Thanks are due to Alixel Cabrera for reporting on the problem of railways (and interstates) bisecting Salt Lake City (“West-siders have waited for trains to cross for decades …”). It is a very real problem that west-side residents have faced for a very long time.
The placement of lower-income housing west of the railways, coupled with the placement of I-15 and now-illegal, yet historically practiced, redlining, amounts to built-in racial segregation in our city. This ongoing segregation is further evidenced by the map of the TRAX system.
Why do we have not a single TRAX line that directly crosses this divide? We need them extending the S-line to Glendale, and from the U. to the end of 700 North. To provide meaningfully reliable service, all TRAX lines should run every 5-10 minutes or less during daytime hours. We need a concurrent three-year curb on housing prices. A small bungalow should not garner a half-million dollar price tag.
It is interesting that it is only now coming to urgent discussion locally as (white) east-siders are priced out, moving west, driving up housing prices, thereby driving established minority communities even further out of town. To be fair, I must count myself among those new west-side homeowners.
These things are the result of a history of deliberate, discriminatory, often violent action by white pioneers, all levels of government, actors in the real-estate business, and white homeowners. We can only build true American equality — change the results of our white-supremacist history — by acting with equally deliberate neighborly compassion and equitability.
Cabrera’s article is timely: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg launched just last summer a funding program aimed at addressing exactly this, alluded to briefly in the article. There are solutions.
Their implementation is not a color-blind matter of commuter convenience: It is one of racial equity and justice.
Loren Carle, Salt Lake City
