Advocates for the poor and disabled still are chapped at the Utah Transit Authority's redesigned bus routes in Salt Lake County, which they say disproportionately cut service to their clients. In central Salt Lake City, they may have a point. But their recent allegation that the transit agency's emphasis on rail service at the expense of buses amounts to a crime doesn't wash.

Linda Parsons of Utah Jobs with Justice has seized on a performance audit of UTA released in January by the Legislative Auditor General. Among their findings, the auditors criticized the agency's passenger data as unreliable, noting that "TRAX ridership has been overstated by about 20 percent."

UTA has acknowledged that its ridership counts, and the extrapolations from them, were flawed, and has taken steps to improve them.

Nevertheless, Parsons contends that UTA deliberately used inflated ridership data to justify rail construction to the Federal Transit Administration at the expense of buses and to qualify its executives for lucrative performance bonuses. She wants the attorney general to launch a criminal investigation.

We don't see evidence of that in the audit. Neither did the attorney general.

It is true that the audit concluded that UTA's "executive salaries and bonuses are high compared to those of other transit agencies," and it recommended that the board "establish policies which bring executive compensation in line with those of other transit agencies."

The audit also noted that meeting ridership goals was one of three criteria the agency used for executive bonuses.

So, should the UTA board take a hard look at the agency's overly generous executive compensation? Absolutely. Did that compensation result from criminal activity? We don't see evidence of that.

As to her allegation that the UTA's recent emphasis on commuter-rail and light-rail construction are an attempt to gentrify the system at the expense of the poor, we can only say that we see a broad economic cross-section of the population on TRAX trains and buses wherever we ride them.

We also would observe that auditors pressed the UTA to make its bus system more efficient, noting that bus ridership had fallen. That was the goal of redesigning bus routes in Salt Lake County.

The UTA is a tax-supported public service that must strive to serve as many riders as possible, regardless of disability or economic class. If it does not, it will not survive to serve the poor or anyone else.