Salt Lake City: A Red State Capital Builds Ambitious Transit

According to Congress for New Urbanism President John Norquist, the Salt Lake City area has the fastest growing rail system in America. And as Streetsblog’s Angie Schmitt pointed out last month, “It’s the only city in the country building light rail, bus rapid transit, streetcars and commuter rail at the same time.”

Since the late 1990s, SLC certainly has embarked on a very ambitious program of transit construction. In 2006, residents voted to invest more and expedite the implementation of the system. This May the city opened its newest light rail line, to the airport, and in December the Sugar House streetcar is scheduled to open.

SLC does have a lot of catching up to do. The region as a whole is still built around the car. In this brief clip, Norquist talks about the lack of transit-oriented development at stops outside the downtown. I also don’t love the gigantic widths of neighborhood streets, which I mentioned in my write up of exploring the city while trying out bike-share. But as Norquist points out, these are all opportunities to transform things for the better.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Salt Lake City, Rising Transit Star

|
On the roster of cities making progress on green transportation in the western U.S., you have the usual suspects like Portland and Denver. But in terms of building track miles and adding busways, the city on the fastest pace might just be Salt Lake City, Utah. Over the last decade, the capital of the reddest […]

American Transit Ridership Hits 57-Year High

|
The last year transit ridership was this high in the United States, Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act. Not since 1956, according to the American Public Transportation Association, have Americans logged as many transit trips as they did in 2013: 10.7 billion. It was the eighth year in a row that Americans have made […]

The Split Between Pragmatic Conservatism and Anti-Transit Extremism

|
In the final installment of a three-part series on Wisconsin’s sputtering tech sector, Bruce Thompson at Urban Milwaukee notes that his home state ranks near the bottom of Democratic-leaning states on the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s “New Economy Index.” If a strong start-up economy is linked to Democratic voting patterns, as ITI’s data shows, […]