Customers of the Utah Transit Authority, that is. They hated the UTA's redesign of bus routes in Salt Lake and southern Davis counties, and they did everything but throw rocks.

To its credit, the UTA listened in a series of sometimes contentious public hearings. In response to 3,000 comments from 2,700 people, the agency's planners redesigned the redesign. They made changes to 55 of the 80 new routes originally proposed and added nine more. The agency's board also approved $1.5 million in additional funding to pay for those nine new routes.

The major result has been to restore service to neighborhoods in the core of Salt Lake City and on the East Bench of Salt Lake County that had been laid on the chopping block. Because many low-income and disabled people in the heart of the city rely on mass transit, we are gratified to see that service restored.

The new route system is scheduled to go into effect Aug. 26.

The goal of the redesign is to boost bus ridership, which declined by about 17 percent between 1996 and 2005.

The route redesign is supposed to improve service to the suburbs, consolidate routes to eliminate duplication, create more routes with shorter times between buses and more express routes (fast buses) from the suburbs to downtown Salt Lake City and the University of Utah, better align buses with TRAX light-rail lines and eliminate the dual system of separate daytime and nighttime routes.

We won't know whether that has been accomplished until the new service begins. But it looks good on paper.

During the decades since the last major bus route overhaul, the population of Salt Lake County has shifted dramatically to the south and west. So it was inevitable that the redesign would eliminate some service in Salt Lake City and spread those assets into fast-growing areas.

But the agency clearly underestimated the blowback from longtime customers in the city and on the East Bench who were outraged to learn they would lose their bus routes and have to walk farther to get service.

Patrons rightly complained that they had moved into areas with good bus service in order to drive a private car less, and now the UTA was pulling that service away.

Alienating longtime customers is no way to build ridership. Fortunately, UTA got that message.