Train too expensive

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

A trip from Eagle Mountain to get to work at 7:30 a.m. at the Wells Fargo Building on Main Street in downtown Salt Lake City used to take 45 minutes via a Utah Transit Authority commuter bus.

Now here comes the much-awaited FrontRunner, and the trip now takes two hours, if everything is on time. For this I get to pay about $190 each month, which is about to be increased.

UTA is one of the most expensive public transit systems in the country, with way too many top-heavy costs. FrontRunner might be a good thing, but when you more than double commute times for the same money, something is wrong.

The public has no real voice in UTA decisions, and our elected officials have no power, either. On one hand, UTA says it is a business, but if you want to file a lawsuit against it, UTA is quick to tell you it is a government agency and therefore exempt.

We taxpayers pay, but we have no representation. Return the commuter bus to Eagle Mountain!

Allen Klinefelter

Eagle Mountain