ago
They should make a bus system that can change any light to green when the bus shows up, and control the grid in other ways to truly expedite public transit.
- pmorici 8y ago
  That technology already exists for emergency vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption
  - jrockway 8y ago
    Plenty of cities have traffic light preemption for buses. Portland does it for the MAX (not a bus, I know), and Chicago tried it when I lived there, etc. (The problem then becomes, what happens when an emergency vehicle AND a bus both preempt the traffic light? In Portland anyway, MAX wins. That doesn't always mean the emergency vehicle stops, though, with predictable results.) I rode the bus route daily when they tried it in Chicago and it didn't speed things up much. One at a time, slowly, slowly, people climbed on board, paid their fare, couldn't move into the bus because it was crowded, and then the next person in line blocked the doors until someone moved enough for them to get on... five minutes, the bus was on its way through a fresh green traffic signal. Great. (Continuing the rant, what about paying the fare off the bus? I've tried this in NYC, and every time I've used SBS, fare collectors have stopped the bus, slowly checked everyone's tickets with the bus stopped, and then gotten off. Waiting at a red light or two is nothing compared to that. I'm sure by the time you include the fare inspectors' salaries, some supervisors to fire them when they do the collection with the bus stopped, and recruiters for new fare inspectors... it's a mega money losing operation. But oh no, we could never make it free, only Communists would want free bus service!)
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      NYC's implementation is terrible because no other place with proof of payment stops the entire vehicle to check fares. The issue with free is that free transit tends to create a negative spiral where some walkers and bikers will switch to transit because it's free, so services have to be improved to deal with the crowding, which makes transit more appealing to bikers and walkers, which increases overcrowding, and so on. None of the cities and towns that have free transit in the world are very big.
tntn 8y ago
I used to ride the bus all the time in Utah valley. Then they tore up all the roads to build lanes for this project, and all the bus schedules went to pot. That's when I stopped riding the bus as often. I'm not sure whether tearing up all the roads for 3+ years to have a bus that connects two places already connected by a new train is that awesome. Just make that stretch of Frontrunner free.
- epage 8y ago
  Its not the endpoints that are a big deal but everything in between plus easier access to those end points.
rblion 8y ago
Considering moving to SLC, it's the perfect hub for all the stuff I like to do and has lots of nice people and food. Airport is not crowded either. I love how mountains are visible from most places as well. Within a few hours I can be at the Grand Canyon or at Yellowston or in Denver or in Las Vegas.
- xeromal 8y ago
  I've lived in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and SLC and SLC is easily my favorite of the bunch. LA has more amenities, but SLC balances that with WAYYYY more accessible outdoor activities, a proper winter, cheap housing, and nicer people.
  - rblion 8y ago
    I grew up in Atlanta (dislike many things about it but it'll always be where I visit my family), visited LA (crowded but I'll revisit), want to visit Chicago (food, museums, skyline). I lived in Utah for a year for learning/work. I liked how clean Utah was and how good the quality of life was. Only trade-off was the Mormon vibe but that can be avoided if you are in SLC. I plan to buy an SUV and drive all my stuff there, live a real simple life, work remotely, take as many adventures as my heart desires.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Some of us consider outdoor activities and nice people to be "amenities"...
    - xeromal 8y ago
      I agree with you on that, but LA still has more for sure. Mountains are an hour and a half away, but they are there. LA has more diversity in food and people so you can find your niche. Do you want Paleo vegan oatmeal cheesecake? Then there's an entire store dedicated to that. The scale LA runs at enables all these niche things. I still love SLC more though.
prh8 8y ago
With how bad the air quality is, I'd be really curious about what would happen if all of the region's public transit was made free. TRAX can be packed quite often, but there's still so much more capacity available in the system. Traffic is so bad, pretty much all the time, so it would have to help that as well. But then there is the matter of money has to come from somewhere, although Utah has one of the richer state governments to begin with.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  free transit has been tried, the findings were that it got mostly new riders from those who walked or rode bicycles because they didn't want to pay for transit but converted very few drivers. [1] it really comes down to, a transit system cannot be everything for everyone so its best to make it good for a segment of the population. if we want to improve transit issues the primary method is to overhaul the power of zoning boards and reduce the ability of groups to sue to prevent housing to be built closer in if not inside cities. one recent tactic has been for politically connected groups to sue and make ridiculous changing demands so that to the point it becomes unaffordable to build and force the developer to sell to the group connected to the politicians. then everyone loses. [2]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-transit-be-free/384929/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-can... [2] https://missionlocal.org/2018/07/axis-developerment-abruptly-abandons-proposed-117-unit-folsom-street-project/ https://missionlocal.org/2018/07/axis-developerment-abruptly...
  - prh8 8y ago
    I understand free transit does not generally work. However, the Salt Lake region is rather unique in the first place, so I'm curious the effects it would have there. It may still fail but I suspect it would be different than previous studies on free transit.
mholt 8y ago
So, I live in a BRT neighborhood in Provo, and it's really weird. It's more inconvenient for motorists, the bike routes are awkward (there are new signs for bikes to yield to vehicles -- at an intersection that has a median through it and is solely for the benefit of bicyclists), and pedestrians have to go into the middle of the street to get on the bus. And BRT still takes 1.5x-2x the time to get to main destinations than direct car routes do. Not to mention that one of the residential BRT streets north of me has been under construction for more time than it took NASA to get to the moon in the '60s. But it's cool that we get free service, I guess. BYU and UVU students get free UTA transportation (more than just BRT) with their ID cards.
mbillie1 8y ago
For what it's worth, living in Salt Lake City: this is one single bus route among dozens. It's nice that there won't be a cost for this route, but this could be expanded to all of our bus routes and still more would need to be done for local air quality.
zacharytelschow 8y ago
Heavily subsidized transportation that hemorrhages money doesn't work.
jparise 8y ago
AC Transit is building out a BRT line in the East Bay between Oakland and San Leandro. http://www.actransit.org/brt/ http://www.actransit.org/brt/
rabboRubble 8y ago
Public transit fangirl here... Salt Lake City's transit system is awesome. Clean, runs timely, and runs in sensible paths through population areas. The bus system off the train service is a bit less useful, but I've found with Lyft / Uber augments, I can get just about anywhere I want to without a car.

316 points by ngngngng 8y ago

3Wq6xQ0hRc 8y ago

"Free" AKA paid for with your taxes.

mozumder 8y ago
Not if you're one of the many people that don't pay taxes! (retirees, children, the poor, etc..)
- jessriedel 8y ago
  Most retirees pay taxes, including on social security.
  - loeg 8y ago
    Most of "the poor," too, unless you pick a particularly narrow definition.
- jhare 8y ago
  ... people pay taxes their whole lives in order to have good income and retire securely. I bet you're a real gem
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't make a bad thread even worse by going into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Stupid poor. Always trying to get something for nothing. /end homer simpson
eksu 8y ago
It was a federal grant.
- benkarst 8y ago
  lol
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  ... which is paid for by taxes.
megablast 8y ago
Like "free" roads then, or "free" police, or "free" non-polluted air.
dang 8y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not ideological boilerplate!

Mbioguy 8y ago

A deeply red/Republican and relatively low-density state might seem like a strange place to find a functional public transit system. Utah is an interesting place. The geography of the Wasatch Front lends itself to public transit in ways that less geographically-constrained places do not. The region is mostly a north-south corridor, with occasional off-shoots to the side, which is how the transit network has developed. There is a significant tech culture, from 'little silicon slopes' in Lehi to the significant student population. The valley has seasonal pollution problems caused by mountains to the east and west. This is made worse by the lake effect, which means energy solutions helpful elsewhere are less effective, like natural gas plants. What would otherwise be transient pollutants instead react with ammonia from the lake and persist in the atmosphere, further trapped by the mountains. Utah has a significant need for public transit, and getting students connected and using it is a great way for generational change to occur. Car culture still rules, and will for a long time, but this is a good thing to hear. Hopefully a Trax expansion or equivalent in Utah county will happen eventually. Until then, this seems the next best policy.

jorblumesea 8y ago
Utah is something like 60% Mormon, and Mormons are really big on community, helping others and many other "socialist" ideas. They are conservative in many ways but progressive in some.
ngngngng 8y ago
With our air quality here, eventually can't come soon enough. I'd love to have a single family car and use public transit daily, but for right now I sacrificed that to live out in the middle of nowhere but still be able to find software jobs easily.
mmanfrin 8y ago
I thing a larger factor is the Mormon Church/Mormon population. Utah has some strangely progressive economic policies like housing-first solutions to homelessness. Utah is a red state for sure, especially when it comes to social policies, but has the 'community' orientation that another commenter mentioned that public transit falls neatly in to.

gumby 8y ago

I don't understand why road taxes aren't used to pay for free public transport. The more people on public transport the more room for cars.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Because outside of hyper dense cities roads are "public transit." Making them free to use (if you've already paid the costs associated with a car) has benefits to all that are large enough that increasing cost beyond what it takes to upkeep them at some subsistence level is not in our best interest (except in a few dense cities).
- mcny 8y ago
  But the upkeep is expensive. One example: Jewel Avenue and Van Wyk Expressway intersection > New York State Department of Transportation Acting Commissioner Cathy Calhoun said the bridge is set to get $13 million in repairs to enhance safety for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists. This is just one intersection and definitely not at the heart of the city. Jewel Avenue Q64 bus is probably symbolic of New York politics. It is frustrating to see no bus for half an hour and then see three buses come together at the same time. However, we can't have a train here even if we somehow we're able to create/take over the land we need.
  - maxsilver 8y ago
    Road upkeep is really cheap. (Cheap enough that Dominoes Pizza can fix roads for fun as a publicity stunt). The numbers seem high, if you aren't used to transit budgets -- but by those comparisons, roads are really cheap. A $13 million bridge repair sounds expensive. But to replace that bridge with a BRT line (as one example) has an initial upfront cost of ~$40 million, and has a higher per-day maintenance cost too. To replace that bridge with a real subway line (which is probably what NYC would need to best serve riders) could easily be $160 million or higher. Roads are the cheapest way to provide public transportation. Not necessarily the best way, but always the cheapest way.
Nasrudith 8y ago

conroy 8y ago

As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic. Instead, we should be aiming to build more BRT like the Orange Line in Los Angeles[0], which operates completely in dedicated lanes. [0] https://www.metro.net/riding/paid_parking/orange-line/ https://www.metro.net/riding/paid_parking/orange-line/

Rebelgecko 8y ago
For LA, separate bus lanes make a lot of sense. For Utah (really only SLC), it's really not necessary. When I was in SLC for work, "bad" traffic was when I had to tap the brakes on the freeway at 4pm.
reaperducer 8y ago
Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  A good functioning bus lane will feel very wasteful only if it's working as intended and the buses are free-flowing. The entire point is that the buses flow quickly past traffic; you could open up the lane to HOV or cars, but then traffic times would just degrade. https://la.streetsblog.org/2014/07/08/balancing-cars-cash-and-congestion-metro-silver-line-brt-in-the-express-lanes/ https://la.streetsblog.org/2014/07/08/balancing-cars-cash-an... > In May 2014, Streetsblog L.A. began to receive tips that Silver Line BRT service along the 110 Freeway was experiencing some problems. So many drivers were taking the toll lanes to the point where the mix of buses, carpools and paying drivers resulted in congestion. > In some cases, traffic in the express lanes was moving slower than the rest of the 10 Freeway. This congestion impacts all the busway users including buses, carpools, and toll-paying drivers.

ProfBernardo 8y ago

Better public transportation means more bodies in the seats at church.

mbillie1 8y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted, despite being a bit cynical this may well have been the pitch to the folks in Utah County.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
The LDS church has a church in every neighborhood out here. People don't take public transportation to get to them. They're literally as close as the bus stop for many people.

modells 8y ago

It often takes 2 hours to get by bus or light-rail from one end of Santa Clara county to the other, while driving typically takes an average of 20-25 minutes. Also, VTA is expensive for low-income folks with a minimum of $2 for a single ride, and it takes up to 4-5 rides to get somewhere each way, and so the daily passes are $7.. Which is also a lot. Yearly passes for kids and disabled are $330, $880 for adults and twice that $1760 for express buses. http://www.vta.org/getting-around/fares http://www.vta.org/getting-around/fares

kennydude 8y ago
Sounds like they need a "hopper" system like London has. London, weirdly, has the cheapest bus system in the UK.

omot 8y ago

Just thought to leave an aside for anyone considering working in Utah. I Lived in Orem, Utah for a long-time super interesting state. Everyone is super conservative, no doubt, but they are the nicest people I've ever met. They can be "accidentally" racist and bigoted but I attribute that for their ignorance as opposed to hate. The church itself governs and operates like a socialist country. Every church member in the world pays 10% of their income to the church, and that money in turn goes towards financing all three Brigham Young Universities - one in Provo Utah, one in Hawaii, and one in Idaho. So a student could get a private-school education for only $2000-5000 a year. The money also goes towards construction projects to build new temples and new churches. It goes towards relief for families that are struggling financially. The state also has some the best national parks in the countries, and probably the best slopes to ski on. I think people mentioned this but there is a pretty significant tech presence there as well. Some downsides, everyone is Mormon is not a lot of stuff is open on Sundays, and even if you're a devout atheist, you'll probably go to church a couple times, because everyone around you goes and you have nothing better to do. Very little diversity, racially, ethnically, politically, religiously, it's almost like living in Japan, where everyone is nice to you but you'll always be considered an outsider.

pyromine 8y ago
This is pretty spot on, moved from the Northeast to Utah for school, now done with school and I'm enjoying my time here because I'm in love with the mountains but I'm planning how to move out of the state because I know that I will never feel culturally secure here. Being part of the outdoor community I never find myself struggling to find like minded people, but I do feel like an outsider to society as a whole.
- therealdrag0 8y ago
  Heard good things about Seattle or Boise and Colorado for outdoor culture.
tntn 8y ago
> It goes towards relief for families that are struggling financially. Sort of a technicality, but that money doesn't come from the 10% tithe. It comes from what is called "fast offerings" that is a separate offering associated with a monthly fast.

danschumann 8y ago

They should make a bus system that can change any light to green when the bus shows up, and control the grid in other ways to truly expedite public transit.

pmorici 8y ago
That technology already exists for emergency vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption
- jrockway 8y ago
  Plenty of cities have traffic light preemption for buses. Portland does it for the MAX (not a bus, I know), and Chicago tried it when I lived there, etc. (The problem then becomes, what happens when an emergency vehicle AND a bus both preempt the traffic light? In Portland anyway, MAX wins. That doesn't always mean the emergency vehicle stops, though, with predictable results.) I rode the bus route daily when they tried it in Chicago and it didn't speed things up much. One at a time, slowly, slowly, people climbed on board, paid their fare, couldn't move into the bus because it was crowded, and then the next person in line blocked the doors until someone moved enough for them to get on... five minutes, the bus was on its way through a fresh green traffic signal. Great. (Continuing the rant, what about paying the fare off the bus? I've tried this in NYC, and every time I've used SBS, fare collectors have stopped the bus, slowly checked everyone's tickets with the bus stopped, and then gotten off. Waiting at a red light or two is nothing compared to that. I'm sure by the time you include the fare inspectors' salaries, some supervisors to fire them when they do the collection with the bus stopped, and recruiters for new fare inspectors... it's a mega money losing operation. But oh no, we could never make it free, only Communists would want free bus service!)
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    NYC's implementation is terrible because no other place with proof of payment stops the entire vehicle to check fares. The issue with free is that free transit tends to create a negative spiral where some walkers and bikers will switch to transit because it's free, so services have to be improved to deal with the crowding, which makes transit more appealing to bikers and walkers, which increases overcrowding, and so on. None of the cities and towns that have free transit in the world are very big.

tntn 8y ago

I used to ride the bus all the time in Utah valley. Then they tore up all the roads to build lanes for this project, and all the bus schedules went to pot. That's when I stopped riding the bus as often. I'm not sure whether tearing up all the roads for 3+ years to have a bus that connects two places already connected by a new train is that awesome. Just make that stretch of Frontrunner free.

epage 8y ago
Its not the endpoints that are a big deal but everything in between plus easier access to those end points.

rblion 8y ago

Considering moving to SLC, it's the perfect hub for all the stuff I like to do and has lots of nice people and food. Airport is not crowded either. I love how mountains are visible from most places as well. Within a few hours I can be at the Grand Canyon or at Yellowston or in Denver or in Las Vegas.

xeromal 8y ago
I've lived in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and SLC and SLC is easily my favorite of the bunch. LA has more amenities, but SLC balances that with WAYYYY more accessible outdoor activities, a proper winter, cheap housing, and nicer people.
- rblion 8y ago
  I grew up in Atlanta (dislike many things about it but it'll always be where I visit my family), visited LA (crowded but I'll revisit), want to visit Chicago (food, museums, skyline). I lived in Utah for a year for learning/work. I liked how clean Utah was and how good the quality of life was. Only trade-off was the Mormon vibe but that can be avoided if you are in SLC. I plan to buy an SUV and drive all my stuff there, live a real simple life, work remotely, take as many adventures as my heart desires.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Some of us consider outdoor activities and nice people to be "amenities"...
  - xeromal 8y ago
    I agree with you on that, but LA still has more for sure. Mountains are an hour and a half away, but they are there. LA has more diversity in food and people so you can find your niche. Do you want Paleo vegan oatmeal cheesecake? Then there's an entire store dedicated to that. The scale LA runs at enables all these niche things. I still love SLC more though.

prh8 8y ago

With how bad the air quality is, I'd be really curious about what would happen if all of the region's public transit was made free. TRAX can be packed quite often, but there's still so much more capacity available in the system. Traffic is so bad, pretty much all the time, so it would have to help that as well. But then there is the matter of money has to come from somewhere, although Utah has one of the richer state governments to begin with.

Shivetya 8y ago
free transit has been tried, the findings were that it got mostly new riders from those who walked or rode bicycles because they didn't want to pay for transit but converted very few drivers. [1] it really comes down to, a transit system cannot be everything for everyone so its best to make it good for a segment of the population. if we want to improve transit issues the primary method is to overhaul the power of zoning boards and reduce the ability of groups to sue to prevent housing to be built closer in if not inside cities. one recent tactic has been for politically connected groups to sue and make ridiculous changing demands so that to the point it becomes unaffordable to build and force the developer to sell to the group connected to the politicians. then everyone loses. [2]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-transit-be-free/384929/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-can... [2] https://missionlocal.org/2018/07/axis-developerment-abruptly-abandons-proposed-117-unit-folsom-street-project/ https://missionlocal.org/2018/07/axis-developerment-abruptly...
- prh8 8y ago
  I understand free transit does not generally work. However, the Salt Lake region is rather unique in the first place, so I'm curious the effects it would have there. It may still fail but I suspect it would be different than previous studies on free transit.

mholt 8y ago

So, I live in a BRT neighborhood in Provo, and it's really weird. It's more inconvenient for motorists, the bike routes are awkward (there are new signs for bikes to yield to vehicles -- at an intersection that has a median through it and is solely for the benefit of bicyclists), and pedestrians have to go into the middle of the street to get on the bus. And BRT still takes 1.5x-2x the time to get to main destinations than direct car routes do. Not to mention that one of the residential BRT streets north of me has been under construction for more time than it took NASA to get to the moon in the '60s. But it's cool that we get free service, I guess. BYU and UVU students get free UTA transportation (more than just BRT) with their ID cards.

mbillie1 8y ago

For what it's worth, living in Salt Lake City: this is one single bus route among dozens. It's nice that there won't be a cost for this route, but this could be expanded to all of our bus routes and still more would need to be done for local air quality.

zacharytelschow 8y ago

Heavily subsidized transportation that hemorrhages money doesn't work.

jparise 8y ago

AC Transit is building out a BRT line in the East Bay between Oakland and San Leandro. http://www.actransit.org/brt/ http://www.actransit.org/brt/

rabboRubble 8y ago

Public transit fangirl here... Salt Lake City's transit system is awesome. Clean, runs timely, and runs in sensible paths through population areas. The bus system off the train service is a bit less useful, but I've found with Lyft / Uber augments, I can get just about anywhere I want to without a car.