But just how quickly a light rail, streetcar or bus rapid transit alternative is developed to sit alongside the planned freeway has become a source of contention.
Transit backers Tuesday accused transportation planners of low-balling projected ridership figures for transit along the planned 5600 West route as a way to justify a freeway-first construction scenario, pushing transit options to the more distant future.
"These models are designed to justify big roads. And for these mayors, who are planning the futures of their cities, that is a real disservice," Sierra Club representative Marc Heileson said following a gathering of Mountain View Corridor stakeholders in West Valley City. "If they think they can justify an eight-lane freeway and put off transit for 20 years because they say nobody is going to ride it is just bad planning."
In the ongoing environmental impact statement of Mountain View being done by the Utah Department of Transportation, the first phase of west-side freeway - which will run along 5800 West in the existing utility corridor - is projected to be finished in 2015. Transit right-of-ways will be preserved, but not developed until after 2015.
A consultant's study projected a best-case scenario of 5,900 daily riders along Mountain View's transit corridor in 2015; not enough, planners say, to put down a transit line that quickly.
Chuck Chappell, executive director of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, says transit- and highway-use projections have traditionally been conservative because of the manner in which the federal government doles out money for road and rail projects. But Heileson says, "It's one thing to be conservative; it's another to miss the broad side of a barn." "People are riding transit. They're voting to raise their own taxes over and over again to get more transit," Heileson says. "The problem we have is that the citizens are way ahead of their leaders."
But Chappell insists that planners will implement transit when the cities say they are ready for it.
jbaird@sltrib.com
