As for financing, I think that rail should pay for itself as much as roads – that might demand a fare increase. The key is that it should not be required to pay more than roads – if we fund road building through taxes then we should fund rail-building. For both roads and rails, operational costs should be paid for by use rather than taxes.

As to the success or failure of light rail in Utah. I don’t think that its measure of success is how many cram into the rails, but how many get off the roads.

That still isn’t happening.

Besides, even operating at full capacity, rail cannot pay for itself. If it did we wouldn’t be taxed for its use.

As for the issue of toll roads – I’m in favor of those too. I used to live in Missouri and I think that the toll roads that I drove on were totally worth the cost of tolls. The problem I see in Utah is that most of us think tolling would be expensive or awkward because we are unfamiliar with it.

My perspective is that we should simply pay for the transit that we use. That can work with roads, but I don’t think demand for bus and rail is high enough to make it work in that arena.

I’ve never seen a toll road in Utah (I think there are a couple–Ogden?) but I think there should be. They’re all over the midwest and east, and they work very well. If it takes raising the gas tax to obviate having to use non-related tax dollars for roads, then perhaps that’s another solution.

I wonder if there is a way to fund the transit such that private corporations run the system and buy and maintain the vehicles while government buys and maintains the corridor and the rails – more like roads. I don’t know how anyone would feel about that but it seems like a reasonable compromise.

Let individuals pay for their cars– pay the extra sales tax for the purchase and leave the corridor for the government.

I’m not alone in this. Michael Medved, a popular radio talk show host, and movie critic agrees.