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Show Local public transportation is out of the dark ages What accolades for the bus system? A couple of years ago that would have been the furthest thing from our minds. Yet this winter, the ChamberBureau tells us, Park City Transit received more compliments than anything else in town. If you arrived in Park City within the last two years or so, you may take the town's bus system for granted. But those who lived through the dark ages of Mountain Metro particularly par-ticularly those who had no other means of transportationcan transpor-tationcan tell you how far we've come. Until about 1982, Park City's public transportation was composed of a collection of battered old things that looked like overgrown delivery vans. If we remember correctly they were bought used very used from a city in California. Califor-nia. Was it San Diego? Anyway, they were already decrepit when they got here, and exposure to the elements in Park City made them terminal ter-minal cases. They were constantly breaking down. Many a tourist had to stand shivering in the cold for a bus that was two blocks away, being hooked to the back of a tow truck. When a bus finally came, the chances are the heater didn't work. Then, if you were a tourist, the city had the gall to ask you for a quarter for the prvilege of riding such a fine vehicle. One by one the vehicles were cannibalized for spare parts. The carcasses started appearing at the city dump. Then, early in 1982, the City Council came up with a way to pump some money into the system: by jacking up the business license fees. There were some squeals of protest, but most of the merchants understood the city's rationale: those who benefit from improved service should help pay for it. . Then the city discovered that there was federal money to support rural bus systems. Since not too many other rural communities in Utah have bus systems, Park City was in for a windfall. The rest is history. The city bought six new buses, then picked up another six at bargain-basement prices after the Exxon oil shale project folded in Colorado. Plans were announced an-nounced for a garage to house the new vehicles. The estimated cost of the 12 buses and the garage: $1 million. Of that, Uncle Sam is paying 80 percent. A substantial substan-tial portion of the remaining $200,000 is being paid by business license fees. Running the Park City Transit system is an ex-bus driver, Kae Draper, who at first had to be convinced that she was capable enough. Now she has convinced just about everybody even herself. The credit for this dazzling turnaround must go in part to the businesses who agreed to come up with the dollars, and to City Manager Arlene Loble for getting help from Uncle Sam (although she admits that it wasn't exactly brilliant grantsmanship). But there is a cloud on the horizon. We now have competition com-petition for the federal funds from cities like Cedar City and St. George. The next time we need to buy new buses we may be footing the entire bill. And new buses run about $100,000 each. It would make sense for the City Council, when it is setting set-ting its budget priorities, to consider putting a few dollars aside for that purpose. Otherwise, we may end up looking for more buses in San Diego. -DH |