Letter: UTA planning not worth the money

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Once again, UTA has proven that $250,000 they spend annually on their director of planning is a waste as, once again, the Utah Train Authority does the wrong thing to fix a problem they, themselves, created.

The south-bound FrontRunner arrived at the North Temple Bridge station just as the Green Line to the airport left the station, so those who transferred between trains had to wait 14 minutes for the next train. The north-bound FrontRunner arrived just before the Green Line trains; therefore, they had a convenient transfer. But, to fix the south-bound train problem, did UTA adjust the schedule of the south-bound FrontRunner? No, of course not! Instead, they adjusted the schedule of the Green Line trains. Now, it is not the south-bound passengers who watch their transfer leave the station; it's the north-bound passengers.

It appears that the business plan for the Planning Department of the Utah Train Authority is, "Never solve one problem without creating an equal problem we can solve in the future." This guarantees that We, the People, will always need to give the chief planner that $30,000 bonus for fixing the scheduling problems, regardless of who actually created those problems.

Dave McNeill

South Jordan