The Good, the Bad, & the Snowy of Salt Lake City Transit

I was there last weekend to attend a football game at BYU. I should have read the details.
Airport to Provo Station on Green & FrontRunner: $6.10 plus $10 Lyft to hotel. Sunday realized no service on Sundays.... Lyft from Hotel to Airport: $70!
I've already planned my next trip so I will be returning on FrontRunner to Salt Lake Saturday night.
That way I can take the Green Line to the airport on Sunday. Tough luck for the Provo hotels & restaurants. 😞

It's pretty common to be able to pay for transit with a phone in the US. Every major city in the US has some sort of mobile fare payment.

PLEASE do a video about UDOT'S plan to build the longest gondola in the world all the way up Little Cottonwood Canyon, the planning and public outcry have been crazy and it's pretty bizarre that we aren't going with a much more reliable train-based option.

The FrontRunner kinda sucks, but it has SOOOO much potential. I think if bus services increased in Utah County in more areas than just Orem, ridership would also increase.

I live a half block from the S line. I love that I can access all the buses and trains from my apartment in Sugarhouse.

Speaking of churches, would you ever consider a video on places of worship that are easily accessible by transit?

Also a UTA employee, thanks for posting. Like a person said in the comments whenever there are special events, or trax/ frontrunner situations. We get the buses moving in a hurry. Representing The Meadrowbrook/Depot garages with pride. You can catch on those bus bridges all the time.

The airport line is off to the side due to lack of funding to bring it level with the arrival gates when the airport was redone. Anywho, the S-line is wanting, it should be expanded to the rest of sugarhouse.

I’m going to Salt Lake next month and originally I was planning to Uber to the hotel but there’s a station near where I’m staying so I’m thinking of using the rail instead. I like rail more than cars and buses anyway so it’s a win for me.

Salt lake City is mid size not small

🚈🚊🚆🇺🇸

My understanding is that the consultant (or whomever) who created the Stadler presentation for rail up Little Cottonwood Canyon was only brought in last minute and that the presentation did not do the option justice. Honestly, as a local, I would love to see rail connecting all the world class skiing that lies within not much more than an hour from downtown SLC. How amazing would it be to stay anywhere in downtown or the Wasatch and be able to hop on a train and ski any of the 8 resorts rather than having to deal with parking or traffic. Sign me up!

My only complaint with trax is that its smelly as hell. I went to antelope island and their bathrooms somehow smelt better than the outdoors (and the toilet was a hole in the ground full of urine and poo.) They need to do whatever that was to trax and make it smell somewhat decent.

I've always been so pissy or critical with our transit system but to sit down and really listen to the positives is a nice change of view. I def needed this

It would have to be Cog rail to get up to the resorts. These are not ski hills, they are mountains! Haha. The gondola makes the most sense for this application

The airport station looks similar setup like BWI Airport in Baltimore…

Thanks for commenting on our little rail system! It means a lot someone is putting a spotlight on a system with so, so much potential!

We don't get many Ws in Utah so this video made for a nice change of pace. I live in Sugar House and easily one of my favorite things is how simple it is for anyone to get to/from the airport. No need to coordinate pickup/dropoff with family or anything like that. I just walk 10m to the S-Line, take it to Central and then get on the Green Line. Takes me about 1hr to get to the airport and I don't have to waste time dealing with parking or anything. The airport TRAX station being outside is definitely weird, but it is extremely close to the terminal so at least there's that. I should point out, I haven't actually been to the airport in the last couple of years (for SOME reason), but it's nice to hear it's still a pleasant experience. The first time I used rail to get to the airport instead of trax I was constantly noticing how pleasant it feels to not have to worry about a car - not to mention just playing video games while the train drives for me.

As someone who has commuted on UTA trax everyday for the last half decade I have to agree. It's always clean and on time.

I've lived in several large cities in the western U.S., including supposedly pedestrian friendly Seattle, and SLC has the best transit system I've used.

Pre-covid I was a daily public transportation user in SLC. I technically live in South Salt Lake just a few blocks below the street car (S-Line) and the biggest complaint I had was that going north into downtown was so easy I had so many options, but if I ever needed to go east or west (which I did daily! and many people do daily for their jobs, especially call centers) the time dilation compared to driving can triple! Where as north to south it generally only adds on a few minutes and is faster during rush hours.

Idk if this huge downstream and minimal cross streams is comparable to other small urban cities in their suburban sprawl but I found it extra nefarious that there is a large and historical class divide between east and west of the interstate.

I took UTA for 2 years while going to the University of Utah.
It's free for students.
You don't have to worry about a parking pass at the school and I spent my time studying on the train instead of getting road rage in traffic! 😎

Very interesting! I have a video of a Frontrunner ride on my channel.

One of the main problems with Utah's public transit is that the light rail and commuter run parallel to each other for the most part. It would be have been better if the commuter rail run N/S and light rail run E/W.

I am moving here from Phoenix AZ and the UTA already looks vastly superior to what phoenix could ever offer.

I live in Utah and wish we could get rid of trax completely. All it does is allow meth head homeless people from Salt lake to come into the nice neighborhoods and dig through our garbage and steal stuff when we aren't looking.
Public transportation shouldn't exist at all.

you sound sponsored. go ahead make your money.

the people who actually live and use trax daily know the good AND the bad. But sure come to SLC for a few days and call it good. 🙄

Im trying to decide whether to move here or to portland oregon. And mass transit is one of the main reasons for choosing both of these cities. If anyone has any advice on which city is better, i would love to hear your opinions

Good luck using public transportation anywhere else in Utah.

Funny thing is you didn’t have to buy a ticket from the airport it’s free with your boarding pass lol

The old airport had Trax connect directly to the Airport - it is surprising why it was not as seamless with the new rebuild (there was something in the paper about it being left out of the budget for some reason).

I take FrontRunner twice a week when I go to work, driving I-15 is the worst. It is a great commuter train. Would be great to see it expand to Logan and Saint George, but those expansions would probably triple the total cost of it already.

Regarding the Sunday cutbacks, the reason that FrontRunner doesn't run on Sunday (and also why it doesn't run in the early morning) is not necessarily due to demand, but actually because they want some downtime where they can sneak in repairs without the passengers noticing. FrontRunner is a mostly single-tracked system, so repairs during revenue hours are highly disruptive, requiring bus bridges to skip passengers over the construction.

Do a similar video on Dallas and Huston please.

As much as I love public transit there’s been a huge controversy over the development of just the GONDOLA in little cottonwood. It’s because little cottonwood is home to so many classic boulders that rock climbers love to project. Putting a rail line through that would exacerbate that tension ten fold, and is not a viable solution.

Awesome to see! Thanks! I'm curious if the ever-improving system will address the airport situation in the future. I agree with you that because of the weather - but just in general - access to the trains should absolutely have been inside the airport where you don't need to stand in the freezing temperatures. Albeit, maybe only a few minutes, but that didn't make any sense to me. Perhaps they can enclose the area, at the very least?

I only stopped in downtown, and did a little walking tour of City Creek on a drive from California to the Midwest, so I didn't get a chance to really explore. But downtown was nice. I'd love to see this system get more funding, as you mention.

I loved this! I live in salt lake and use the trax and buses quite a lot, and even as someone from San Francisco I find the service to be great, especially in the city proper. The only gripe I have with the system is that it doesn’t run late enough at night, but there has been talk lately about extending services later. As far as the idea of putting a rail line in the canyon, that would be fantastic but the avalanche risk makes it impossible. Little cottonwood is the most avalanche prone place on the continent, so that would inevitably drive maintenance costs and cleanup costs on the rail through the roof. I think the best solution would be to expand further and incentivize more the bus services already in place to get more people on them. They really are fantastic. I didn’t own a car my first year here and I still had no issue getting to the resorts whenever I wanted!

I'm happy you enjoyed your visit to the great SLC. I hope you're able to come back to Utah again and maybe hit the train from Moab to grand junction...

As a local Utahn, I do think UTA does a decent to good job especially for public transportation in the US. You definitely emphasized some of the best aspects/routes of UTA, and presented some interesting/promising ideas for future projects.

Where UTA could really improve is with their bus service. It's far too infrequent. If you want to ride a bus and have it take you where you need to go you really have to plan your day around the bus schedule, and buses are infrequent (hourly at best if you're lucky), and oftentimes late so your planning goes to waste.

One notable exception is the FREE UVX bus line that runs in Provo/Orem about 35-45 minutes south of Salt Lake. Trax, FrontRunner, and UVX (the 3 most recent large UTA projects) have all been successes.

So UTA has done some great things, but we (in Utah, and the US at large) still have a long way to go. I for one am definitely in favor of some of your suggestions as well as some other improved service options that I would be more aware of as a local.

The difficulty with the train is that it would still be in the avalanche slide paths. The goal of the gondola is to keep the canyon open while they do avalanche work. You would need to put the train in a tunnel to accomplish the same thing which would be more expensive and potentially more harmful to the overall environment of the canyon.

Hey I do really like your content. I also live in SLC and it’s nice to hear a positive thing out the city. But bro fix your hair lol

That rail line to cottonwood canyon would almost never happen.... that's due to the residents who live there, it would go through an expensive part of town and nature lovers would hate it. Also avalanches are an issue. There was a proposal for a gondola and that went as well as a dumpster fire rolling down the street. While skiers like it, just about all the residents would be bringing out pitchforks over it... us residents would suffer for it and pay for it meanwhile wealthy skiers and tourists would be the only benefactors. Historic sandy has a bit of a crime issue and some poverty which would bring more if it to there with those residents would resent. Cool sounding on paper, but that's about it.

Part of the reason for a cutback on service on sundays is due to just about everything being closed here on sundays. Also there are church buildings everywhere and people usually walk to church, especially the more downtown you live.
Because people aren't shopping or using much of the rail services, they just don't waste the energy running trains where almost no one is going to use them.
That is due to the local culture here in Utah. Also more people own cars and drive due to things outside of downtown being so far apart and people want to visit family on sundays so they either walk or drive to see family. The workers on UTA also want the day off to be with family, so its hard to also have workers working on the sabbath.
It's a Utah thing.... most people outside of here won't understand.

so they did budget / look into the train line and it's not that much more expensive and better in almost all ways. but not as flashy

Your suggestion for the ski area train, why start at the Historic Sandy Station? There is nothing there. Why not the Expo Station, Civic Center or even South Jordan? Civic and Jordan you could go up through the open space with cut and cover.

I went to salt lake city to visit my girlfriend at the end of last year, I was blown away by how amazing the public transport was. The busses, the rails, the supple sidewalks were just so refreshing.

Good video. One quibble: you compared SLC to Calgary and Edmonton, saying it is smaller than both. This is technically true by looking at the population of SLC proper, but if we zoom out a bit we see that the Utah Transit Authority serves closer to a population of 2 million with light rail service in Salt Lake County (1.1M), and commuter rail stretching from Utah County (~700k) to the south, to Davis (~400k) and Weber (~300k) counties in the north, and of course bus service throughout.

on the subnect of the new seats: the sd70's used on the green/red/s line and the sd160s(the unit's with the sliding doors, not the bifold doors) on the blue line actually had there original seats replaced, they were leather, but uta reoplaced them with the seats they have now.
also, there is transit oriented developement actually happening on the system, just on the southern end of the network (mainly from milcreek to murray north, and from bingam junction to daybreak parkway). the stops in the downtown area is mainly has retail developements taking place (hence the placement of the city creek mall), and there really isnt much in the terms of housing along those segments currently.

for the frontrunner, i'd say the bombardier bilevel coaches/cab cars are a good start to the network in terms of capacity. we did have comet cars , but they were just "there". they rarely saw any use. stadler rail havin a factory nearby is cool, but the only major thing happening with the frontronner is midlife rennovations to the bilevel cars.

SLC is a rather unique city and a lot of the things that work there probably do not work in other American cities. You also have a lot less crime and lawlessness in the area which keeps a lot of older people like myself off of public transit.

I really appreciated this video. I am a salt lake resident and though I do wish a lot of things were better you reminded me how much I also appreciate the Trax system especially. I very much agree with your ideas for improvement and the easiest improvement really is run it like they did for all star weekend. That was some of the best public transit I've ever felt in salt lake city. Just do that all the time