What could the future of public transportation in Utah look like over the next 25 years? On March 15, the Utah Transit Authority released its new long-term planning document, UTA Moves 2050.
It includes increased frequency of existing bus and rail lines, a future TRAX light rail line from the University of Utah to the Salt Lake City International Airport and expanding FrontRunner commuter rail by double-tracking much of the line and expanding into southern Utah County.
But the virtually guaranteed 2034 Winter Olympics is not mentioned at all.
The International Olympic Committee is expected to announce the 2034 host city in July. Utah’s deadline for assurances has arrived and its chances are about as good as they can be. The state has the only bid recognized by the IOC, so unless something drastically changes, the games will be coming back in the next decade.
Although UTA Moves 2050 does not mention the Olympics, it’s still on the mind of long-range and strategic planning manager Alex Beim.
“This [plan] is meant to be sort of a roadmap, if you will, of a list of projects that we're considering over the next 30 years,” he said. “But it's not meant to constrain our ability to make adjustments.”
The next official update to the plan isn’t until 2027, but a future Olympics could certainly “see things move up quicker or something move up and something move farther back [in their priorities].”
“It doesn't mean that we won't be planning and thinking about things that might need to shift in the meantime.”
Being the host city for the 2034 Winter Olympics could also open up new lines of funding from the state and federal governments.
According to Beim, any increase in funding would likely go toward smaller projects first and expanding existing services to seven days a week.
Enhancements like that could motivate University of Utah student Jacob Moeller to ride transit more than a few times a week.
“It gets crowded sometimes, but everyone's got to get somewhere so you can't get too mad about it. Maybe they could add a couple more [buses or trains] at night time.”
Moeller rides transit usually twice a week to class or downtown to catch a Jazz game. The one thing he isn’t too keen on yet is using transit for daily errands.
“I wouldn't want to be on a TRAX train with, like, multiple bags full of groceries,” he said.
“If there was a way to have more room for everyone… If they kept it open longer and had more frequent trains, then I think that's probably the thing that would be most important to get more people on it, using public transport.”
Once frequency and ridership issues can be boosted, Beim said more ambitious projects like high-speed rail, even more FrontRunner or TRAX lines, or train service to the Wasatch Back might be seriously considered.
They have visions of what they want to do “should funding become available,” Beim said. “But of course, we also want to talk specifically about things that we think that we can do with reasonable financial assumptions of what we think might happen over the next 30 years.”
