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Vote on fare-free countywide transit system planned for 2000
By Doug Smeath
It was all set and ready to go. In November 1998, the Logan Transit District was prepared to move forward on plans to expand its service to cover all of Cache Valley, from Richmond to Hyrum, according to a Nov. 20, 1998, article in the Utah Statesman. According to that article, LTD Transit Manager Geoff Straw said Cache Valley residents would vote on creating the Cache Valley Transit District on May 4. But, more than seven months after the vote was supposed to happen, it still hasn't. However, Straw said that doesn't mean the expansion won't happen or that CVTD won't be created. "Regional transit service is not dead," he said. "(It's) just delayed due to a state legislative moratorium on all special districts." Straw said LTD plans a countywide vote in November 2000 on a referendum that would create the district and provide funding for it. Logan residents pay a 0.25 percent sales tax to help fund LTD, the Statesman article said. If CVTD were created, that sales tax would apply throughout the county. "It, too, will be fare-free and will interline through the USU campus," Straw said. Currently the LTD bus system runs six routes every day but Sunday, adding a seventh on weekdays. Riding the LTD is free. However, bus service only covers Logan. According to the Statesman article, LTD learned that many people requesting service expansion in and around the Logan area indicated a desire for service to North Logan. Straw said the demand is still high. "By all accounts, citizens and elected officials in this proposed district are very much in favor of this expansion, and we anticipate strong support in the election," Straw said. In addition to serving the public's transportation needs, Straw said an expanded transit district would be beneficial to Cache Valley in numerous other ways, including environmental and safety issues. * * * * * * Each year, about 1 million passengers ride the LTD. "Our safety record exceeds national averages for similarly sized systems," Straw said. LTD buses have been involved in accidents over their years of service, but Straw said they have been few and relatively minor in seriousness. "We've been involved in accidents, of course," Straw said, but for a bus system traveling almost 500,000 miles a year, he said that is to be expected. Information wasn't available on specific numbers of accidents, but he said LTD has caused few accidents resulting in more than $250 of damage. "Most of (our) accidents are very minor fixed-object accidents," such as hitting street signs, parked cars or other buses in the LTD garage, he said. "The vast majority of our accidents are caused by other drivers hitting our buses." * * * * * * Cache Valley is growing. Plans are in the works to expand the Cache Valley Mall, new restaurants constantly pop up where no restaurant was before, and floods of new residents move in every year. Utah State University alone counts for around 20,000 seasonal residents. With all this growth comes economic improvement and richer diversity. But the growth also brings more traffic, more pollution and more safety concerns. "Transportation planners within and adjacent to the Logan Urbanized Area all agree that traffic congestion, as measured by total vehicle hours of delay, is getting worse as the population of the area grows, as we continue to suburbanize and as each household makes more trips using the private automobile," Straw said. He said public transportation helps with all these things. "There is a very strong link between transportation and air quality," Straw said. He said traffic congestion, traffic volumes, traveler behavior and environmental factors such as wind and temperature all impact the air. "Greenhouse gases produced by internal combustion engines are one of the largest contributors worldwide to poor air quality," he said. By getting more people out of their individual cars and into one transit vehicle, Straw said LTD and other public transportation systems reduce such pollution. "Obviously, with the high number of riders we carry we reduce traffic congestion," he said. "To what degree is hard to pinpoint exactly." Based on the fact that each day, about 5,000 people ride an LTD bus, Straw said he would speculate "conservatively" that LTD reduces traffic by 2,000 automobile trips a day. "However, without conducting an intensive origin/destination study, and until the 2000 U.S. Census data is received, we can only speculate," he said. According the web site for the American Public Transit Association, a non-profit organization of over 1,200 transit systems, product and service providers, academic institutions, departments of transportation and other transportation providers, transit vehicles contribute far less atmospheric pollution than automobiles do. But reducing traffic isn't the only way public transit reduces pollution. In fact, public transit helps the environment in many ways, the APTA web site says. "Transit vehicles used 768 million gallons of fossil fuels and 5.0 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 1997, which is less than 1% of all the energy consumed in this country," according to the Web site. That kind of environmental protection is important in Cache Valley for health reasons, but also for economic reasons, Straw said. If air quality in Logan got to be too bad, various kinds of federal funding would be in danger, he said. Logan has never exceeded the standards of the Clean Air Act, but "we have come close on a few occasions," Straw said. He said when a city or town exceeds these standards, it becomes what is known as a non-attainment area. Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo and Orem are all non-attainment areas. In a non-attainment area, "residents must abide by vehicle emissions testing requirements (and) burn/no-burn requirements, and public officials must abide by transportation demand management -- carpooling, transit, etc.-- and transportation system management requirements," he said. He said all transportation system projects would be required to model how the proposed improvement would impact air quality. "It's obvious the Logan Urbanized Area must do all it can to avoid becoming a non-attainment area because the testing, reporting and project implementation process becomes much more onerous," he said. "Most importantly, our quality of life is at stake if our air becomes dirty to breathe." In addition to the environmental impact, Straw said public transportation has an effect on traffic safety. According to the APTA Web site, a full 40-foot bus holds about 70 people including standees. At the estimated national average of 1.2 persons per automobile, one bus is equivalent to 58 automobiles. Fewer automobiles -- and less frustration caused by traffic congestion -- typically leads to fewer accidents, Straw said. "Almost half of all accidents occurring in Logan are on Main Street," Logan's most congested road, according to a 1998 incident report from the Logan Police Department. The top five causes of accidents, according to the report, were improper lookout, failure to yield on a left turn, improper turn, red-light violation and following too closely. Most of these are the result of impatient driving and frustration, the report said. In 1998, the LPD handled 2,065 accidents, including 1,729 that were "reportable," meaning they involved at least $1,000 of damage and/or an injury, according to the report. These accidents led to 219 injuries and one death. The report said most accidents occur between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., peak operating times for LTD. "Transit is one of the safest methods of passenger travel, according to the National Safety Council," the APTA web site says. According to the web site, the average death rate per 100 million passengers from 1994 to 1996 was 0.94 for automobiles and 0.02 for transit buses. In addition to reducing pollution, energy consumption and traffic congestion, the APTA web site says public transit encourages rational development, leads to greater retail sales, creates jobs and increases mobility, especially in times of crises. "After the 1989 San Francisco earthquake the entire city was paralyzed, but the (Bay Area Rapid Transit District) rail system resumed operations after a few hours to check for damage," the web site says. Service was then expanded to 24 hours per day since the bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland was closed for several weeks, the site says.
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Archived Months:
September
1998 |
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