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Utah Transit Authority executives gave themselves high marks Wednesday in a yearly report-card presentation that helps determine whether they will receive annual bonuses, and for how much.
They said they fully hit 13 of 16 goals set by the UTA Board for 2014, clearly missed one, and partially achieved two others.
UTA President and CEO Michael Allegra stressed that the agency had its highest ridership ever, turned in its best safety record ever, had a low tax cost per mile of service, had the nation's best on-time record and was named the nation's top transit system by the American Public Transportation Association.
Allegra said that seeing all of UTA's accomplishments last year "blows me away. It just floors me," noting much of that was driven by goals set by the board.
Normally, the board figures executive bonuses based on the percentage of board goals that are achieved, multiplied by the amount of money budgeted for bonuses.
Two years ago that led to bonuses of up to $30,000 for some top UTA officials, including Allegra. After such big bonuses, in addition to high pay, were criticized in a legislative audit, the board last year reduced the maximum bonus to $7,500 — and gave that amount to 22 people. Allegra, however, was not given a bonus.
The UTA Board's Finance and Operations Committee decided Wednesday it would leave the job of figuring goal achievement and its effect on bonuses to the UTA's executive board.
The one goal that managers said they clearly missed was a key one: increasing ridership by 4 percent. Ridership grew by 2.2 percent in 2014.
"But compared to everybody else, particularly our peers, we did exceptional," Allegra said, noting that UTA more than doubled the national average increase in ridership of 0.95 percent.
Transit is used by 25 percent of people who travel to downtown Salt Lake City and 37 percent of those going to the University of Utah, he said, adding that transit use removes the equivalent of 1.5 to two lanes of traffic from Interstate 15 every day.
UTA's tax subsidy per rider, which it calls "investment per rider," was held to $3.95 per ride in 2014, according to preliminary numbers. That beat the goal of $3.99 per ride.
Allegra said the agency achieves low cost per mile even though the district covers 4,000 square miles and offers rides that are often longer than in other cities.
"We put more service on the street per dollar, per revenue dollar, per sales tax dollar than anybody I know, particularly when we compare ourselves to our key peer cities," Allegra told board members.
While not part of a direct board goal, Allegra said UTA was the nation's leader in arriving on time. He said the on-time performance for TRAX was 95 percent; was 92 percent for FrontRunner; and was 91 percent for buses.
"I can't do that in my car," he said.
UTA had its best safety record ever in 2014, Allegra said. There were no accidental fatalities in its system (it did have some suicides) and buses had their lowest avoidable accident rate ever.
Last year, UTA installed 3,000 new cameras in its system, including on all buses. UTA officials said that reduced high-severity incidents on buses by 65 percent as managers reviewed videos with drivers in training opportunities.
Among goals that were partially achieved was failing to complete a new compressed natural-gas fueling facility. UTA has said that was slowed by old concrete foundations, poor soils and archaeological requirements at the site. Construction is underway.
Another partially met goal was entering into agreements with three cities for "transit-oriented developments" near transit stops. The agency had agreement with Salt Lake City and Ogden.
Allegra and other managers reported on a variety of other areas. They said UTA's electronic fare card, called FAREPAY, is becoming more popular. Replacing cash fares with the card is viewed as key to UTA's planned move toward distance-based fares, instead of charging flat fares for a trip of any distance.
UTA reported that it sold 20,525 FAREPAY cards in 2014, and they are now available at 291 retailers. The cards are used in about 4 percent of boardings.
Managers said polling by UTA shows a 75 percent public approval rating of the agency.
Allegra did acknowledge that UTA was heavily criticized in a legislative audit last year, which attacked possible sweetheart deals with developers, high pay and bonuses, failure to plan well for maintenance costs of new rail projects, a fare structure that may force the poor to subsidize the rich and high debt that might prevent restoring bus service that was cut to fund new train lines.
He said UTA has responded to all recommendations in that audit, and is fixing the problems identified.