The bad news: There's no guarantee the wireless Internet connection will work on any given train yet.

The Utah Transit Authority provided no official FrontRunner rider count on the first day of paying service, but after several free days of fanfare the new Ogden-Salt Lake City line started to take on the look of a normal commuter railroad. Morning and afternoon rush hours saw most seats full but few if any forced to stand, and the mid-morning and mid-afternoon brought lulls where many trains had just 20 to 50 riders.

And on the Salt Lake Central platform, people were feeding $5 bills into the machines. When a 5 p.m. TRAX light-rail train arrived, about 75 people rushed across the platform to catch FrontRunner, pushing the total aboard over 200.

"It's definitely a gas saver," said Bryan Caldwell, who paid to ride from Clearfield to Salt Lake, where his employer provides a van from the train. While his morning commute was about the same as his drive has been, he said the FrontRunner gets him home faster in the evenings than his usual traffic battle.

UTA spokeswoman Carrie Bohnsack-Ware said the agency has sold roughly twice the typical 400 premium $145 monthly passes for May, indicating people are more willing to pay for trains than express buses. Many more have half-price or otherwise subsidized passes through their employers.

One of them, Mark Atwood, rides the train for free and then takes the free downtown shuttle bus to quickly reach his office on Main Street. "It's so quick," he said of his new commute from Farmington.

UTA officials said the number of families with curious children was way down on the first day of fare collections. Still, some people continued to ride just out of curiosity.

"I'm just riding for the sake of riding," Utah Country resident Jeremy Garcia said while buying a ticket. "I didn't really have time to ride it the last few days."

UTA continues to tweak its wireless Internet equipment and expects to have full coverage on the trains by the end of next week, Bohnsack-Ware said.