Johnny Morris, Special to the Daily Herald

As the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed, Utah Transit Authority buses have gone faster and further, even more than before the pandemic. There has been a 25% increase in ridership each fall.

“We had a full return from COVID last fall,” said Mary DeLaMare-Schaefer, regional general manager in Utah County for UTA. “We have an extraordinary bus system.”

According to a study conducted by HireAHelper, the Provo-Orem area has the best public transit area for mid-size cities in the United States.

To determine the locations with the best public transportation, researchers ranked metros according to a composite score based on the following factors and weights. Provo-Orem ranked over 92% with the next closest at just over 84%. The criteria factors include:

• Annual public transit trips per resident (25%).
• Share of workers who commute by public transit (20%).
• Average commute time difference, public transit versus private (15%).
• Share of passenger miles traveled using electric power (15%).
• Mechanical failures (breakdowns) per passenger mile (10%).
• Share of stations that are ADA accessible (10%).
• Safety and security incidents per passenger mile (5%).

As for some of the other criteria, like mechanical breakdowns, DeLaMare-Schaefer said UTA keeps a mechanic in the field at all times so they don’t have to transport the bus back to the garage. UVX buses are hybrid, using both electricity and gas, cutting down on emissions and increasing the share of passenger miles traveled using electric power.

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald file photo

“UVX is half our ridership with more riders than the next three most used buses combined,” DeLaMare-Scheafer said. “Our recovery has been strong in Utah County.”

According to data from 2022 made available in the UTA Data Portal, the Bus/Timpanogos Service Unit had 3,323,929 boardings, FrontRunner in Utah County had 1,071,689 boardings and United Way/Paratransit recorded 37,523 users.

Construction on Provo’s 900 East stations will also begin in spring of 2024. UTA models show an expected 16% increase in UVX ridership by adding those two stations on opposite sides of the street, just north of the new music building at Brigham Young University.

In an effort to increase ridership across the state, UTA in 2022 eliminated costs for all public transit, called Free Fare February. UTA saw significant increases in ridership for the month, particularly on Saturdays with a 58.5% boost. In 2023, the agency provided 10 days of free service rather than the whole month, overlapping with increased traffic for the NBA All-Star Game.

The Provo-Orem area isn’t the only in Utah to appear in the ranking, Salt Lake City came in No. 9 for large metro areas using the same criteria.

The study notes that as businesses shuttered their doors and workers stopped commuting into the office, public transit ridership in many places dropped to as low as 10% of pre-pandemic levels. Now that the national emergency is coming to an end, public transportation is rebounding.

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