The 2002 Winter Olympics were a defining moment in Utah history. The games brought belonging and relief to a nation reeling from crisis. The legacy of the last Olympics in Salt Lake City stretches beyond the memories and the medals, the infrastructure built to support the games remains today. Sporting venues are not the only structures bearing the Olympic logo. Before the games UDOT embarked on a massive project to modernize and rebuild Utah’s freeways. The largest such project involved the reconstruction of 16.2 miles of Interstate 15 in Salt Lake County at a cost of $1.63 billion, about $3 billion in today’s dollars.
The proposal to relocate the existing Frontrunner and Union Pacific rail lines through Salt Lake City into an underground “Train Box” under 500 West and restore the Rio Grande Depot as a rail transit hub was originally proposed two years ago by a pair of engineers looking to improve the city they call home.
Recently, Salt Lake City released a screening analysis for their own Rio Grande plan. Salt Lake City’s plan comes with more benefits, and a higher cost than the original citizen-led proposal. The cost of this plan is a truly Olympic $3 billion. The timing couldn’t be better. The cost of such a project would be prohibitive under any other circumstance.
With the Olympics’ return in 2034 we have an opportunity to invest in an infrastructure legacy to serve generations to come. With the overwhelming public backlash to the proposed freeway expansion between Davis and Salt Lake counties, it is clear that the Olympic infrastructure funds leading up to 2034 should be spent on transit. Enough freeway bridges and interchanges already bear the Olympic logo, let’s focus on a project that will benefit motorists, transit riders, pedestrians and cyclists equally.
The Rio Grande plan should be our next Olympic legacy.
Nathan Strain, Murray
