Don't Miss This Bus

Don't miss the train either, for that matter. Salt Lake and Utah Counties have some very important questions on the ballot this year involving increasing taxes to pay for corridor preservation, expanding TRAX, and getting commuter rail from Payson to downtown Salt Lake. We're in quite the transportation crunch right now and the state is failing to take any kind of real leadership on the issue, so I think we need to bite the bullet and vote for these taxes in both counties.

Utah is facing a projected $16.5B shortfall in transportation funding between now and 2030. With our current population, that works out to around $320 per Utahn per year until that point. This sales tax increase is projected to bring in about $900M in Salt Lake County, or around $1,000 per county resident. This sounds like a lot more than is necessary, but the quick infusion of cash now will save us a lot of money later.

Right now, the land for the Mountain View Corridor highway is relatively empty. Buying it now before the land is developed and the right-of-way becomes more expensive will save hundreds of millions of dollars. We're also leveraging today's price of concrete, a commodity that has seen rapid price increases in the last decade as China sucks up more of the foreign supply we used to depend on. Oil prices are also driving asphalt and construction costs higher, so building now makes more sense than building later.

It seems really expensive to shell out $1,000 now for new roads, but it will save us tens of thousands of dollars in direct costs, travel times, and economic growth by acting sooner rather than later. Join me in supporting the effort to pass Question 3 in Salt Lake County and the Opinion Question in Utah County. Sign up with the official website supporting the measures today. I'm already hankering for my yard sign.