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| Braving the Elements: Tracy Marafiote gets the attendtion of Salt Lake City drivers at a pro-light rail "honk-and-wave" event. |
After campaigning for TRAX, Salt Lake City resident Marafiote has taken
advantage of its benefits. As a doctoral student who lived near the University
of Utah and taught in another campus south of town, she was able to catch
one train, transfer to another, and ride to within a few blocks of her classroom. "It
was just a wonderful commute," she says. "I could prep for
my class and grade papers. It took about 15 minutes longer than driving,
but was a
much more enjoyable trip. The Wasatch Mountains are right out the window
for most
of the ride."
The great majority of Salt Lake City commuters implicitly concur with
Marafiote’s
assessment. In 1999, when TRAX’s first line opened, transit authorities
expected 13,000 riders—40,000 showed up. The current average daily ridership
of 20,000, though below the first day’s flood levels, is still 40 percent
higher than projected. And as organizer Heileson likes to point out, "Forty
percent of TRAX ridership is new to public transit. That means a lot
of cars off the road."
Fewer cars means less smog, less asthma and other respiratory problems,
and less greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. The suburban
sprawl generated
by a behind-the-wheel lifestyle also gobbles up precious remaining wild
places.
But despite its social and environmental advantages, light rail was hardly
viewed as an attractive transit alternative by locals prior to its arrival.
Before braving
the snow and winning in 2000, the Sierra Club had supported another sales-tax
hike to fund transit, but been beaten soundly. Only after experiencing
the ease and efficiency of TRAX were residents willing to support further
growth.
Glen Brand, the Sierra Club’s Midwest regional representative,
hopes that Cincinnati, like Salt Lake City, will warm to public transportation
and make
good on its recent commitments to include light-rail in future transportation
solutions. Cincinnati firmly rejected a first measure to use a sales
tax
increase for rail funding. The vote left Brand dejected, but not despondent.
This year,
Brand got involved in a three-state transportation committee assigned
to figure out how to ease the gridlock on I-75 north of the city.
The group’s goal was to climb from a federal traffic rating of
F, the lowest, to D, one notch up the scale. In order to do that, they
looked at
two main alternatives.
The first expanded the highway from 6 lanes to 12, while paving over
adjacent communities and open spaces.
The other alternative was the addition of an extra lane in key areas
along with light rail. The committee voted to for the latter plan, 27
to 1.
Despite near-unanimous support, Brand and other committee members acknowledged
that the construction of the light-rail line is by no means assured,
because funding sources are uncertain.
" Highways appear to be free to locals, while public transit appears expensive," remarks
Brand. Currently, Congress pays 80 percent of construction fees for both
highway and transit projects. But the waiting list to receive federal money
for transit
is approximately 20 years long, which routinely forces transit supporters
to raise funds locally through sales tax increases or other measures. Meanwhile,
state gas taxes that are already in place often pay for the local portion
of
highway projects.
Brand is confident that ultimately, more robust public transit systems
will take shape in American cities, but he’s hoping that the time comes sooner rather
than later. "People are feeling what I call the ‘highway hangover,’" he
says. "They’re waking up from spending billions of dollars on pointless
sprawl, and saying, ‘What have we done?’"
Congress has the chance to cure the country from its hangover by passing
a TEA-3 bill that allocates the money to public transit that it deserves.
— brian.vanneman@sierraclub.org
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