The Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Utah Transit Authority says ridership on its light-rail system is down this year compared with last year.

The Utah Transit Authority says the decrease is a result of glitches with a new passenger counting system, downtown construction and greater public acceptance of high gas prices.

In the first five months of 2007, an average of about 1 million people rode TRAX each month. That's a 17.5 percent decrease over 2006, when an average of 1.28 million people rode on TRAX each month.

But ridership in 2007 is still higher than it was in 2005, when an average of 954,197 people rode TRAX during the first five months that year. That's an increase of about 11 percent in two years.

UTA critics such as Michael Packard and Drew Chamberlain -- who are part of a lobbying group called Coalition for Accountable Government -- say the results from UTA's new passenger counting system are proof that the agency has lied about ridership numbers over the years.

"The ridership didn't drop," said Chamberlain. "They just simply got caught cheating, and now they have to count in a more correct fashion."

But UTA defends its ridership numbers. In the past, UTA would manually count riders on randomly picked trains throughout the day. A formula was then used to determine a ridership number for the month.

The new counting system was installed on some trains in February that uses heat sensors to detect bodies going on and off the train. Saley said the heat-sensor system didn't count riders on trains that were added last-minute during rush hour, or for special events such as a Utah Jazz game.

The UTA plans to analyze its past train schedules and try to determine what cars were not counted for ridership amounts.

UTA spokesman Chad Saley doesn't believe ridership would be greater than last year with the additional counts because many businesses downtown have closed.

"There are less people going to downtown Salt Lake City," he said.

Saley said that last year was a shock for people when they saw gas prices above $3 a gallon. This year, people are accustomed to those prices and more willing to drive their own vehicles instead of taking public transportation, he said.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D3.