FrontRunner south opens for business

Today's schedule delays were a disaster. Morning train was 10 minutes late which threw off the Trax connections. Return train in the afternoon was half an hour late. I was frozen by the time it got to the Murray Central station. What good did all those months of testing do? Heck of a lot cheaper than driving, though. Hope they get their schedule problems fixed

It's difficult to get excited about spending nearly $900 million for this extension knowing the voters turned down the entire light-rail project a few years ago, albeit to no avail. And especially since the entire Bamberger Railroad running between Salt Lake and Ogden could have been purchased for just $2.5 million in the late 1950's. What great fun we had as young kids after WW II riding the Bamberger to Lagoon for a dime I think it cost a quarter to go all the way to Ogden. And if you needed to go further north, there was an extension you could take all the way to Preston, Idaho, while on a southern extension via the old CSL (California Short Line) you could go all the way to Payson, Utah. Here's a link to a summary explanation about the Bamberger with an interesting video you can click on. It's well worth watching if you're old enough to remember the Bamberger, and perhaps even if you're not: http://www.american-rails.com/bamberger-railroad.html There were also the electric trolley's that ran downtown in conjunction with the Salt Lake City Lines buses; hence the Trolley Square Mall today, which then housed their garages. But the UTA would serve as "the nose of the camel in the tent" after their demise. And all this we term "progress." I also remember that the voters were overruled after refusing to have light-rail shoved down their throats mainly because the LDS Church already had its plans to construct "the large and spacious building" (conference center; that their own Book of Mormon repeatedly warns about). But without the light rail system's numerous parking lots to add to the cumulative total, there wouldn't have been enough parking to accommodate its 25,000-plus seating capacity, so the prevailing politics simply kicked the majority voters to the curb and blessed them with it anyway. And once all that had been accomplished, why not build a multi-billion dollar mall and call it the City Creek Center? But some just call it "the Jesus Mall."

Same story for me. I have not found one person since this was announced months ago (outside of UTA employees/representatives) who has found that FrontRunner has added any value. I hope to see the positive side to it soon. UTA Please bring back some of the express bus routes. My plans are to use FrontRunner through December when my monthly pass expires and in January plan to spend money on a carpool lane sticker or friends to ride to work with - the UTA extra commute time and all the connections is just not worth it. I don't live back east in a big city for a reason.

Well said. I added 30 minutes of commute time each way. I caught the 6:51 train and I was still late for work downtown SLC. Not a happy commuter.

FrontRunner Frustration!! Up until today I have been able to catch a northbound UTA ExpressBus at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi at approximately 6:40am, it would make no stops until it arrived in downtown SLC and I was walking into my office at 7:20am for a total of 40 minutes riding UTA. Today I caught the 6:51am FrontRunner going through Thanksgiving Point and it had to stop at Draper, South Jordan, and Murray before finally arriving at Salt Lake Central where Trax was there waiting, but didn’t leave until about 10 minutes later, and I finally walked into my office at 7:55am for a total of 64 minutes riding UTA. My commute has gone from 40 minutes from the time I got on the bus until I walked into my office, to 64 minutes from the time I get on FrontRunner until I walk into my office. That’s an extra 24 minutes ONE WAY! That’s a total of over 4 extra hours a week of commute time! I lived in Layton and was riding the 473 UTA ExpressBus to downtown SLC when Frontrunner first opened up there 4 or 5 years ago. The difference up there was that UTA kept the ExpressBuses running. They didn’t discontinue them in Davis County as they have done in Utah County and many of us continued to ride the ExpressBus most of the time after trying out FrontRunner. I know UTA wants to force folks to use their hugely expensive shiny toy, but I believe they have seriously miscalculated people’s tolerance for a substantially longer commute time. If you read the comments to your story (and I’m guessing similar comments will have been added to similar stories on other web sites) you will see I am not alone. PLEASE, let our voices be heard as follow-up reporting is done via television, radio, and internet today and throughout the week!