With another Olympics on Utah’s horizon, officials say they’re fast-tracking plans to expand light rail lines and stations in downtown Salt Lake City and into growing neighborhoods such as Ballpark and the Granary District.
The Utah Transit Authority is already honing a preferred vision for around $400 million in new mass transit connections across the capital city such as extending and realigning its Red, Blue and Green lines and adding a fresh Orange route linking Salt Lake City International Airport with the University of Utah’s Research Park.
The UTA plan now coming into focus would add miles of new tracks and up to nine stations across the city, including stops at Pioneer Park and West Temple along 400 South, three along 400 West and three more on the U. campus.
(The Salt Lake Tribune)
Those would be part of a series of rail extensions, spurs and cross-links referred to as TechLink that builds on prior UTA plans, the agency’s planners say, and promises to improve overall TRAX service and reliability while meeting growing demand in areas that have added population and development.
Public funding and construction of this TRAX future might be as far out as 2029, but the intervening marathon of government review and approval to get there has started.
The latest UTA blueprint amounts to the best glimpse yet for what might actually be built come the Winter Games in 2034.
“That is definitely speeding this up for us,” said Patty Garver, UTA’s manager of environmental compliance and sustainability.
Input is welcome, and UTA has a website explaining the plans and process at http://www.techlinkstudy.com.
What’s in the preferred plan?
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Along with Salt Lake City, the U. and other key planning partners, UTA has gathered loads of public comment and vetting since September 2023, yielding what is now its preferred alternative for TRAX expansion. The agency gave a receptive Salt Lake City Council its latest look this week.
The favored alternative, by the way, is also the least expensive, at an estimated $390 million compared to similar versions projected to cost $570 million or more.
If the lead-up to the 2002 Olympics is any guide, big cash for new TRAX is likely to come primarily from Congress and the federal U.S. Department of Transportation.
The preferred plan, according to UTA, has three major pieces:
• A new Orange Line running mostly on already built tracks to tie the U.’s Research Park on Arapeen Drive to the airport with dedicated service threading through the 400 South corridor, largely alongside the existing Red Line.
Under that scenario, new stations would go in near Rice-Eccles Stadium, as well as along Mario Capecchi Drive and near Research Park. While significantly shortening travel times from the state’s flagship university to its newly expanded airport, Garver said the Orange Line is also intended to boost light rail capacity and frequency along 400 South, where ridership is already high.
• The popular Red Line would stretch westward along 400 South to 400 West, jog south along 400 West to 800 South, then extend east on a spur to 300 West and connect with the Blue and Green lines at the Ballpark Station near 1300 South.
That loop extension would include five new Red Line stations, including 600 South and 800 South stops serving areas in the west side’s burgeoning Granary District and then feeding back into the Ballpark Station’s three-line hub serving that redeveloping neighborhood.
• A third major project would realign portions of the Blue and Green lines, rerouting the Blue to carry passengers to and from the airport and the Green to link into FrontRunner and other transit options intersecting at the Salt Lake Central Station near 300 South and 600 West.
(The Salt Lake Tribune)
UTA’s three other plans, which are still on the table, involve slight variations on these main overhauls.
One version includes an elevated segment of 400 West over 500 South and 600 South, potentially rerouting trains over those heavily used east-west road segments carrying traffic to and from Interstate 15. But according UTA’s models, Garver said, raising that segment of 400 West for two-plus blocks didn’t appear to improve rail travel times or make vehicle traffic flow that much more efficiently than without it.
Another version contemplates rerouting parts of the Red Line on the U. campus to South Campus Drive, but that scenario added substantially to costs and is not in the preferred plan now.
(The Salt Lake Tribune)
There are lots of tweaks, UTA said, among the exact locations for new stations and how those might serve passengers, as well as how best to add links into the Salt Lake Central Station, which also has one of two FrontRunner stops in the area, along with the North Temple Bridge-Guadalupe Station a few blocks north.
Another key metric has been economic growth, UTA officials said. The favored plan is thought to be the best at serving existing residential and commercial development as opposed to fostering future growth, while also reducing some environmental impacts and the costs of buying rights of way.
How are the plans vetted?
(The Salt Lake Tribune)
Demand for more TRAX service in Salt Lake City is on the rise, thanks to decades of population growth combined with long-standing worries over tailpipe pollution and Wasatch Front inversions.
That was true before the city was awarded another Olympics, but the need is intensifying, according to City Council Chair Victoria Petro — propelled in part by a near-doubling of downtown residents and a host of incentives for transit-oriented housing with reduced parking.
“It’s happening quickly,” Petro said, calling for urgency in UTA’s expansion. “I love the idea of using the Olympics to catalyze and to draw attention and funding” for transit projects but “hate narratives that would have us build or function for the Olympics.”
Alex Beim, UTA’s long-range planning director, countered that while planning for new TRAX routes might be accelerated by the Winter Games, “nothing that we’re doing is just because the Olympics are coming. It’s because we need all those things.”
(Utah Transit Autority) Criteria used for Utah Transit Authority's preferred alternatives for expanding TRAX light rail lines and stations in Salt Lake City.
A spokesperson for the Utah Transit Riders Union, which advocates for thousands of light rail and bus users, said it supported UTA’s latest preferred version, while it has also called for expanding TRAX widely along the Wasatch Front. With its approach to realigning light rail along 400 West, co-founder Chris Stout said, the latest plan potentially puts in play another proposal, referred to as the Rio Grande Plan.
That independently created, multimillion-dollar vision calls for burying train tracks in Salt Lake City’s industrial 500 West and 600 West corridors and restoring the historic Rio Grande Depot, all with the aim of streamlining east-west traffic.
City Council member Sarah Young, representing Sugar House, said the prospect of extending the Red Line to the Ballpark Station was also “a game changer.” But Young urged UTA to try to increase the number of hubs all along on its network where Red, Blue and Green lines intersect, allowing passengers to transfer more conveniently between TRAX lines.
