By Joe Belnap
The city of Provo held an open house on October 13th at Wasatch Elementary School, not far from where a new proposed bus stop could be built.
The community came out to leave their comments. Provo engineer Rob Hunter attended the open house to collect feedback from the public.
“The consensus so far that’s been given to me is that people are for it, people are excited about it,” he said.
“It’s convenient to BYU, it’s convenient to me and other neighbors because this is our neighborhood,” said Carlee Guenther Dynes who lives near the proposed bus stop.
Back in 2016, residents opposed this location.
“They’re concerned about having the elementary school be secure when you have people coming and going at a bus stop,” said Mary De La Mare-Schaefer, Regional Manager of Utah Transit Authority.
Dynes wasn’t living in that area when that decision was made, but she thinks the neighborhood has changed since then.
“Some things that I think I have heard people say there’d be a lot of traffic or people coming into the neighborhood that mostly I just think it was people who were racist or scared of poor people or homeless people. I don’t know. I just think most of their concerns are things I’m not worried about,” Dynes said.
UVX busses come every ten minutes, “so you tend to not have people lingering at those stations,” said Mare-Schaefer.
Besides being convenient, UVX believes that another bus stop could increase ridership.
“More people that we can get on transit, the less air pollution, the less cars on the road,” said Mare-Schaefer.
“I care a lot about air quality and I think UVX is a good way to deal with that,” said Dynes, “but mostly I just think it’s good policy.”
Others who live in the neighborhood feel there are already enough stops around BYU campus and that college students are used to walking. “Sometimes walking is an option but sometimes it makes your life difficult,” said Mare-Schaefer.
“There’s just a big gap between kind of going down by the J Dawg or all the way up around by the MTC,” said Dynes. “That’s just a pretty long stretch.”
The exact location of the bus stop is not set.
If you missed the open house, there is another one on October 20th at the Provo Rec Center. Also you can fill out a survey here.
