The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with West View Media and KUER.

It’s about 6:30 on an August morning and Marlene Ross has just walked up to her bus stop on Salt Lake City’s Westside at the intersection of 600 North and 1400 West. The sun has just come up and Ross is waiting to catch a ride to work. She’s 69-years-old and at about five feet tall, a small woman with a very big smile that she puts to good use as a greeter at the downtown Walmart.

She’s been taking the 205 bus here for the past year and says she would welcome a bench to sit on while she waits, prompting the question: Why aren’t there more bus benches on Salt Lake’s Westside?

“Like me, I’m old and sometimes the buses are late and you’re standing here, especially in the wintertime, you know it’s hard to stand in the snow,” she says. “We should have benches.”

She was surprised to learn that the Utah Transit Authority had promised the Rose Park Community Council in January to install 30 benches on the Westside, including at Ross’ stop.

“They put benches over by Smith's, why not here?” she asks. “We need some new benches.”

The Utah Investigative Journalism Project examined Westside bus stops and found UTA had only installed nine of the 30 benches promised. Overall, they found most bus stops on major routes in the city lacked benches.

The Utah Investigative Journalism Project physically inspected 434 stops on major routes in Salt Lake City, as well as two of the largest routes running south through Salt Lake County. Of the 434 stops, less than a third (31%) had benches. Five percent had microbenches known as “Simme-Seats” that are installed into bus stop signs and allow one or two people to sit down, but without a backrest. There were shelters at 22% of the stops and trash cans at 29%.

UTA spokesman Gavin Gustafson says picking which bus stops get benches and shelters is not an easy task. UTA employs a Master Plan and follows a special decision matrix to know what stops should get what amenities. He says it’s a fair and rigorous system, but ultimately it does come down to money.

He says that “if the question is, why doesn’t every stop have a bench?” then the simple answer is that “it’s expensive.”

But he says the answer to why a major route running from west to east has more benches and shelters on the east side is more complicated.

“A double-edged sword”

The Utah Investigative Journalism Project limited its analysis to routes that were only contained within Salt Lake City – 1, 9, 551 and F11 – and two of the busiest routes – 200 and 217 – departing from Salt Lake City south through most of Salt Lake County.

The north/south routes had the most in total average monthly boardings for 2023 with route 217 having 72,736 and route 200 having 66,302.

The lowest average boardings last year was on route F11 that runs primarily in the Avenues; it had 927 boardings. Route 551, which heads west from North Temple and out to the International Center west of the airport, had 3,475 average boardings for 2023.

Route 1 runs west to east and had 44,079 boardings last year; the other west/east route – 9 – had 35,910 boardings in 2023.

The stops on those routes were primarily based on the city and county’s west side, either heading south and north on State Street or on streets west of it.

But route 1, which starts on Redwood Road and moves through Rose Park before heading east up to the University of Utah Hospital, is almost like a tale of two cities.

On the western part of the route, 71% of the stops lack benches or shelters. But on the east side of the same route only 39% of the stops lack these amenities. One of the Westside stops appears to have a homemade bench from wooden logs set up where UTA had not yet placed a bench. At one stop along 900 West someone had set a cinder block as an impromptu stool. But climbing east up toward the U, multiple stops feature clean, gleaming shelters and benches.

Bryan Hope works in patient transport at the University of Utah hospital and catches the bus on route 1 along 1000 North. He says a shelter would come in handy for him and others heading up to work.

“Not too long ago it was raining, it was pouring and I didn’t check the weather before I came out and it was a nice six or seven minutes that I was out here getting drenched,” Hope says.

Not all routes are as unequal. For example, route 9 has a more equal mix of benches on the western and eastern sides of the route. The F11 route focused on the Avenues also has few benches.

UTA’s Gustafson says route 1 was modified in the last couple years and UTA is now evaluating what amenity upgrades are needed.

He also notes that with thousands of bus stops the costs are not inconsequential, especially when one factors in ongoing maintenance.

UTA’s Bus Stop Master Plan, for example, shows the cost of a brand-new stop can range from $6,181 to more than $50,000, depending on infrastructure. Most bus stops would fall in the $6,000-$18,000 range.

Overall, Gustafson says that by federal law one neighborhood could not be favored by another. Instead, UTA has to weigh key objective factors.

He notes UTA’s decision matrix prioritizes benches, shelters, and other amenities based on factors such as wait times and average daily boardings. If the average wait time at a stop is longer than 15 minutes then benches will be prioritized. It also comes down to if a stop gets more than 10 average boardings a day, in which case it should receive a bench and a trash can.

Another factor can trump even these considerations: whether a stop is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires the stop to have a concrete pad and easy access for a wheelchair.

“Anything that is not yet ADA compliant, that’s going to go to the top of the priority list,” Gustafson says.

Councilwoman Victoria Petro represents Salt Lake City’s District 1 west of I-15 and north of I-80. She does believe there should be more benches and shelters in her area but also worries about homeless individuals taking advantage of the benches and shelters.

“Everything on the Westside is a double-edged sword, right?” Petro says. “It’s a resource that we need and one that could be misused. Should we implement it because of the other vulnerabilities our community faces?”

Ultimately, she believes the pros outweigh the cons.

“Every time I’m driving down 1000 North there’s a mom there with her two kids and a stroller. Like, she deserves a little shade while she’s waiting,” Petro says.

“I refuse to believe that the Westside deserves anything less than what can be done for them.”

Gustafson says that UTA recognizes this and notes that another factor influencing where benches go is dependent on people speaking up. He says UTA’s customer service department is responsive to citizen concerns and will prioritize upgrades when a community demands them – even if the stop isn’t prioritized under the decision matrix.

“Absolutely, that does happen and that’s in large part what the customer service department is for,” Gustafson says.

While it does happen, however, it doesn’t always happen very fast.

“…that list is long”

UTA provided The Utah Investigative Journalism Project an email sent on Jan. 4, 2024, from the customer service department to the Rose Park Community Council as an example of Westside stops receiving improvements.

The email notified the council about plans for installing 30 benches, along with other amenities like shelters and trash cans.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have an exact timeline for this, but we are hoping they’ll arrive within the next couple of months,” UTA wrote in the email.

Seven months later, only nine of the benches promised had been installed and only six of the stops were provided with all of the amenities outlined in the email. Gustafson says UTA is still planning on doing the upgrades.

“The simple answer is that all of these stops are high on our to-do list, but that list is long,” Gustafson wrote in an email.

UTA was also asked about the priority of ADA projects given that UTA announced upgrades to 24 bus stops in the Avenues neighborhood between May and August. Gustafson says that the majority of those upgrades were for ADA compliance. But route 551 on the Westside has 19 bus stops in the International Center and only one stop, located outside the Amazon Fulfillment center, appears to be ADA-compliant. The other stops lacked not only benches and shelters but also concrete pads for wheelchair service.

Gustafson says even the ADA upgrades needed – like those on route 551 – can be disrupted by more pressing safety needs.

“Overall safety is always the highest priority,” Gustafson says. “So, if a TRAX rail is damaged, for example, the construction team could be pulled away from a bus stop project.”

Kevin Parke has been the chair of the Rose Park Community Council for the past seven years and says getting more benches and shelters is like getting any resources for the Westside – a struggle.

“It feels like you have to fight a little harder on the Westside for things,” says Parke.

Parke commutes to Sugar House and has also noticed the disparity in bus stops along the way.

“As I was coming home Saturday night I noticed a man who was probably in his late 50s, early 60s, just sitting on the cement because there were no benches,” Parke said. He says in recent years he’s seen a few added in Rose Park including the tiny Simme-Seats.

“But by and large, we don’t have a lot of benches and some of the benches we do have, as a member of our community pointed out, have dividers on them so that if someone is on the heavier side they may not fit on the bench.”

Parke says what’s an inconvenience for some can be a hardship for others, including the elderly and those with disabilities.

“We have worse health outcomes on the Westside than anywhere else in the city and less access to health care, so it’s a struggle for people to not be able to just sit and wait for the bus.”

He says UTA has made progress in recent years and he’s glad more bus routes have been added to the Westside, but he’s still frustrated by the slow pace of UTA’s upgrades in his neighborhood.

“The Westside gets a bad rap, and this is my soapbox,” Parke says.

“It’s a tight-knit community. There’s lots of diversity and lots of just amazing people, and I think we’re overlooked a lot with … the amenities that other areas have. I think there’s a perception that there’s a super-high crime rate and that we just don’t take care of the things that we’re given and that’s just not the case.”

“We have our problems like everyone else, homeless issues, crime, but it’s a good place to live and we deserve to be treated with respect, just like every other community.”