When Carlos Forcadilla arrived at his routine UTA bus stop on 6th Avenue on Thursday morning to catch a ride to the U, he noticed a bright yellow sign posted at the stop with the words “BUS STOP ELIMINATED.”
Like many Utah Transit Authority passengers, Forcadilla will have to alter his daily transportation practices to match changes following the UTA bus-route redesign that will be implemented this weekend.
Starting Sunday, all existing UTA bus routes will be renumbered and some stops downtown will be eliminated to expand bus access to suburban communities and provide more frequent access to areas with higher ridership. New routes to and from the U will extend throughout the valley, as well as to Ogden, Orem and Farmington.
In the new system, 12 routes in the Salt Lake area will operate every 15 minutes, mirroring the TRAX schedule. Buses to and from suburban areas and in between cities will operate on 30-minute intervals and provide night and weekend service.
The previous night-routing system will be eliminated. Instead, buses will operate on the same routes and route numbers as they do during the day. More “fast bus” routes will bring passengers from the suburbs to downtown or the U. Bus services — including express buses — to Utah, Weber and South Davis counties will not change.
UTA said nearly 70 percent of its redesign program has been tailored to the responses of almost 3,000 residents in Salt Lake and Davis counties, but the question remains — will the change be a positive one?
U Director of Commuter Services Alma Allred said only time will tell.
“I think we need to wait to see when it’s implemented,” Allred said. “Right now there are a lot of vacant parking places (at the U). If that’s going down next week after the redesign, we’ll see that more students are moving to their cars.”
UTA spokesman Chad Saley said the redesign will provide more ways for students to get around the Salt Lake Valley and to the U, although the change will shuffle routes and shift stops.
To minimize confusion, a yellow sign has been posted at every bus stop listing the previous route number as well as the new route number that comes to that stop. Where stops have been eliminated, similar yellow signs have been placed saying that as of Aug. 26, the stop is no longer in service. UTA started putting these signs up in May at the nearly 7,000 bus stops around the county.
Because ridership is low on Sunday, Saley said the real transition will most likely occur Monday when commuters are heading back to work and school. Hundreds of UTA employees will man bus routes to direct passengers.
UTA has encouraged passengers to learn about the changes online and through printed schedules. At the UTA website, www.rideuta.com, commuters can find their new route by typing in their starting and ending addresses in the “trip planner.”
“We hope there are as few surprises as possible on Monday,” Saley said.
But to Forcadilla, a junior in sociology and Middle Eastern studies, the bus changes were a surprise.
“I saw the yellow sign saying my stop was eliminated, and I was like, this sucks — now I have to walk a little further, a couple of blocks,” said Forcadilla, who uses the bus system almost daily to travel to the U, TRAX stations and downtown.
After widespread public opposition was expressed toward the plan last spring, UTA made concessions to its original redesign, adding $1.5 million to the plan and changing 55 out of the 80 routes proposed. Nine routes not on the original plan were also added.
“We know we can’t appease everyone,” Saley said. “We know it may not be as convenient, but we want to make it better for more people.”