Salt Lake City seeks to convert rail line to bike path

Salt Lake City seeks to convert rail line to bike path
900 South » Old spur would link to Jordan River trail.

By Brandon Loomis, The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:06/09/2009 10:34:20 AM MDT

Where freight trains once rattled bungalow windows and startled sleeping west-siders, trail planners now foresee a quieter traverse.

Salt Lake City has won National Park Service assistance in planning a paved bike trail along the abandoned 2.5-mile 900 South rail spur that separates the neighborhoods of Glendale and Poplar Grove. It would connect from downtown at 500 West to the Jordan River Parkway and then west and north to the as-yet unpaved Surplus Canal Trail at 1800 West, forming a triangular link among the three trails.

The city applied for and got technical support from the Park Service's Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program in Denver.

"Providing trails is very helpful in improving people's health, with the whole obesity problem that all states have," said Kay Salazar, the Park Service planner assigned to the project.

The path passes Parkview Elementary at Emery Street -- about 1200 West -- and some kids could use it to get to school. For now, though, uncut grass, tall thistles and litter dominate the shoulders of the leftover ballast rock.

Just getting rid of those trains was enough for many neighbors. They screeched through the west side, often at night, until Union Pacific abandoned the route to the city in late 2007.

Joyce Gaffney moved into a house by the tracks in 1949 and has rested easier at night since the trains left.

Kids are always throwing rocks from the rail bed into her yard, she said. She wouldn't mind seeing the old rail line spruced up to make the weedy corridor near her side yard useful.

"I was afraid they might put a street through there," she said, and replace train traffic with cars.

Neighborhood newcomer Donavon Brewington walked his son home across the old rail crossing on Emery after school last week. He sometimes bikes the Jordan River, he said, but has to access it by cycle lanes on Indiana Avenue.

"That's a busy street," he said.

Brewington welcomes a better connection along the old rails, especially because the corridor is wasting away.

"I kept telling my kids not to walk down this way," he said, pointing down the rail line, "because I don't really know this area. But now, if there's a trail, it's going to be great."

There is no consensus in the neighborhoods, though. Glendale Community Council member Jay Ingleby would rather fill part of the corridor with new homes than extend the trail all the way west to the Surplus Canal. That's possible along two stretches of Hayes Avenue, where the rail line ran on the empty south-facing side -- already curbed and guttered -- and driveways could access the street. In his vision, cyclists would use residential streets past those stretches and the school.

It might make sense to build the trail west from downtown to the Jordan River, he said, but no farther. Homeowners would take better care of the property, he believes. There is no guarantee the city will hack the weeds regularly. It could remain an ugly menace to the neighborhood, he said, and a place for criminals to lie in wait.

"The trail goes nowhere," Ingleby said. "There's no Disneyland out there. There's no Six Flags. There's nothing for people to go out there for. The trail is a waste."

The Poplar Grove Community Council supports the trail, all the way through.

"We were fighting to get the rail line gone with the anticipation that it will become a trail," council Chairman Mike Harman said. "It's going to be a great addition to our neighborhood."

The city plans to pave the Surplus Canal dike eventually, and Harman argues that accessing it would improve the neighborhood.

"It's not a trail to nowhere," he said. "It's a vital piece in the trail to everywhere."

The city and Park Service are staging a public meeting Thursday to gather ideas about what might border the trail. But the path itself has been on the city's plan for years and is not up for discussion, Transportation Division Director Tim Harpst said.

There might be room in places along the rail line to add homes, Harpst said, but they cannot block the trail. The city decided years ago to place the trail on its plans, he said, and it will span the entire rail corridor. The public can help decide whether to create a linear park or make other improvements next to the trail.

The budget and time frame for completing the trail are unclear, Harpst said, in part because the city still must decide what to build alongside it. It could happen in phases.

Getting people to use a corridor for legitimate recreation often clears up crime, the Park Service's Salazar said.

"People talk about the safety issue in the neighborhood," she said. "Once there's activity along the trail and people use it a lot, it's kind of self-patrolled."

The Park Service grant doesn't include a budget, but such projects generally take a single federal planner about a month and a half -- five or six pay periods-- to coordinate.

bloomis@sltrib.com

What's next?
» Public hearing
» Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m.
» Pioneer Precinct building, Conference Room C, 1040 W. 700 South.

Provo-Orem BRT open house

You are invited to attend an open house to discuss the Provo-Orem Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project’s proposed alignment around the Utah Valley University campus as well as options for a possible interchange at 800 South in Orem. General information regarding this project will also be available. We look forward to meeting you and collecting your input!

DATE: June 18, 2009
TIME: 5 – 7 PM
WHERE: UVU Student Center Centre Stage
Short presentation and Q & A at 5:30 PM

Sugar House streetcar? It may be closer to reality than you think

Sugar House streetcar? It may be closer to reality than you think

By Derek P. Jensen, The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:05/29/2009 10:20:22 PM MDT

A slow-sliding streetcar connecting Sugar House with TRAX could be ferrying passengers in three years, and the line eventually may swing north to Westminster College and the University of Utah.

In a status update Friday, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, South Salt Lake Mayor Bob Gray and Utah Transit Authority board member Keith Bartholomew stood on the corner of McClelland Street and Sugarmont Drive -- the initial end of the line -- to announce the $40 million to $50 million project is "on or ahead of schedule."

The two cities and UTA will spend the next year deciding whether to pursue federal dollars or local funding, followed by a two-year construction timeline. The planned streetcar, stopping every two blocks, would run along a two-mile stretch of 2300 South between the Central Pointe TRAX station on 200 West and McClelland at 1045 East. Blueprints call for enough space alongside the streetcar for a pedestrian and bicycle trail.

"We want this to be a valley project," said Gray, predicting the car will salve congestion in Sugar House and South Salt Lake. "Something that will pull the community and entire valley together."

A 2007 study estimated daily ridership on the line at 2,300 people. The construction plan includes a single track -- a streetcar would appear every 15 minutes -- with potential for a double track if demand increases.

UTA completed a preliminary review last year that concluded streetcars, rather than light rail or historic trolleys, were the best option.

Salt Lake City Councilman Soren Simonsen, who joined the mayors Friday, said the line someday could extend east to neighborhoods hugging the Sugar House business district as well as north to Westminster and the U.

"It will be fantastic," said Scott Clark, who owns a vehicle-detailing and storage shop within earshot of the final stop across from Fairmont Park. "All the Sugar House businesses should benefit."

Bartholomew also told a neighbor who stopped by the news conference on her bicycle that the streetcar's impact on property values would be "substantially positive."

"You might think of this as your alternative 401(k)," he said.

The officials predicted an uptick in commercial development along the line, noting retail density tends to follow streetcars in cities such as San Diego and Portland, Ore. And Bartholomew said the addition could transform the surrounding neighborhoods into "some of the most exciting in the region."

In two weeks, Becker plans to sponsor a resolution at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Providence, R.I., calling on Congress to streamline the funding process for streetcars nationwide. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, already has placed a cash request for the Sugar House project.

"We're hoping," Becker said, "that Congress will accelerate the investments."

djensen@sltrib.com

Gentlemen, ladies -- Stop your engines

Gentlemen, ladies -- Stop your engines
Pollution » Competition seeks to cut emissions by encouraging people to bike or ride public transportation.

By Judy Fahys, The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:05/28/2009 11:11:08 PM MDT


When the Feral Chihuahuas go up against the Killer Bunnies, it could get ugly. Or at least sweaty.

Some teams signing up for the six-week Clear the Air Challenge that begins Monday are serious about the competition. And they're passionate about the goal of reducing millions of pounds of pollution going into the air along the Wasatch Front.

The Feral Chihuahuas are already in training, taking TRAX, riding the bus, biking to work, linking their errands together to cut air pollution -- in short, reducing transportation pollution that makes up the biggest single factor in the Wasatch Front's sometimes-stifling air-pollution problem.

"All of us have been trying to use less gas, less energy to get from one place to another," says Sameera Dharia, Chihuahuas leader and a bioengineering student at the University of Utah.

The challenge is part of the Salt Lake Solutions program created last year by Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and County Mayor Peter Corroon. Their plan is to motivate the community to cut energy consumption, ease traffic congestion and improve air quality.

"This challenge has been designed so there is something for everyone," said Becker.

"There are many people, like me, who already use alternate modes of transportation regularly and there are others who are completely new to it," he added. " The important thing is that everyone makes an effort to think about their driving habits and make adjustments to drive less and drive smarter."

One way to participate is through the "Creative Challenge" for jingles, artwork and videos on the clean-air theme.

Among the examples is the "Don't Idle" jingle by 6th grader Zachary Adamson.

"Paul and Sid" posted a giddy video on the evolution and excitement of carpooling. Another features Olivia, a toddler, singing "The Wheels on the Bus," to her wide-eyed baby brother, Calvin.

People behind the challenge include representatives from state and local government, as well as the University of Utah and Westminster College, Utah Interfaith Power and Light, Utah Moms for Clean Air , the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Wasatch Clean Air Coalition and the Utah Clean Cities Coalition.

Organizers hope to get about 10,000 participants for the clean-air portion of the challenge, which basically means pledging to reduce the number of trips they take in their cars, either by four, eight or 12 times a week.

There will also be online tips and weekly forums throughout the challenge to help people learn, say, how to commute by bicycle or how dirty air affects health. A daily personality profile will be posted on the Challenge Facebook page and Twitter "tweets" will also be deployed.

Organizers hope to see teams challenging teams and people challenging one another.

"We want this to be their program," said Michelle Straube of Salt Lake Solutions.

Heidi Schubert, is organizing the University of Utah Biochemistry Department team. In UTA's Commuter Challenge, the team won its division twice, she said.

This time, under a different program with different rules, she's casting about for recruits. So far, there are about 17 signed up from the 100-person department.

In the warm-up phase, she and her husband opted to do a "gallery roll" by bike instead of the usual gallery stroll. Schubert also has ridden her bicycle to work from her home in lower Sugar House to the highest elevation university building in the foothills -- even though she's four months pregnant.

Although she and many of her friends already calls themselves bike advocates, they also see a larger purpose to participating in the challenge.

"You can look across the valley on any given day," she said, "and not see the Oquirrhs."

The Chihuahuas hope to expand their ranks to 30 people by June 1, said Jenny Esker, an air-quality consultant who has signed up with two teams, the Chihuahuas on the weekends and her office during the workweek.

She likes the instant gratification the online tally provides: a log of trips saved, pollution cut and money saved.

"The extra motivation [of joining the challenge] helps you make it a habit," she says.

"There's a lot of positive reinforcement," adds Dharia, who thinks a party might be in order to prepare the Chihuahuas creative entry.

Chihuahua Maura Hahnenberger, an atmospheric sciences graduate student at the U, has been enjoying the online tips the challenge Web page offers. It parallels her own experience of learning how to navigate the Salt Lake Valley's bus system to her home in Sandy.

"A lot of people don't realize what options there are to commute, to get around the city," she said.

Hahnenberger's even come to enjoy her bus-riding time. "It's relaxing,"

fahys@sltrib.com
Clean Air Challenge Basics:

The goal » eliminate 300,000 trips

To avoid » 1 million miles of travel

To involve » 10,000 Utahns

To cut » 1.8 million pounds of emission

The contest » June 1 to July 10

To find out more » http://cleartheairchallenge.org/

Source: Clear the Air Challenge
How the Feral Chihuahuas got their name

The team's name is a tip of the hat to a couple of members who take in anti-social Chihuahuas and foster them until they can rejoin the ranks of civilized lap dogs.
Factoid

If all Wasatch Front drivers kept their cars parked one day a week, vehicle emissions would be reduced by 6,500 tons per year.

Europe Imagines Its Suburbs Without the Car

Europe Imagines Its Suburbs Without the Car
May 12, 2009
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NYTimes

VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the Swiss border. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where middle-class families from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes. And that, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming. Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.

While there have been efforts in the past two decades to make cities denser, and better for walking, planners are now taking the concept to the suburbs and focusing specifically on environmental benefits like reducing emissions. Vauban, home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life. But its basic precepts are being adopted around the world in attempts to make suburbs more compact and more accessible to public transportation, with less space for parking. In this new approach, stores are placed a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant highway.

“All of our development since World War II has been centered on the car, and that will have to change,” said David Goldberg, an official of Transportation for America, a fast-growing coalition of hundreds of groups in the United States — including environmental groups, mayors’ offices and the American Association of Retired People — who are promoting new communities that are less dependent on cars. Mr. Goldberg added: “How much you drive is as important as whether you have a hybrid.”

Levittown and Scarsdale, New York suburbs with spread-out homes and private garages, were the dream towns of the 1950s and still exert a strong appeal. But some new suburbs may well look more Vauban-like, not only in developed countries but also in the developing world, where emissions from an increasing number of private cars owned by the burgeoning middle class are choking cities.

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting “car reduced” communities, and legislators are starting to act, if cautiously. Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much larger role in a new six-year federal transportation bill to be approved this year, Mr. Goldberg said. In previous bills, 80 percent of appropriations have by law gone to highways and only 20 percent to other transport.

In California, the Hayward Area Planning Association is developing a Vauban-like community called Quarry Village on the outskirts of Oakland, accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and to the California State University’s campus in Hayward.

Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus at Cal State and a leader of the association, says he “can’t wait to move in” and hopes that Quarry Village will allow his family to reduce its car ownership from two to one, and potentially to zero. But the current system is still stacked against the project, he said, noting that mortgage lenders worry about resale value of half-million-dollar homes that have no place for cars, and most zoning laws in the United States still require two parking spaces per residential unit. Quarry Village has obtained an exception from Hayward.

Besides, convincing people to give up their cars is often an uphill run. “People in the U.S. are incredibly suspicious of any idea where people are not going to own cars, or are going to own fewer,” said David Ceaser, co-founder of CarFree City USA, who said no car-free suburban project the size of Vauban had been successful in the United States.

In Europe, some governments are thinking on a national scale. In 2000, Great Britain began a comprehensive effort to reform planning, to discourage car use by requiring that new development be accessible by public transit.

“Development comprising jobs, shopping, leisure and services should not be designed and located on the assumption that the car will represent the only realistic means of access for the vast majority of people,” said PPG 13, the British government’s revolutionary 2001 planning document. Dozens of shopping malls, fast-food restaurants and housing compounds have been refused planning permits based on the new British regulations.

In Germany, a country that is home to Mercedes-Benz and the autobahn, life in a car-reduced place like Vauban has its own unusual gestalt. It is long and relatively narrow, so that the tram into Freiburg is an easy walk from every home. Stores, restaurants, banks and schools are more interspersed among homes than they are in a typical suburb. Most residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts that they haul behind bicycles for shopping trips or children’s play dates.

For trips to stores like IKEA or the ski slopes, families buy cars together or use communal cars rented out by Vauban’s car-sharing club. Ms. Walter had previously lived — with a private car — in Freiburg as well as the United States.

“If you have one, you tend to use it,” she said. “Some people move in here and move out rather quickly — they miss the car next door.”

Vauban, the site of a former Nazi army base, was occupied by the French Army from the end of World War II until the reunification of Germany two decades ago. Because it was planned as a base, the grid was never meant to accommodate private car use: the “roads” were narrow passageways between barracks.

The original buildings have long since been torn down. The stylish row houses that replaced them are buildings of four or five stories, designed to reduce heat loss and maximize energy efficiency, and trimmed with exotic woods and elaborate balconies; free-standing homes are forbidden.

By nature, people who buy homes in Vauban are inclined to be green guinea pigs — indeed, more than half vote for the German Green Party. Still, many say it is the quality of life that keeps them here.

Henk Schulz, a scientist who on one afternoon last month was watching his three young children wander around Vauban, remembers his excitement at buying his first car. Now, he said, he is glad to be raising his children away from cars; he does not worry much about their safety in the street.

In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany. But whether the concept will work in California is an open question.

More than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in the Bay Area’s “car-reduced” Quarry Village, and Mr. Lewis is still looking for about $2 million in seed financing to get the project off the ground.

But if it doesn’t work, his backup proposal is to build a development on the same plot that permits unfettered car use. It would be called Village d’Italia.

FrontRunner ridership sags with economy, fuel cost

FrontRunner ridership sags with economy, fuel cost
Commuter rail » Numbers 31% under UTA projections.

By Brandon Loomis, The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:05/11/2009 07:37:55 AM MDT


Farmington » FrontRunner commuter trains are running 31 percent emptier than transit officials had projected when the line opened a year ago, and even lighter than when high gasoline prices drove waves of riders to the rails last summer.

Then again, highways are seeing less traffic as well in this struggling economy. Where critics see a waste of tax dollars, believers see a down cycle that will end with the recession.

"I noticed today that the parking lot wasn't as full as when [FrontRunner] started," Layton passenger Terry Smedley said last Thursday during his daily ride to Salt Lake City. It was roughly half empty. "But that might be because of gas prices. They'll be back."

For now, though, ridership is well off of last April's opening-day projections, and not just from the $4.50-a-gallon gas days. The Utah Transit Authority still is tallying last month's numbers, but March drew 4,083 riders per weekday on the diesel-powered Pleasant View-Salt Lake City trains. UTA had projected 5,900 per weekday at opening and logged almost exactly that a year ago.

When pump prices exploded, commuters crowded the double-decker cars to average nearly 8,800 in August. With those prices now just upward of $2 a gallon, an $11 round-trip ticket from Ogden to Salt Lake City becomes a closer call.

"It was really busy last summer," said University of Utah commuter Alice Lundgren while riding a FrontRunner train that would drop her downtown at 8:37 a.m. In those days, she said, each of the four-seat pods carried at least two people.

On this morning, the upper deck where she rode had 18 such pods, but only 11 riders.

Despite relief at the pump, highways also are emptier this year. The latest monthly figures from the Federal Highway Administration found that Utahns in February drove 3.6 percent fewer miles on urban arterial roads than they had in February 2008.

Legacy Parkway opened four new lanes through Davis County last September. That cleared congestion on Interstate 15 and gave commuters another option.

Those who stuck with FrontRunner appear drawn to the leisurely ride.

Smedley, for instance, worked a book of puzzles Thursday. Lundgren gazed out the window while listening to something through ear buds.

"Avoid the stress of traffic every day," west Farmington resident Eric Larson listed as his top reason for riding.

The information-technology worker had beads of sweat on his forehead after riding a mountain bike to the Farmington platform. Besides the exercise and traffic dodging, he said, there's the free wireless Internet access for his laptop.

"I kind of catch up before I get to the office," he said.

Larson never rode public transportation into Salt Lake City before FrontRunner.

"A few people at work told me the express bus wasn't that exciting," he said. "It's always crowded."

That dichotomy -- trains, yes; buses, no -- is a constant annoyance to commuter-rail critics who prefer buses because they run on highways with less capital investment.

"Why do we have to subsidize snobs?" said Randal O'Toole, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and longtime critic of rail-transit investments. Express buses running in carpool lanes, he argued, could move as many people for less.

The drop in riders is predictable in a recession, O'Toole said, as is a rebound if the economy improves. Still, he maintains it would be smarter to invest in technologies that make cars and roads more efficient, because people now have many more destinations than during the days when trains dominated U.S. travel.

TRAX exceeded expectations when it debuted in late 1999 and went on to a long growth period. O'Toole argues that's because Utah was entering an economic boom then.

This year, TRAX ridership is off, too, though not nearly as precipitously as FrontRunner. The light-rail system averaged almost 43,000 riders on weekdays in March, down from 46,000 last May and a high of 55,000 last July.

UTA Assistant General Manager Mike Allegra agrees that the numbers are largely a reflection of the economy.

"People are just combining trips," he said, "and conserving more than they ever have."

Ridership on the existing route will get a bump in 2012, Allegra predicted, when UTA finishes the second leg, south to Utah County. Thirty percent of the likely riders projected in feasibility studies have destinations north or south of Salt Lake City.

The federal government paid 80 percent of FrontRunner's $542 million first-leg price tag, and UTA says its $12.29 million per mile compares favorably to Legacy Parkway's $12.23 million -- when considering the potential for future expansion, as simple as adding new rail cars.

As odd as that may sound in a time of shrinking ridership, Farmington Mayor Scott Harbertson said it's coming.

"If the economy turns around and building starts to pick up again, we'll start to see more use of FrontRunner," he said. Already there's evening rush-hour slowing where I-15 drops a lane in Kaysville, and Harbertson sees the eventual return of traffic jams pushing more people toward trains.

"I-15 and Legacy will fill up again," he said. "There's no doubt."

Though the mayor rarely travels to Salt Lake City, he said, residents tell him they appreciate the new array of options.

bloomis@sltrib.com

UTA gets stimulus money for Mid-Jordan line

UTA gets stimulus money for Mid-Jordan line

By Matt Canham, Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:05/07/2009 06:37:18 PM MDT


Washington » The federal government is pumping $91 million in economic stimulus money into the Utah Transit Authority's planned Mid-Jordan light rail line, according to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Thursday's announcement, which included eight other transit projects around the country, seemed to take UTA off guard.

"We are very pleased," said spokeswoman Carrie Bohnsack-Ware. "We just heard about this today."

Bohnsack-Ware said UTA officials were meeting Thursday evening and would present details Friday morning.

In announcing the funding, the Transportation Department said the infusion is part of the $428 million the federal government has promised to provide for the project, which will cost about $535 million altogether.

When built, the Mid-Jordan line will start at the Fashion Place West station (6400 South) and travel almost 11 miles through Murray and Midvale into West Jordan. It will include nine new stops and end in South Jordan's Daybreak development.

Originally UTA expected to complete construction in 2012. Bohnsack-Ware couldn't say Thursday if the accelerated federal funding would impact that deadline.

But LaHood said: "By getting these funds to the Utah Transit Authority now, we're providing a boost that will help this project keep moving forward while jump-starting the economy and putting people back to work."

The federal government will provide the rest of the funding in annual increments through 2013.

mcanham@sltrib.com