A Conservative State Builds Progressive Transit

Salt Lake City's strides in Progressive Transit, despite being in the most red state in the United States of America.

Street Films

Salt Lake City is in the most conservative - the most red state in the country - Utah

and somehow, even with very, very right-wing politics they've managed to create this wonderful transit system.

Salt Lake City, Utah

A Conservative State Builds Progressive Transit

Back in 1995 we formed the Future Moves Coalition

and held a conference to ask the question "Do we want to grow up to be LA?"

Everyone said no, and we said "well we've got to invest in different mobilities because the original plan for the Olympics was just to expand the freeway."

We said "you know, we've got to provide light rail into downtown from the suburbs and it will give people a convenient, reliable, and hopefully affordable choice to leave their cars at home."

"And maybe they can live with one less car."

Our light rail is a Cinderella story.

In the last 14 years we have delivered 140 miles of light rail and commuter rail

It's frankly 17 years ahead of schedule.

We're so excited that the public gave us the confidence and the trust to deliver this.

Back in 2006 we all approved as voters, an increase in the sales tax to go to Utah Transit Authority to do the 2030 transit plans by 2015, and we've done them.

It's the fastest growing rail system in America.

Just this year two lines were added. The Sugar Hill line and then the line that goes from the airport to downtown.

We're seeing a huge number of business travelers using transit to get to the airport and bypassing the hassles of having to drive your car, park your car, pay for your car.

Right now we're standing in the corridor that was formerly a railroad corridor.

It was purchased by UTA a few years ago so they could put what you see now, which is a streetcar line

that will go from the Central Pointe TRAX station about two miles East into Sugar House.

Sugar House is a commercial district - the downtown Sugar House is, and then there are some pretty nice old homes around it.

That's what'll go here. It should be done in about December of this year - of 2013.

This area here is for a multi-modal trail; a bicycle and pedestrian trail that will connect two of the major trails in Utah

the Jordan River Trail on the West and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail on the East.

This is our new Siemens low-floor light rail vehicle.

Well-liked by the disabled community because they are a low-floor.

Very functional cars. There's not a lot of bells & whistles to these in Utah.

That's our main premise - building a system that works.

We have great on-time reliability.

Last year we carried close to 43 million boardings in one year with almost half of that being on our TRAX system.

We opened the bike share just a month ago and apparently if you look at some of the stations - they're in great use.

and it provides that kind of connection that people in transit always talk about.

The first mile and the last mile.

Bicycling and transit have always been important to connect to each other because transit trips don't start from your doorstep

they often start on foot or by bike, or even by car.

Recently UTA has agreed to, over a period time, increase the number of bikes allowed on buses from two to three by changing the racks on the front of buses.

Art in transit is a huge part of our portfolio

we're very excited to give back to the community and share a little bit of that local flavor of each one of the stations.

Contrast, Culture and Courage.

There's a symbol there of the American Indians [from] when we built this platform hosting the Winter Olympics.

I think Salt Lake City is really on the right track.

They have a prominent member of the American Planning Association - Ralph Becker - who is the mayor.

When you have a really progressive mayor who is a really progressive planner that's a great combination.

We've done the backbone, but we now need to add the ribs, and the connective tissue, with separated bikeways, with van and bus lanes to feed that rail system.

I think that it's interesting to see that innovative and progressive projects haven't just come from Salt Lake but they've come from conservative communities, from conservative leaders.

For example South Salt Lake is fairly conservative yet you see here evidence of bridging that divide.

We still have a ways to go

we have a lot more services that we want to add to feed the system, to feed the lines.

Bus shuttles, bus rapid transit.

But we're really excited about this opportunity to have opened up all of these lines a couple of years ahead of schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars under budget

and exceeding our ridership expectations every step of the way.

This is a map of the old trolley system that we had

until National City Lines, with the help of Standard Oil and GM tore out the old electric trolley

Every other street had a trolley system.

And then, of course, back in the 1940s they tore it out to create the great American love-affair with the automobile.

Now we're trying to put some of it back.