@@zmoney42069they said they will when they get Frontrunner double tracked so trains will be more efficient and when more infrastructure upgrades happen so they won’t have to be forced to do all of the repairs and maintenance on Sundays anymore
Nice. Look in to the Rio Grande Plan which is trying to make the old Rio Grande Station the ‘Central Train Station’ again… Would also recommend showing more of Main Street and Temple Square area.. That area breaks up the blocks better and is the most walkable area of the city.
Here is a follow up 6 months later with some details on the Rio Grande Plan, and other expansion plans! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FzxNt4CVAhI.html
unfortunately, signal priority is the biggest problem on 4th south, which is a state highway, and UDOT is pretty hostile towards transit, so while signal priority is technically already in place, its gonna take some work to get it implemented
Precisely right. Most cross streets are actually pretty good with priority but it can't end pedestrian cycles early if someone presses a button. But there isn't much priority at State St and 700 E, which are both major UDOT roads.
Thanks for watching! You have good bones with the Trax system though! A lot of cities would love to have what you have (Where we live in Austin included!) -Louis
SLC is really impressive for a western “flyover” city though. It seems more useful than the Denver rail system and it has a much lower population. Also the urban fabric of SLC seems pretty authentic and enjoyable, even if there can be random low density.
Love the episode! I live in the suburbs of Salt Lake, but I like to use transit to get downtown or get around town whenever I can. One of my favorite transit adventures in SL was taking Trax from downtown to the S Line riding that to sugar House then renting an e bike to get to the climbing gym in Millcreek. If you visit again the S Line Street car is cool to check out as are the BRTs that were mentioned in another comment. Also, pro tip, take the front runner to the North Temple Station. It doesn't sound like it, but it's actually more downtown than the central station. Thanks guys!
Moved here 2 years ago. After a couple moves around town, we've landed downtown. Like, right downtown. This is the best way to live a car free life here, which we are now doing.
Nice video! Another interesting part of this system is that UTA is in charge of public transit across multiple counties, so the system tends to integrate together across different modes better than some other systems. They have funding to add additional double tracking to FrontRunner, and the plan is to double frequencies to every 30 minutes off peak and every 15 minutes on peak. The most recent light rail strategic plan from UTA includes signal prioritization improvements at 19 intersections, so they are aware of the issue. Definitely agree that SLC itself has too much pavement, just not quite enough at its bus stops 😀
Thanks for the comment! Definitely excited to see how the expansion of the light rail goes, as well as some of the other improvements you mentioned! We'll have to make our way back there to follow up soon. Thanks again.
I LOVE THIS! Pretty new to SLC but I use trax ALLLL the time! We take it to all sorts of sports games all over the SLC and up to Ogden for events. I would love to see more of what restaurants you ate at and a variety of what you can access with the public transit!
Thanks for the comment! Appreciate the kind feedback 😊 Maybe we'll add more of the content that didn't make it in here in the future! We hope to make it back for more as well. We enjoyed SLC and wish we had something like Trax where we live in Austin, TX 🙃.... some day....
Ayy SLC is much more pleasant in the Spring and Fall, but glad you got to see some of the city! I started biking and using transit to commute across town last fall to reduce my car dependency and overall have been pretty pleased with the system. My commute is 2-3 times longer (45 min to an hour) using transit than driving (15-20 min), and even biking is faster (35-40 min), but it sure is nice to not have to deal with traffic in the snow. I didn't think I'd have much use for Frontrunner, but I've used it multiple times to get to Ogden and Provo for events and it's great. Now if we could just get more density and rid ourselves of the plague of parking lots everywhere.
Greetings for Tyler, I used to live in Tuscaloosa, AL. I'm living in Salt Lake City since last year and I have been using the public transportation from the beginning, I think is a very good service. Thank you for the video.
Salt Lake Central needs to be replaced with a proper station. The people working on the Rio Grande Plan are trying to make that a reality. That Rio Grande Plan will reactivate the Rio Grande Depot you saw. You should check our their project.
I loved the video! Live in the salt lake metro and take UTA all the time to work. I think the biggest miss was temple square. It a huge tourism area. With great connections to transit.
The streets are wide in SLC because when Brigham Young started planning and building the city fires were a huge problem for other cities. He made them wide so fire couldnt easily jump the street and burn the whole thing down. Liberty park also has a great pond where you can catch carp, trout and white bass. Its a fun place to spend time.
Even with it's many problems, the public transportation system in Salt Lake is still better than like 95% of mid-sized cities in the US, especially in the Western States. I think they're planning on adding more trax and frontrunner lines before Salt Lake hosts the 2034 Olympics, so it'll definitely improve even more over the next decade. Salt Lake is also looking to build a new NHL arena and possibly a new MLB stadium, so they'll probably also have to expand the rail lines to service them.
Thanks for checkin out Utah! Our transit system here isn’t great but it’s getting better. If you come out another time make sure to check out Ogden and Provo
There is a reason it is so quiet at trolley square and it has nothing to do with gentrification. Almost everyone who is at the age where they would go to a mall is kinda freaked out by the building because there was a shooting there a while ago.
Let us know what you thought of this episode! Where do you want us to go next? Want to support the show? Check out our newly launched Patreon: www.patreon.com/TransitTangents We also have followed up on this episode more recently here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FzxNt4CVAhI.html
Thanks for the tip! Rio Grande plan looks interesting at first glance! Had not seen it. We hope to make it back in the future and meet up with some more of the transit/urbanist locals! This seems like it would be an awesome topic. Appreciate the comments and support over our SLC episodes😊-Louis
Lived in Utah my whole life and apparently I’m as old as the Trax system, did not know that lol. Anyway I might try something like this with my wife, since we never use transit in SLC and it could be a good time.
I enjoyed all of the varied parts of this video but my favorite part was seeing you sharing your couch, both of you in short sleeves having a relaxing chat. I would love to meet Pete, because he is smart and very good looking a nice Indiana boy, just like my husband!
Along with all the freeways the Trax system was installed for the Olympics ridership. I have lived here since 2009 finding the system to work very well. The 7200 S Trax station is only a mile from my house so frequently purchase a day pass. I can ride the entire Frontrunner, Trax and bus lines for under $7. That is a pretty good deal.
For air travel I can walk to the Trax station, make one line transfer and be dropped off at the airport terminal with a 200 yard walk. No traffic or any delays. Pretty good system.
SLC seems to have pretty solid transit for a city of its size. It kind of reminds me of Denver's RTD like...10ish years ago before they redid Union Station and built out their Regional Rail. I think if SLC moves forward with the Rio Grande Plan and electrifies the Frontrunner they'll be even better than RTD
Agreed! A ton of potential in SLC for infilling a lot of housing/mixed use downtown in parking lots, but also further out of downtown at Trax stops and Frontunner stations. They also have some Trax expansion plans in the works. -Louis
Cool vid! I haven't seen this kind of format for videos about transit before and I'm definitely looking forward to more of your videos! Hi from Australia :)
If you want to meet a local transit enthusiast, I would be happy to meet and talk when you guys return. I could also explain the controversy around the Cottonwood gondola plan.
We would love that! I am not sure when our next time in the area will be, but send us an email to transittangentspod@gmail.com so we can be in touch when it happens!
Thanks for the comments! Trax was never too far behind schedule, but when they were behind schedule, we were often watching them stuck at stop lights (or we were stuck at stop lights on them). At the least it could make the travel time between stations faster. On time performance might not have been the right metric to bring up. Nonetheless, signal prioritization would be an upgrade. -Louis
slc folk here and yeah - i recently got a job downtown so ended up taking the bus from frontrunner for the end of my commute, and it's been great - they're pretty consistent on the schedule and have always been clean sooooo many of the stops need to be improved though
I'm trying to move out of San Antonio due to its depressing car centric society. I narrowed my choices down to Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, or Pittsburgh due to them all being affordable intermodal cities. I ended up going with Pittsburgh, but SLC still seems like such a cool place. And honestly the streetcars in SLC look more modern than in Pittsburgh, but it seems Pittsburgh is more walkable which also influenced my decision. Plus I'm more into forest hills than sparse mountains.
FYI: The bus stops signs with green are every 15 mins. The white signs varied on some routes, some are every 30 mins and some routes are every hour. The 223 is once a hour and was merged with the former Route 3 that travel along the same area as the 223.
17:28 there are probably worse bus stops elsewhere in America. Out in Phoenix, there’s a bus stop along 7th Street for a resort (Hilton Tapatio Cliffs), and the bus stop is in the middle of a continuous flow intersection (as in, it’s along the left turn lane to go on the east side of 7th Street, where the resort is), and there’s no legal way to actually get to the resort, as there aren’t any crosswalks. Plus, once you actually get to the resort, you can really only get around if you’re not using a wheelchair.
Awesome video! One option to go from near the fort douglas station to the museum are the campus shuttle buses, they come every 15 minutes during the week
Nice job explaining the less than ideal transit system in Utah. I live here and the UTA system has been treated as the last resort for people who don't drive. The TRAX green line directly to the airport is quick and cheap.
I think it’s pretty good. The city of SLC had a population of 300k, the metro area at 1.3m. The city has 214km of track length (not including Amtrak). Comparatively Marseille has a population of 1.3m as well and has only 35.7km of rail lines (not including TER service). Of course urbanism in Marseille is much better but that doesn’t discount the effectiveness of SLC.
I'm sure you couldn't help noticing that many of the bus stops and train stops aren't very well sheltered. They also do scale back to service on Saturdays and especially Sundays. The frontrunner does not run on Sundays. By the way, I live in Orem down in Utah Valley.
Yeah, especially given the weather all winter, I am surprised there wasn't any better way to keep warm while waiting, etc.... Even just to get out of the wind, etc.... Thanks for the comment!
@@TransitTangents unsheltered train/bus stops are only a good thing in places with near perfect weather year-round. I don't know of any place like that.
Unless you live in Salt Lake City proper, I find public transportation to be ass here in Utah. Sure, I'll take Front Runner to visit my sister, but I'm driving to the station and having my sister pick me up. I will NOT touch a bus. And if you want to go east/west (like West Valley), then you're screwed. Front Runner seems to be only used by people commuting to serviceable places only (colleges and SLC and such). Maybe my view is cynical and uneducated, but that's a failure on UTA to not educate the citizens here.
Thanks for your comment! Most transit agencies don't do the best job teaching folks what is available unfortunately. Generally speaking, buses are less difficult to navigate or less of a hassle than folks might realize. Are they perfect? No, but we had pleasant experiences on the bus in SLC, and they were both close to on time. Obviously that might not be the norm, but buses that run to and from the train stations probably have decent on time performance. I'd encourage you to check it out! -Louis
I went to visit a good friend in Utah in December of last year and my experience was so so it was cold out but thank God she picked me up from the American Fork station and she lives in Utah and told me she will never take public transit as long as she lives there because it's slow and said who is going to walk around like that in the cold or the heat well for a Utah native she hate public transit there and that she will drive and buy cars as far as her dollar can go. My gripe was no service on Sunday or late nights. Them in the cold and snow was sure a no with me or her.
How would you remove pavement in SLC? lol I was born and raised here and your comment to remove pavement has me laughing at your naïveté. The footprint of the buildings coincide with the City Plats. To turn dedicated roads, state and federal highways into private land would need to be vacated. The owners of street facing businesses wool create a coalition put up a huge fight throughout the city. Your suggestion would die before reaching committee. Regarding signal prioritization for Light Rail I’ve seen it with my own eyes. During large events I’ve seen Trax turn signals red. If they removed this feature it must be recent. My guess it’s paused during slow hours of the day and week. It’s easy to criticize so that’s a turn off for me. Next time you have questions reach out to the transit authority and the states DOT.
A few examples, giant parking lots everywhere. Am I saying to get rid of parking? No, but maybe consolidate some surface parking lots with a garage or two. That would free up space to build more housing, businesses, parks, etc.... That extra housing close to downtown also creates more customers who can walk to the businesses you mentioned in your comment as well. No loss of parking spots with the garage, etc... The roads were also hilariously wide. You can easily add dedicated bike lanes to either side of the street and have them separated from traffic with a thin strip of grass with small trees, planters, etc.... You'd still have plenty of travel lanes, etc.... You may not even need to remove any depending on the street. That would be great if Trax gets signal prioritization during game days, etc.... We didn't see it happening at all, but that doesn't mean its not. Overall I think we left with mostly positive takeaways on transit in SLC if you watched the video. Ya'll are in a much better position than in our home town of Austin TX with a lot of potential. Also, we'd love it if transit authorities and DOTs would meet with us to answer questions. We've tried. They tend to not give small podcasts/RU-vid channels answers so we do what we can with what we have until someday we are big enough lol. Thanks for watching and for your comments. -Louis
@@TransitTangents I have to agree the downtown area is kind of ugly. Very few green spaces, you don't see art of any type, and it's very noisy everywhere you go. Even at the library there's a loud speaker outside blasting the local PBS station. Why?
