UTA expects these transit projects to be ready before the 2034 SLC-UT Olympics

A UTA Trax train travels through Salt Lake City on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Salt Lakers woke up Wednesday morning with the official news — the Olympics are returning to their city in the winter of 2034.

The event was transformative for Salt Lake City prior to 2002, when it hosted its first Games. The city sees the legacy of organizing those games in its light rail transit and road improvements, changing how residents moved through its grid system.

With a new date for the games on the horizon, the Utah Transit Authority has already determined a few projects slated to be ready by 2034 in its Long Range Transit Plan , including enhanced FrontRunner service and a new Salt Lake City TRAX line.

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“Since (the 2002 Winter Games), UTA has transformed. We’ve expanded the TRAX network, connected the Wasatch Front with FrontRunner commuter rail, and implemented clean-air electric buses,” the authority said in a news release. “And we’re not stopping there.”

Salt Lake City is expected to run the “most compact Olympic Games ever,” Gavin Gustafson, senior public information officer at UTA said, with the possibility of hosting all games within a one-hour distance from the city. While most of the transit infrastructure is already in place, some improvements are still needed and have been planned before the bid became official.

One of them is increasing the frequency of the FrontRunner to get service every 15 minutes, up from the current 30 minute service. The FrontRunner is also expected to start running on Sundays and extend its service south of Provo to Payson. UTA is planning on achieving that pace by adding tracks in segments of the train’s path.

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“We need to do double tracking so that we can still do maintenance like we do on Sundays right now, but we can do maintenance while the train is running,” Gustafson said. “That’ll allow us to do Sunday service. So that’s already in the works and in plans and in progress.”

Those improvements are part of the first phase of UTA’s plan, which is scheduled to be completed by 2032.

Phase one also includes plans for a new Orange TRAX line connecting the Salt Lake City International Airport and the University of Utah’s Research Park. An express bus line from 5600 West Old Bingham Highway station in West Jordan will also connect to the airport by 2034, according to the UTA news release.

The Midvalley Express rapid bus line, connecting the Murray Central Station through Taylorsville to West Valley, is also planned to be ready, potentially making connections to Olympic venues, Gustafson said.

The Davis-Salt Lake City Community Connector , a 26-mile bus rapid transit system between southern Davis County and northern Salt Lake County, may also be ready in time for the Olympics.

“Everything is going to be connected, obviously, to that main spine of the FrontRunner and the blue and the red (TRAX) lines, ” Gustafson said. “And then from there you can get everywhere.”

Though the plan extends to 2050, UTA expects to update it in 2027.

While in Gov. Spencer Cox’s view, Utah could be equipped to host the Games in six months with the already existing venues, leadership, volunteers and transportation systems, he said during his monthly news conference broadcast by PBS Utah in July that transportation is one of the things Utah can improve as it grows.

“Those kinds of east-west corridors are not as strong as the north-west corridors, north-south corridors. We want to make sure that we’re expanding transit wherever we can,” Cox said. “And maybe hastening some of those transit projects that would make sense.”

In addition to those corridors, Cox’s wish list for transportation plans include trail projects to allow commuters move from one city to another walking, running or biking.

“E-bikes are a big thing now. (We want to) give people an opportunity to transit in new and different ways. Making sure we have safe paths for them, I think, is going to be very foundational to what we’re doing,” Cox said.

During the news conference on July 19, Cox said he hadn’t had any talks with the federal government ahead of the official Wednesday vote, but he hopes to open up the discussions in the future.

“It’s not just Utah winning the Olympics, it’s the United States of America winning the Olympics, and we get to represent this country to the rest of the world,” Cox said. “And historically, the country has played a role in helping us to get ready for those, and so we’ll have those conversations with the Secretary of Transportation and others once we secure the actual bid.”

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