Officials, residents want to see options from intravalley bus service to FrontRunner trains

In metropolitan areas, public transportation is simply a way of life. Traffic jams and a lack of parking mean more people hop on a bus or a light rail line.

In Tooele County, the car remains king. However, many officials are predicting a sea change in our commuter lifestyle — and it may arrive in the not-so-distant future.

“As our population grows and various parts of our valley are developed into retail centers and recreation sites, there will be an increasing need for public transportation,” said Nicole Cline, Tooele County economic development director. “It helps people control their personal budgets. It helps us keep pollution in check. It also alleviates congestion.”

Not only that, Cline said, more public transportation options means less of a need for the community to spend money on larger and more complex road systems.

“Public transportation just makes sense,” she said.

On that point, almost all county officials are in agreement. In fact, improved public transportation is often cited as a driver of increased economic development. As an example, Cline pointed to Miller Motorsports Park and neighboring Deseret Peak Complex.

“These are centrally located in the valley and not near hotels and restaurants,” Cline said. “It would be nice to have a public transportation system to take event goers to those destinations.”

There are also compelling social reasons to increase public transport services.

“The lack of public transportation disproportionately affects our low-income residents,” said Karen Kuipers, Tooele County Relief Services coordinator. “If you need to get into the city, it’s only early morning or late afternoon that the buses come. It affects the ability of people to search for work or go to the grocery store. Some families have two people working, but only one car.”

The Utah Transit Authority does offer paratransit and senior shuttle services in Tooele Valley, but those services require advance booking.

“We either need to look at our own system, which is a huge undertaking, or we need to look to UTA for more,” Kuipers said.

Tooele County Chamber of Commerce director Debbie Winn said intravalley bus routes would be a boon to many workers.

“We have several miles in between towns and business,” Winn said. “We have employees that don’t have access to transportation. They aren’t able to be good employees because they can’t get where they need to go.”

Tooele County Commissioner Jerry Hurst said while better public transportation would certainly help the county, convincing UTA of that is a difficult numbers game.

“Our usage is low so it’s pretty hard to justify it,” Hurst said.

County officials, however, have been working with UTA officials to beef up service locally.

“We have talked about a triangle route from Grantsville to Tooele to Stansbury, running on the hour,” Hurst said.

Steve Swan, UTA service planner for the county, said there are no definite plans to implement such a route at this time, however.

“We have leased a facility in the Utah Industrial Depot, where we are keeping our buses at night, rather than taking them all the way back into Salt Lake after a route and bringing them back the next morning,” Swan said. “That wastes a lot of time and fuel. One of the things that has been discussed is using some of that saved money to implement more local service in Tooele, but no decision has been made yet.”

In addition, not everyone agrees that expanded bus service should be the county’s top priority.

Rep. Jim Gowans, D-Tooele, said he feels like the biggest transportation issue the county is facing right now is congestion on I-80 from commuters heading back and forth to Salt Lake City. As such, he is pushing for FrontRunner, UTA’s commuter rail system, to be expanded into Tooele Valley.

“They are already coming out to the airport,” Gowans said, referring to a new TRAX line scheduled to be completed by 2015. “They might as well keep coming. It might be something that would solve a lot of the traffic issues in the county. I’ve lived here all my life and it’s changed. There is a lot more traffic.”

Tooele resident and avid bus rider Sel Heidel said his priority isn’t intravalley bus routes or light rail services. He just wants more buses running into Salt Lake City at more convenient times.

“I go into Salt Lake three to four days a week,” Heidel said. “Having other routes would mean that I don’t have to use my car. All of us should think about not using our cars because it’s causing a problem in Tooele and elsewhere with smog.”

Three weeks ago, Heidel drafted a petition in which he and roughly 70 other signees are asking UTA for an additional route from Tooele into Salt Lake City between 8 and 11 a.m. daily.

“We used to have this route, but then prices went up and they cut this service,” Heidel said. “My petition is to see if we can put this time back on and see what else we can do.”

In the past, UTA has responded to local requests for more service. Last November, for example, UTA added Grantsville-Stansbury routes following a request by Grantsville residents for better connecting service at times more convenient for workers.

However, new routes are evaluated after a year, and if ridership numbers are poor the services are altered or even discontinued, according to Carrie Bohnsack-Ware, spokesperson for UTA.

Cline said proving demand is the key to bringing more public transit options to the county.

“When UTA does their planning, both from a public and a private standpoint, we need to participate in those processes and let them understand what we want and need,” Cline said. “UTA does react to service requests. Obviously, if there is a big demand from travel from Grantsville to Tooele they will respond to that, but we have to let them know. The demand today is far better than it was 10 years ago. Will it be even greater 10 years from now? Most definitely.”

Jamie Belnap: jamieb@tooeletranscript.com