Hopefully I’ll be more accurate with this one!
Last year, Salt Lake City’s UTA ordered 77 vehicles from Siemens, reportedly the largest light rail vehicle order ever in the US. I don’t know if we’ll beat that – I think it depends on whether we order all of our 2020 vehicles at the same time.
1977 marks the year that the Washington State Department of Highways became the Washington State Department of Transportation. Thirty years later, they still mostly build highways.
Initiative 348 also came in 1977 on the heels of the creation of WSDOT and the implementation of a 2 cent per gallon gas tax. It was basically an early version of I-912, the Eyman attempt to roll back the 2005 Transportation Partnership Account (the 9.5 cent gas tax).
Today being May 1st, an important anniversary. 38 years ago today, the final runs of Burlington Northern’s Empire Builder and first runs of Amtrak’s Empire Builder began. Wished Amtrak had started on what is now National Train Day, though. Sorry to bring that date up here, in your themed post.
That’s perfectly relevant. I didn’t know it was May 1st. :)
I almost forgot about it myself.
So, I went to the Salt Lake City light rail website (Utah Transportation Authority) and thought that I would find some cute little paltry system (Tacoma Link-esque) because who would think a deeply red flyover state would make a substantial transit investment. Was I ever shocked….a multi-line and multi-modal (light rail and commuter rail) system that’s still expanding.
I was most jealous of their super robust Frontline (commuter rail) schedule that features Saturday service…and day long bi-directional (city center to suburb) runs with 20-30 minute headways from early morning to around midnight. Ogden is probably way smaller than Tacoma, and Salt Lake is no Seattle…so, how can they possibly do this when it seems to take divine intervention to add a run to our meager Sounder service? I just counted 35 weekday trips each direction (70 total). This is insanity…what the hell is going on here? I would have assumed such feats nearly impossible in places like that.
It appears that lots of their light rail is at grade, but still…holy jeebus crisco.
I haven’t actually ridden in UTA but I have seen it serveral times. UTA started their line with the main north and south link with federal money from the Feds during the SLC Olympics. It proved to be immensely popular so they were able to add on to the downtown east-west line by extending it to the University of Utah campus in the foothills. The final stop up near Primary Childrens Hospital has the BEST view of the sunset over the SLC valley!!!
As for Frontline, success breeds success. The outlying cities (Ogden to the north and Provo to the south)clamored for their own systems. As I understand it, UTA used the old railroad tracks that still exist along I-15 so it was relatively cheap to upgrade the tracks.
UTA does have its challenges with politics. The state legislature is pretty hostile to transit and keeps trying to raid UTA taxes for road money but Salt Lake County keeps fighting them off with help from Ogden and Provo. Sound familiar?
When I was in Salt Lake over the summer, I say an article in the local Salt Lake Tribune about expansions of rail. There was a poll of a representative number of Utahns, and something like 85% or more supported rail expansion. This was not just a poll of Salt Lake City residents, or even people within UTA’s jurisdiction, but of all Utahns in general. The number was in the 90%s when only UTA-area numebrs were counted.
And by the way, the commuter rail is actually called FrontRunner.
As I understand it, Sound Transit is constantly wrestling with BNSF to allow more train service and they’re currently at the contractually obligated capacity until the track upgrades are finished. Plus remember that Amtrak uses the tracks too, and I don’t think UTA has this problem (as Shawn explained, UTA owns the tracks).
Sounder has been incredibly successful and if it was up to ST they’d be running a lot more trains. I’d like to see weekend / mid-day service too, for sure, but unless they build their own right of way that’s going to be pretty difficult.
“….if it was up to ST they’d be running a lot more trains.”
If this is true, I would feel a lot less depressed about our “limited” (but successful) service. I just have never got that feeling…I mean, ST doesn’t advocate this point of view very strongly in their literature. Is BNSF the limiting factor here? With all of the ST money spent on their infrastructure you’d think they would be more cooperative partners.
Maybe they should have used the other (Union Pacific?) tracks that seem infrequently used and run just several hundred meters to the west (at least in Auburn and Kent). The Sounder schedule is not very helpful to those that stray a few steps from temporal conformity.
What is true, is that ST has reached their contractual capacity for the BNSF lines. They cannot put any more trains on the tracks until they complete the upgrades. Also true is that Sounder gets more riders per weekday than UTA’s FrontRunner, despite the (many) less train runs.
The demand for more Sounder runs is obviously there, so there’d be no reason for ST to willingly hold back service.
Dig up some history on the UTA. You’ll find how rapidly their system has grown since the runup to the Olympics.
When I visited just after TRAX was built down to Sandy, they barely had bus service at night, and Sunday service could have been described as something of a Swiss PostBus level (4 or 5 trips, mostly intercommunity service to Provo and to Ogden).
Service to Utah county is still pretty sparse on Sundays. Otherwise the UTA runs service roughly equal to Phoenix, AZ.
I took a look at UTA’s website and they actually have a “contactless card reader” for transit trips. It also accepts contactless credit/debit cards! Can they make the ORCA readers accept credit/debit cards?
It appears to be similar equipment, on the surface I don’t see why not.
Well of course underneath the surface there would be a reason why not, that being how the ORCA project is being administered and its contractural limitations.
The readers on the UTA MAX “BRT” I rode look identical to ORCA readers, but with color screens and little credit card symbols.
DFW is the same way. I grew up there, and moved to Seattle (via a short stint in San Diego) in 1992. When I left they had just started construction on the first leg; I went back a few months ago for the first time in 17 years, and they have a sprawling system, with huge expansions in the works.
I think it comes down to a number of things, some positive while some negative:
(In no particular order)
A). Western Washington’s terrain of steep hills (of loose soil and clay) sandwiched by deep lakes. Many of these other areas have land that is solid and flat as far as the eye can see.
B). They also have state governments that actually recognize that the transportation needs of 50% of the population and 60% of business is a state issue.
C). On the other hand, in many of these areas, policy decisions are made by behind closed doors by the Chamber of Commerce, and the general public couldn’t care less what they do, the few that vote tend to rubber stamp what the CoC decides.
So, in a strange manner, these completely disparate items come together and actually create the speedy implementation of rail, in places you would not expect.
But I’m grateful for that! The more MSAs that use rail, the more change we will have.
BTW: can we get a post on what took place at Friday’s transportation meeting?
77 years ago this picture was taken at the intersection of 8th and Olive:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattlemunicipalarchives/2845660181/in/set-72157607203935085/