Std-Ex: Public Comments Invited on Proposed Ogden City Streetcar Routes

UTA Public open houses calendered for March 24 and 26

We'll direct our readers' attention to an important story in this morning's Standard-Examiner, which will be of interest to those of you who are closely following developments with respect to Ogden's pending street car study project. This morning's story reports that the Utah Transit Authority will be seeking public input on three possible cross town routes, in which connection it will host the following public open houses:

• March 24, 2009 - 4 to 7 p.m. - Ogden Eccles Conference Center
• March 26, 2009 - 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. - WSU Student Union Building

As we've discussed before, each of the three proposed routes would connect Ogden's downtown Utah Intermodal Hub with WSU and Dee-Mckay Hospital, and each will feature east-west connectors between Washington and Harrision Boulevards. The first of these, which would use 26th street for its east-west leg, was also identified the the preferred alternative in the 2005 Baker Study, the only rigorous study which has ever been done (at considerable taxpayer expense) to examine possible transit corridors. The latter two, which would follow routes along 30th and 36th Street, are routes which Boss Godfrey apparently pulled (at no taxpayer expense) out of his ever-visionary... umm... hat.

Mark your calenders folks, and please plan to attend at least one of these events if you can.

Reader comments about the relative merits and disadvantages of each of these proposed routes are invited in our lower comments section, of course.