Salt Lake City’s sprawling suburbs keep growing. Here’s where new transit options could ‘connect the dots.’

When Mercedes Autry was growing up in the late ’90s, she could take a Utah Transit Authority bus or TRAX train almost anywhere.

As a teen, she went to concerts, visited the then-South Town mall and easily split her time between her mom’s home in Bluffdale and her dad’s in Sugar House — all before she got her driver license. Now a mother of five in Tooele, her kids don’t have the same freedom.

“My sister and I, we didn’t even look up the bus schedules, because you just go to the bus stop, a bus will be there at some point within the next 15-20 minutes” Autry said. “... It was that consistent.”

As more and more Utahns like Autry seek residential refuge farther and farther from Salt Lake City’s core, transit agencies are working across northern Utah to keep up. That means building new roads, extending bus routes, adding light rail stops and more.

Where is transit being prioritized?

The Wasatch Front Regional Council projects that by 2050, there will be substantial population growth near five northern Utah suburbs: South Jordan, Sandy, Murray, West Valley City and Clearfield.

The council is made up of representatives from six northern Utah counties and works to make sure regional transit plans align with local projects, from the new baseball stadium in Daybreak to new housing developments.

Understanding where people will live helps the council prioritize. For its 2050 projection, the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute determined county-level population estimates, while the council worked with cities to specify community population estimates — right down to the square mile, said the council’s analytics director, Bert Granberg.

They also estimate where people will want to work, based on “economic strength across the region,” said the council’s deputy director, Ted Knowlton.

“We’re trying to get a sense of the market, where it wants to go, what cities will allow — and it’s the combo there,” Knowlton said.

Those assessments have led to increased transit investment in southwest Salt Lake County and northwest Utah County, Knowlton said.

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Now, it’s a game of “connect the dots,” he added — planning that ensures people can also get to grocery stores, sporting events and more all on public transit.

“A single family subdivision,” he said, for example, “is not as transit supportive, as like a village, or as like a community college.”

But accommodating for growth in these suburbs is no easy task, UTA’s long-range planning director Alex Beim said. They are much more sprawlingly spread out than, say, downtown Salt Lake City.

Locals who live there also tend to immediately want rapid-transit bus routes (with frequent service in dedicated bus lanes) and rail lines to help avoid car traffic, but those solutions are expensive, Knowlton said.

The council prefers adding more basic transit options, like its on-demand ride-share service or an introductory bus line, in fast-growing suburbs. Then, once those have steady ridership, a community can determine if they want to work with UTA or the Utah Department of Transportation to fund more transit options.

“It’s always this process of this step upward on the transit ladder,” Knowlton said.

What’s being done now?

Daybreak is one community the Wasatch Front Regional Council has targeted. It’s Utah’s largest master-planned community, sitting on 4,200 acres with room for 20,000 homes.

The development already boasts a 22-mile trail network to connect pedestrians and bicyclists alike to schools, grocery stores and restaurants. And with the relocation of the Salt Lake Bees to Daybreak, UTA is adding a TRAX station just across the street from the new ballpark at America First Square.

City centers — like Daybreak’s America First Square — that plan to include shops, restaurants and concert venues are perfect stops for new bus lines and TRAX stations, Granberg said.

“When we do our forecasting ... we’re definitely incorporating where cities and towns have defined the opportunities for these revitalized or new urban centers,” Granberg said, “many of which are close to the existing infrastructure and can be served by the existing UTA service already.”

UTA’s new Daybreak station will add on to the existing TRAX Red Line, which has stops in West Jordan, Murray and downtown Salt Lake City. And UTA’s South Valley Regional bus route will start service in April, adding connections to two other fast-growing communities: Herriman and Draper.

The transportation agency planned that bus route — also called Route 126 — by using a “heat map” that illustrated residents’ use of the transit agency’s on-demand ride-share services across Herriman and Draper, UTA Executive Director Jay Fox said.

“The on-demand is still available therke,” Fox said, “but it now takes a little pressure off that on-demand service, and allows it to go to other places in that larger area, because you have another service that’s available to people.”

‘Next to no transit options’

Transit development in fast-growing Tooele, where Autry lives, is still lagging behind, she said.

She moved to the county in 2007. Three years later, Tooele had about 58,000 residents, census data shows; by 2022, it was the fastest-growing county in Utah. By 2024, its population ballooned to about 83,000.

The county is expected to house 149,000 residents by 2060, according to projections from the Gardner Policy Institute.

“Like a lot of other people, we moved out into Tooele because the houses were a lot cheaper,” Autry said. “And I did quickly find out that there were absolutely next to no transit options.”

UTA currently operates two bus lines in Tooele, and both only run on weekdays, mostly taking people to and from Salt Lake City. Route 451 operates every 30 minutes in the mornings and evenings, and Route F453 operates hourly in between, with two commuter “flex stops” that only have service for an hour between 7:20 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. and again between 3:30 p.m. and 4:40 p.m.

Autry works remotely, but her husband commutes to Magna. The family bought a hybrid vehicle so Autry’s husband could save on gas driving to and from work, she said.

The couple looked into transit when her husband started commuting in 2018, but the commute time is about an hour and a half each way, Autry said. Compared to a 30-minute drive each way, transit wasn’t feasible for their family.

“To this day, what I’ve noticed is that the bus lines really only accommodate a 9-to-5 schedule,” Autry said. “Which is kind of unfortunate, because there’s a lot of warehouses around here, like Amazon, Walmart, the airport — a lot of jobs that have third shifts, off shifts, stuff like that.”

Autry said she hopes UTA will add more bus lines in Tooele, rather than rely on UTA on-demand services and more park-and-rides for current routes.

“Just more stops, so that taking transit doesn’t take so long, and more options for the middle of the day, like a bus line within Tooele County that isn’t focused just on taking people to Salt Lake,” Autry said.

Until then, it’s not really feasible for people in Tooele to go about their daily life without a car, she said.

“Everything’s still pretty spread out,” Autry said, “and it’s really hard.”