There's not much Emerald City news to report about this morning. Believe us... we've looked. Nevertheless we did find one Weber County Forum-topical item over on the Standard-Examiner website this morning which we believe ought to spark some reader discussion.
Everyone remembers The UTA open houses which were held last spring, where Emerald City citizens were invited to examine preliminary UTA studies and documents , and then to chime in with their own opinions regarding the best streetcar alignments for a new public transportation corridor. We believed these meetings to have been sufficiently important that we published a record-length series of dunning reminders. And as regular readers will recall, Emerald City citizens enthusiastically responded -- these public sessions were well-attended -- and the citizens of Emerald City did dutifully chime in. And according to our unimpeachable sources, a 25th/25th street east-west alignment was the citizens' overwhelming choice.
Word on the street however is that a 36th street corridor is the Utah transportation bureaucrats' preferred route; and everyone already knows that's also Boss Godfrey's top choice.Well... we caught a disturbing Standard-Examiner letter to the editor this morning, wherein Ogden resident James Wilson offers up his prognostication on what the UTA will do with the data which we so diligently submitted. Mr. Wilson's opening paragraph sets the tone:
After meeting with citizens of Ogden and Weber County in two public open houses earlier this year, to gain feedback on possible streetcar alignments for a new public transportation corridor, our public representatives have rolled up the maps, folded up the comments, and apparently thrown them in the trash. These agencies are on auto-pilot, working against all rational arguments for a 25th street streetcar, and are instead pushing their own 36th street alignment.We're linking the rest of Mr. Wilson's letter here, for those readers who are now sufficiently steamed as to desire to read on:
• Many want a 25th Street streetcarWe don't know whether Mr. Wilson is hooked up with the UTA/UDOT or whether he's privy to any insider information; but his prediction does have a ring of truth to our admittedly jaded ear. What Mr. Wilson is predicting smells like classic bureaucratic behavior to us, where our public servants so often technically fulfill formal public notice requirements, and then proceed to do whatever the hell they want.
Just for good measure, we'll provide the same UTA email link that we earlier published during the springtime public input period:
• lscanlon@rideuta.comWhat the heck... perhaps a few scathing citizen emails might help. Under the circumstances we doubt it could hurt.
Please feel free to chime in here, gentle readers, with any other suggestions which you might provide to get planning for a reasonable streetcar route back on track.
That's it for now; we'll stand back and await your ever-savvy comments.
