[wrendog]

Westside freeway favored over light rail
By Joe Baird
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 03/28/2007 06:55:34 AM MDT


Posted: 6:55 AM- WEST VALLEY CITY - Backers of the Mountain View transit corridor are accusing transportation planners of low-balling ridership projections.
They say that is happening in order to favor a competing plan to add a new westside freeway.
At a meeting yesterday to discuss transit plans for the proposed 5600 West route, Sierra Club representative Marc Heileson said that favoring freeway over light rail or buses is a disservice to the region's future.
"If they think they can justify an eight-lane freeway and put off transit for 20 years because they say nobody is going to ride it, [that] is just bad planning," Heileson said.
An environmental impact study of Mountain View is being done by the Utah Department of Transportation. So far, that plan projects the first phase of west-side freeway would be finished in 2015.
Meantime, the ongoing study suggests that transit right-of-ways will be preserved, but not developed until after 2015.
Consultants so far estimate a best-case scenario of 5,900 daily riders along Mountain View's transit corridor in 2015. Planners say that is not enough to justify putting down rails quicker than proposed.
Heileson says that ridership estimate is way off.
"It's one thing to be conservative; it's another to miss the broad side of a barn," he said. "People are riding transit. . . . The problem we have is that the citizens are way ahead of their leaders."