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A bill that once sought to reform how the Utah Transit Authority is governed motored past its next-to-last stop toward passage on Wednesday with a lighter load.
SB174 moves to the full House as primarily a mandate for studies of UTA governance, funding and transit-oriented developments.
Jettisoned from it were reforms to reduce the size of the UTA board and revamp how members are appointed — including Senate confirmation. Also dropped were restrictions against the agency entering into partnership for more transit-oriented developments.
The House Transportation Committee voted 6-0 to pass the rewritten SB174, and sent it to the full House for consideration. It earlier passed the Senate 27-0.
Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, the bill's sponsor, said changes were made to allow more focus on another provision it contained to create a state task force to study how to coordinate future funding — and possible tax hikes — for transit, highways, airports and other transportation projects.
It also will look at how transportation agencies should best be governed.
The bill still includes some minor tweaking of UTA, including requiring that its citizens advisory board include at least some riders who use its bus and train services.
It also requires UTA to do a cost-benefit analysis on transit-oriented developments — and make them public .
In such developments, UTA usually uses excess land at rail stations to partner with developers for projects designed to increase transit ridership. But audits have criticized sweetheart deals for some developers, including building large garages for their projects that sat mostly empty for years because of developer delays.
Testifying in support of the rewritten bill were the UTA, the Salt Lake Chamber and the Wasatch Front Regional Council, which performs long-range transportation planning.