Thursday, May 14

On Money

UTA sold a ton of bonds yesterday ($306 Million) in order to pay for construction of the lines.

The trouble with bonds is, someday they come due. Now, this sounds obvious, but when it comes down to it, Mass Transit faces a different profitability standard than Individual Transit does, particularly out here in the West. There have been tons of emails and blog posts flying around right now, with this topic as a primary subject. The basic question is: why are trains expected to make a profit, but roads can be a budgetary sinkhole?

The answer is: Trains are more visible, so people get more angry when they see their tax dollars going to something they never ever use.

Roads on the other hand, are practically invisible unless they blatantly need improvement, in which case most people just want it fixed, and don't care how much it costs.

Few things are going to resolve this issue, and I'm not sure propaganda is the right tool for the job. Instead, we need to make the roads more obvious (Your Tax Dollars at Work signs?) or trains less obvious. Not sure how to go about that.

In other news... I'm in the news! Yay! Thanks to Streetsblog for talking about me.
Posted by Dominic Ford at 8:08 AM
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3 comments:

  1. One of the problems is, at one time voters voted no on Trax...and it was built anyway. I guess there was more to the issue that whether it was built; perhaps it was an issue of funding, but it confused a lot of people, including me.

    Another problem is, most drivers (and most of Utah drives!) sees the benefits of roads, as getting us there faster. Whereas, when they put in Trax, it actually created one more transfer for west side people to get downtown. So where is the benefit?

    Also, in road construction, a bus can detour, but Trax can't, so it's hard to get to your park and ride at times.

    That said, if I was on a direct line where Trax actually went, I would probably use it. I do use it for downtown events when it is so much easier to park down at a further station than downtown.

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  2. I have a thought for you: ask BB about her experience on the train yesterday, and research how much authority transit police really have.

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  3. As far as money for Trax is concerned... you are a victim of the issue I'm talking about. UTA is expected to turn a profit, to pay off bonds with fares, where roads aren't. They can't have awesome lines out west, because they can't prove it will be profitable. If there was a line there, you would use it, but most people would still just drive, at least for a while, so the line wouldn't make money.

    As for transit police, I'm working on it. They have a lot, though. But not overstretching civil liberties, like they did with her. That's an issue.

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