New TRAX and bus routes are coming to SLC airport. Here’s when.

Rushing along the pavement with a suitcase in tow to make the last train home from Salt Lake City International Airport may someday be a problem of the past.

Just give it a few years.

Expanded TRAX light rail service is on the horizon with the Utah Transit Authority’s orange line, which will offer more frequent — and possibly later — service running from the airport to the University of Utah. The new route, however, is still years away.

Flyers need not fret, though. Nearly 24-hour bus service — connecting a wider portion of the Salt Lake Valley — may come on line much quicker.

“This is something that’s been desperately needed for years,” said Christopher Stout, co-founder of the Utah Transit Riders Union. “It’s a move in the right direction, but … we want more trains, more buses everywhere, all the time.”

What new transit options are coming soonest?

For now, the green line — which runs from West Valley City, through downtown Salt Lake City and then west through Fairpark — is UTA’s option for travel to and from the airport.

However, the earliest arrival the green line can provide is 5:21 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and 5:45 a.m. on Sundays, leaving early-shift airport employees and travelers out of luck.

The last train will get passengers to the airport at 11:21 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 10:45 p.m. on Sundays, leaving red-eye flyers reliant on costlier rideshare services. The train’s final departure toward West Valley City is scheduled for 11:26 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and 11:09 p.m. on Sundays.

When the orange line begins operation sometime before 2030, it could offer earlier and later airport service, said Alex Beim, UTA’s long-range planning director. The official schedule, however, has yet to be determined.

But that new train being years down the line doesn’t mean transit options at the airport couldn’t be expanded sooner. Nearly around-the-clock bus routes to the airport are outlined in UTA’s newly released 2025-2029 draft service plan.

UTA doesn’t currently offer bus service to the airport, but the plan proposes two west-side routes to change that.

A final draft of the plan to be released in August will offer more clarity on when those routes could start running, but generally, new bus lines can come on line sooner than trains because they are easier to plan.

Route 236 would begin at UTA’s West Valley Central Station, and would operate on the following schedule:

• On weekdays and Saturdays, Route 236 would run every 30 minutes from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and every hour between 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.

• On Sundays, the bus would run every hour from 1 a.m. to 12 a.m.

Route 256 would start from UTA’s Old Bingham Highway Station in West Jordan and would operate more frequently at some times during the day:

• On weekdays, the bus would run every 30 minutes from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., every 15 minutes from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and every 30 minutes from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.

• On Saturdays, the route would run every 30 minutes from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

• On Sundays, the bus would run every hour from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

These routes would be crucial for the nearly 15,000 employees that travel to the airport every day because many don’t live near the areas served by the TRAX green line but still depend on public transportation, according to Kevin Staples, airport sustainability coordinator.

Staples said adding that expanded service can “essentially change their lives” by giving them more flexibility to get to work.

When might UTA expand TRAX service at the airport?

Within the next few years, UTA plans to have two trains connecting Wasatch Front passengers to the airport.

The blue line, which currently runs from Draper to Salt Lake Central Station near The Gateway — with stops in Sandy, Midvale and Murray along the way — will have its last stop moved from Salt Lake Central to the airport, joining the orange line in serving jet-setters.

The blue and orange lines would share stops between downtown and the airport, and the red and orange lines would share stops between downtown and the University of Utah, Beim said.

“So you would effectively have improved frequency along both those lines,” Beim continued. “Instead of one train every 15 minutes, you’d have two trains every 15 minutes.”

With these changes, UTA’s green line would swap destinations with the blue line — with the green line no longer serving the airport, but having its last stop at Salt Lake Central Station, Beim noted.

The plans are part of UTA’s federally funded TechLink study and are not finalized, but the agency has included blue line and orange line service to the airport in each design option outlined in the study.

After a design concept for the routes is selected next month, the project will go through a federally required environmental analysis phase to determine environmental impacts. That phase will take at least a year, during which officials will determine service frequency on the new routes.

Project development would begin within the next year or two. Beim said in April that while the new routes were in the works no matter what, Salt Lake City hosting the 2034 Winter Olympics will “do a lot to accelerate the progress of this project.”

Salt Lake City Council member Victoria Petro — whose west-side district is home to the airport and one of the highest concentrations of airport workers in the city — can’t wait for the expanded service.

“I have some people who can’t take a job at the airport because they would be required to get there outside of hours for transit functions for them,” Petro said. “It’s really a stunting fact that we aren’t able to get people access to these jobs. And then it’s a stunting factor to the airport who needs a workforce ... I think the impact on workforce development and workforce opportunity is pretty amazing if we would expand this transit service.”