By Curmudgeon
Two interesting stories in this morning's Salt Lake Tribune, on Frontrunner and the impact it's had already, and the future of rail transit in Utah.
The first article discusses the surprising Saturday traffic Frontrunner carries between Ogden and Salt Lake City. Just about the same number of people as it carries on Monday through Friday [commuter heavy days]. This in particular caught my eye:
Saturday trains carried an average of 7,113 people in June, compared with 7,809 on weekdays. FrontRunner does not run on Sundays.The question is, is Ogden doing anything actively to promote, tap, assist the pleasure travelers riding the rails north?
The train has inspired a wave of intrastate tourism, and as many day-trippers are heading north to Ogden as are riding south to the bigger city, said Paul O'Brien, Utah Transit Authority rail general manager. "People get off the train [in Ogden] and ask, 'Where's a good place to eat lunch around here?' " O'Brien said.
The second article discusses the Wasatch Front's need to invest a great deal more in rail infrastructure over the next decades than in road construction, or we will find ourselves in a competitive disadvantage of significant size. Here's a taste:
The Salt Lake region and the other burgeoning "megapolitan" areas of the Intermountain West need renewed federal cooperation to build more such connections, the Washington-based Brookings Institution finds in its latest metropolitan study, "Mountain Megas: America's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper." If Congress continues to shrink from infrastructure spending and to insist its money go mostly to roads, Brookings scholars predict Utah could sprawl in ways that choke productivity. The Salt Lake region must keep up with 1.5 million newcomers over 30 years.Comments?
