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Salt Lake City might not be the first place you’d think to look for great transit, but the city and its robust light rail and regional rail system truly charmed and impressed me during my short stay. This is what the rest of North America can learn from UTA!
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Ever wondered why your city’s transit just doesn’t seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
49 Comments
I like SLC because it proves that your city doesn't have to be New York sized to have a nice transit system. Kinda like every smaller to mid sized European city lmao
I'm glad to see a video on Salt Lake City from this channel! I've managed to live mostly car-free in Salt Lake City for most of my life, but it is a struggle sometimes, especially when you get out of the downtown core. I think TRAX and Frontrunner are excellent systems, but our buses do leave something to be desired. I also agree strongly that we could do better with our bus and train shelters, especially since we have cold winters AND hot summers.
I do agree that we see nice incremental improvements to our system over time. They even just opened a new downtown infill station just last year, so even existing areas of the system are not being overlooked.
I think you go too easy on SL Central. If there's any criticism I have of our system, it's just how pathetic our "central" station is. It's not central to anything, and it hasn't generated any transit-oriented development in its 15 years of existence. The North Temple station is much better-used and much more effective at transfers between TRAX, Frontrunner, and the bus system, and it doesn't feel like a wasteland at 10pm. UTA seems committed to doubling down on that failure. I know there's been a couple of comments mentioning it, but there is a proposal to move it to a historic train station nearby (which they should've done from the beginning) and bury the freight rail lines downtown in what's called the Rio Grande Plan. It would be a huge project, but it has been gaining some steam in local circles. Unfortunately, UTA is so committed to making Salt Lake Central a thing that they seem to have the least interest in the project so far.
A lot of people in Utah have served LDS missions in other countries. Many of them go to Europe, Asia and South America so, yes, they are familiar with such systems. I spent most of mine in Norway, which has excellent public transit. You've done an explainer on the system in Oslo, Norway; I was somewhat familiar with that system back in the late 1980s.
When I was stationed at Hill AFB, between Salt Lake City and Ogden (1992 – 1993), there was no light rail anywhere. Bus service, between SLC and Layton (the town nearest the base) was pretty lame; I rode it a few times (I didn't have a car; it was bike, bus or the old heel-and-toe-express for me). They built the rail systems in prep for the 2002 Winter Olympics (long after I left). They spent a metric tonne of money getting ready for that and it's nice to see that the area is still benefiting, today, from the money spent.
Going to church on Sunday means the entire family, frequently with lots of kids, going to church. No one wants to keep track of a bunch of small kids while navigating public transit; they have minivans, SUVs and travel coaches (no, not exaggerating) for that purpose. Public transit is ok for parents and teens getting around, to and from work, etc. but, the moment small children are involved, nope. So no surprise that there's not much public transit for getting to / from church. There should be but that's a shift that they're just not willing to make.
The one time I went to SLC, I landed too late to catch the last train to downtown! I was so sad 🙁
As a native New Yorker who doesn’t drive and uses public transportation if I visit SLC for a few days are there public transportation options for me to utilize to access hiking trails !?? I really wanna hike the wasatch range. You guys have buses for park city as well correct ? And the light rail system I’m sure is good enough for me to get around the city.
I lived in Salt Lake for about a decade, moved away about a decade ago, still visit frequently (my in-laws live in Ogden) and I am always amazed by just how much UTA has improved over the last decade. A few defenses I will make on the criticisms that you've made. The airport isn't completed yet. They've only done phase one of the airport, phase two is supposed to start in the next year or two, and my understanding is that a better transit station was part of phase two of the airport. Also, for Salt Lake Central, the fact that it is mostly just a big open concrete plaza has to do with Greyhound and Amtrak. Back in the late 2000s, UTA partnered with Greyhound and Amtrak to make what would essentially be a grand central station that would serve all three agencies, it would be the central station for local bus, express bus, intercity bus, light rail, regional rail, and intercity rail. It was supposed to be modeled off of stations like you see in New York or Washington DC… well, then the recession happened, everything went sideways, the project stalled, and UTA who had been the public face of the project was left with egg on their face as the ones having to announce that it was canceled. It seems like ever since then, they have become pretty shy about really big projects that require partnerships with outside entities.
Also, if you look at their website, it looks like their biggest pushes right now are to maximize new services and increasing frequency on existing services. Capital projects aren't as high of a priority right now.
Dude, if anyone ever builds that Cottonwood Canyon rail line I will straight up consider moving to SLC. One of the biggest things standing in my way of a car-free life is my yearning for the mountains and desire to go to different trailheads. Public transit TO a variety of different trailheads would solve many of my problems.
Stadler proposed an electrified swiss style rail line to Alta/Snowbird at similar cost to the gondola and much higher capacity!
they are probably embarrased for that or that they dont have heavy metros like some other cities do
The dirty little secret reason why US airports hate their transit connections is because of parking revenue 😭
As a Utah resident and recently graduated transportation engineer, I can say that a lot of the secret sauce is that our agencies play nicely with each other. We’re able to get stuff done around here in part because (generally speaking) the various state, county, city, and nongovernmental agencies play nice with each other.
I’m going to the Kilby Block Party music festival in SLC in May, and every ticket comes with unlimited UTA access for 3 days! I’m really excited to try it. From what I’ve seen, they’ve been very proactive in building a solid network with multiple modes. I was surprised to learn that even from the hotel I’m staying at, way far from downtown, there’s an express bus that’ll take us from right there to the city center in 15 minutes.
Agreed, impressive! I was there at the same time, and found the transit super interesting. I tried all three but didn't ride the streetcar due to the 30 minute frequency (I also had a bike). BTW, no problem taking bikes on the trains. This even though the trains were packed due to the game and free transit that weekend. It was nonetheless very clean and as you said the LRT frequency was fantastic. Also a great place for biking with some really nice trails.
fantastic video! i live in slc and ride uta services regularly. great review of the system.
couple comments to add to your thoughts
you mention how the airport connection is off in the corner. unfortuently that decision was made due to cost. the original plan called for an elevated track to the second level that would connect indoors, right between the drop off curb and the parking garage. i believe UTA was responsible for the construction cost and decided for the cheaper alternative. i agree that it was a missed opportunity
i am a snowboarder with a season pass at snowbird and i visit twice a week! a rail connection to the ski resorts would be so awesome, but it’s just not feasible. the steep grades of SR-210 in little cottonwood canyon would not allow for electric rail. a study was done to determine if dedicated bus lanes, gondola or a cog rail system would be best and UDOT decided on the gondola alternative. (the public comment periods for this decision are still on going and the gondola is not set in stone yet.) cog rail would have been so cool, similar to Pikes Peak in Colorado, but the cost was too much. there was also an issue with frequency as the track between snowbird and alta required sharp turns and slow speeds.
It’s unfortune that these projects usually take the cheaper route which I am sure is due to the limited budget as you mentioned. however UTA does so much with what they have, including a great ski bus service to most ski resorts in the state (there’s 15)
Glad you enjoyed your visit to a Utah and hope to have you back soon! SLC is a special place.
As a trax operator I as pleased to hear so much light from your review. We are in the works on trying to get our next generation trains from Stadler.
Regarding the airport connection, that decision was made due to cost. It was supposed to be an elevated track to the second level that would connect indoors, but alas, they went with the cheaper alternative. I agree that it was a missed opportunity. The livery on the UTA vehicles is aesthetically pleasing! Part of getting people to take transit is to make it appealing, and they've succeeded in doing that (well…besides the Airport station). That aside, I definitely understand that embarrassment argument.
The main reason their TRAX system was built and opened in 1999 was in preparation for the 2002 Winter Olympics (like how the 2010 Winter Olympics bid motivated Vancouver to build the Canada Line). If they didn't win the right to host, I doubt they would've built TRAX. Heck, when it opened, there wasn't even a station at the airport! The airport wouldn't get one until 2013! TRAX ended up borrowing 29 Kinki Sharyo LRVs from Dallas to handle overcrowding during the Olympics! And another thing Utah did for the 2002 Winter Olympics for transport was for those heading to Soldier Hollow (for biathlon, Nordic combined, and cross-country) that the Heber Valley Railroad offered a special train service to Wasatch Mountain State Park on steam locomotives, and then horse-drawn sleighs took spectators to the venue.
FrontRunner wouldn't become a thing until 2008! As for light rail, light rail in the Salt Lake Valley was first seriously discussed in the late 1980s to provide an alternative to traffic congestion on I-15, but the idea was met with criticism (surprise to no one). Construction for TRAX began in 1997. Protesters at the groundbreaking insisted light rail would be dangerous and a waste of money. Public opinion remained divided and businesses on Main Street in downtown Salt Lake City suffered during the construction period.
After the north-south line opened in late 1999 with sixteen stations, ridership expectations were quickly met. The system was enthusiastically embraced by valley residents, to the surprise of many, and once-skeptical communities soon began clamoring for extension. TRAX currently has 50 stations on three lines. Gee, it's like if you actually GIVE THINGS A CHANCE, they might end up great!
If the North-East corridor is considered the pinnacle of US rail, you know we got a terrible transit system…
p.s. It is easy to stop making fun of streetcars not running on the streets, you could start calling them trams.
surprised the UVX wasn’t mentioned in this video. thoughts on that?
Thanks for covering our transit! I commute via FrontRunner once a week, driving to the Provo station. There are plans to expand FrontRunner to three more stops south of Provo, where UTA also owns the track. Agreed with what you said: these plans should be accelerated.
UTA punches above their weight and I wish the state would repay that prowess with better budgets.
Basically clueless ppl designing a station
3:55 uh huh Uh Huh UH HUH! you hear that Metrolinx L E V E L B O A R D I N G what a mind blowing concept 🤣 the direct integration is another thing too
Salt Lake City has hosted the 2002 Winter Olympic Games and could be poised to host the 2030 Winter Olympics for a second time. I would love to visit this town someday.
I was born and raised in SLC for between 21 and 22 years
The road to Fascism.
Tell people that there is something wrong with your country and it needs saving.
Choose a scapegoat to channel your unwarranted aggression against. This can be immigrants, people different from you (LGBT community), people with progressive views, etc….
This is exactly the same playbook that the Nazi party used in Germany in the 1930s.
The sad thing is that they actually had a grievance, the condions bestowed on Germany by Treaty of Versailles, while most of these people have no grievance other than what they are told to hate by a media that profits off of their anger. Anger that was given to them by media companies intent on the drama of division of a society.
I don't necessarily disagree about salt lake Central, but it is a transit hub. 😂 Trax, frontrunner, bus and Amtrak. I'm not sure another shopping center up there will really work though. There's city creek and gateway mall. When city creek went in, gateway kinda fell on it's face.
My Dad delivered supplies to the new airport and kept me updated on the project and originally the Green line's Airport station was originally set to be on the overpass right in front of the main entrance.
I got to ride a few of these trains back in 2018 and thought it was very well done
I was quite shocked on my first visit in SLC in 2019. I stayed at a hotel right off I-215 opposite the Valley Fair Mall and was surprised that I COULD HAVE taken light rail not only back & forth from my hotel but to a couple of trails just behind the University of Utah (I went up & down the “Living Room” Trail).
Upon further research after said trip, I found that the entire Wasatch sprawl has about as comprehensive of transit as one will ever find for a region it’s size. Commuter rail & apparently both Ogden & Provo have a BRT line. It’s a bit of a shame I never rode any of that system…
One thing in particular that state oughta consider is state sponsored Amtrak back & forth from SLC to Moab (literally home to two national parks & at least one good state park) and to see if they could get Brightline West to do a northward extension of their planned LA to Vegas service to extend to/through:
>St. George
>Hurricane (almost the entrance to Zion National Park)
& ultimately the SLC area including Provo & Ogden
With substantial potential to see if Brightline would want to build a service between St. George & at least Moab; ideally to Grand Junction CO (allowing Amtrak’s California Zephyr or other potential future intercity routes to operate on said upgraded alignment between said points).
The obvious benefits aside, I-15 between Vegas & SLC appears to already have very plentiful volume along it… truck traffic in particular. Any options deterring tourists to literally drive everywhere could noticeably help regarding traffic pressures if not public safety to a degree (the more of the absolute dumbest drivers using some sort of transit instead of driving everywhere, the better for everyone).
2:12 great outdoors underpass location! ☹️😡 (DIA also outdoors, but not next to underpass 😉)
Rio Grande Plan all the way
Living in Utah my whole life everyone just shits on UTA. It's nice to hear a different perspective and realize its pretty great. It saved my life for about two years doing full time school and work in Salt Lake City, and living in Draper.
I've been a transit advocate all my life and co-founded the Utah Transit Riders Union in 2014. I've ridden UTA services since I was 10, and rode the bus from the east side where I lived to the missile plant and back for a dime. I fought the fare increase from a dime to a quarter while in middle school (and lost) and have been pushing for better transit ever since.
Outside Salt Lake City, UTA is a hot mess. There are no 15 minute service east-west bus routes south of 33rd South, and only 2 north-south routes — one on the west side and one on the east side. There's only one 15 minute bus route in Ogden, and only 2 in Utah County — with a population of 685k. The primary reason why Salt Lake City rocks with transit — although there are still under served areas, is that the city established a transit master plan and coordinated service with UTA. It did this by funding service that UTA could not have otherwise provided.
The airport station was flubbed, most definitely. Because it wasn't actually part of the airport reconstruction, there wasn't any money for the project. The plan for a second level platform inside or next to the terminal would have cost $65 million, so the current configuration at $15 million was built instead.
Yeah I live in SLC and UTA does not have the best track recored with CEO pay scandals
don't you dare endorse the gondola… PLEASE look into this issue before you ever cover this topic. it's highly controversial with 90% of Utahns against it.
the salt lake airport as your said is brand new and is still under construction. the train station there is temporary till the other half of the airport is built. also you wouldn't go to a temple on Sunday. how religious institutions are set up in Utah your place of worship is going to be in walking distance of your house.
Salt Lake City resident here: first off, great video! Just a couple of comments:
* The S-Line's biggest problem is that it doesn't connect to the rest of the UTA rail network. It's just a random short line that feels out of place. If they extended it west to meet the TRAX, it'd be a lot more useful.
* I agree the gondola is not a good idea. In fact, everyone I know here thinks that, but they're pushing forward with it. The biggest problem is that it's only going to stop at the resorts. There's much more in Little Cottonwood Canyon (hiking trails, smaller lodges, etc.) that the gondola will miss that either rail or even better bus service would be able to stop at.
* They've experimented with free UTA service over the last couple of years at least during bad air quality days and I think that's something more cities could follow.
Stopped watching when you said, Its almost as if the airport is embarrassed that they have a light rail connection. I travel quite a bit – the signage is good in the SL airport. A petty comment – SLC has a decent light rail system, a new airport, and adequate signage.
Fellow utah'n here. Id like to add a few key notes. The problem that i see with the green line (airport rail) is the area it has to pass through. Last year west valley city was ranked among the top 10 most dangerous cities to live in. So there might be a little bit of embarrasment to have our passengers travel through the city. I dont think we should hide our skeletons, but i also dont think we should have them on our front door. (my wife will not ride trax alone due to the safety feeling). Aaaaand the green line end station was actually farther away beleive it or not. You make a valid point with having the end station be in the airport. That could have been a cherry on top for many people
Secondly; the largest hang up with The front runner line is that it is currenly on a single rail system allowing for a 30 min service minimum during rush hour. I used front runner to commute during rush hour, and i will tell you from experience, 30 minutes is too long. Talk had been done about converting the line to a double track system, which greatly improves ridership, but comes with a price tag thats in the billions. uta has been slowly expanding the line so long as they see demand, like you mentioned
Lastly i like how you brought up little cotton wood canyon. I didnt even consider another light rail to shuttle one to the resorts. From a locals point of view, I wouldn't want a gandola to obstruct that amazing view. On the opposite side of that, how awesome would that view be from a gandola, before you hit your favorite resort. Fortunantly, the plans for lcc (little cottonwood canyon) has been paused due to so much feed back. They got 13,000 comments and decided to re-survey the area for new ideas, and problems not addressed in the first survey. Ive read some of the responses, and they are very detailed.
I took trax when I was a student at the University of Utah. I loved the free service I received and it's use of extra trains during sporting events.
Hi there. I moved here from the penultimate public transit city, New York. And though it clearly is not as extensive as NYC, SLC has a much cleaner and pleasant system. I am surprised and fairly happy with it.
The frontrunner station on North Temple is clean, efficient. But I was stunned at how barren the area is, for amenities. Getting a cup of coffee or a bagel, sandwich, etc is ridiculous. But, I noticed a lot of new building going on, so I hope little stores are going to crop up to serve the community and travelers. I guess SL Central is similar, have not been there yet. Good points dude.
I was also just in Salt Lake recently, it's NOT bad by any means, however it's sub-branches (Draper, Heriman, South Jordan, etc) kind of get left out and become much less frequent in run times. I'm not sure if you're familar with Trimet from Portland, Oregon, but they have the best transit in the US and I think Utah should have a transit ecosystem similar to that.
I'm no Mormon, but it seems like a big part of what makes the UTA network so nice is the relative lack of piss and fentanyl smoke aboard the train, when compared to the systems in many other American cities.
It's important to remember, SLC has high quality transit because it's the Capitol, everything is invested there.
Out in Ogden we've been screwed out of transit projects for decades. They literally widened Washington Blvd. for a light rail system that never got built. I saw the plans to revitalize downtown and thought "all this stuff should have been done 20 years ago, and they're saying it's 20 years out."
Ogden's been withering away ever since the Railroad left, if John Moses Browning could see his home town now he'd weep.
As a resident of SLC (Sugar House) and a transit user, it was nice to hear how we are doing. I don't get a chance to compare with other systems.
Great video! It was nice that even though I currently live far out in the burbs in Daybreak, I was able to easily get to the airport without a car by using Trax. I use my bike, Trax, and Frontrunner to get to work everyday and it is awesome! I just can’t wait until the strategic double tracking of Frontrunner is complete so the frequency can increase. Better bike parking (in addition to cities providing better cycling networks) needs to be included at the stations. I just got back from the Netherlands and it was amazing to see their bike parking facilities at transit stations in person!
You should come to Cleveland. I want to know how good you think the transit is.
As for no service on Sunday, most people in the Salt Lake Valley live walking distance from a church. Lol