This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
I enjoyed Peg McEntee's "For me (and others), UTA takes too long, costs too much" (Tribune, April 2), on the frustration of trying to get from her home to The Tribune office with the Utah Transit Authority. However, I respectfully suggest a different conclusion.
Instead of flushing away billions more dollars (the agency has spent more than $1 billion on rail expansion), what could have been accomplished had that money been devoted to the purchase of electric cars?
I envision a rotating loan fund that provides consumers no-interest loans to finance the difference between what it would cost to buy a no-emissions electric car versus the price of a gasoline model. With $1 billion, you could loan 100,000 Utahns $10,000 each to help them buy electric cars. As the loans were repaid, new loans would be made. I wonder what the impact on emissions would be versus giving another billion to UTA.
As McEntee so aptly demonstrated, people are never going to ride mass transit that is so expensive, so inconvenient and so wasteful of their time. Sinking more money into the UTA system, as McEntee suggests, would be throwing good money after bad.
Paul S. Wetzel
Salt Lake City