Passenger Trains > Salt Lake City's Sugarhouse Streetcar

I was in Salt Lake City for work about a week and a half ago and finally got over to the Sugarhouse Streetcar, which has intrigued me since it was built. This is a small, single track line (with one passing siding), that follows the ROW of an old freight branch. Despite the modern SD100 LRV it has the look and feel of an ancient interurban.

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one last one

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Thanks for sharing the great photos. And the entire trackage is paved concrete?

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublicatiions.com

Yes, all two miles of the ROW (3.22km) are concrete. Great for streetcars, walking, bicycling and such.
And, the urban planners have created an "awesome greenway" within the space. Feels good just to read about it.
https://land8.com/from-forgotten-rail-line-to-awesome-greenway/

This sounds like they built a streetcar just because they had unused ROW. Was the streetcar part necessary, when they could’ve just converted it to a multi-use trail?

Posted from iPhone

But why would pedestrians and bicyclists be sharing the same right-of-way as the street cars? That sounds unsafe.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com


Lurch_in_ABQ Wrote:
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> Yes, all two miles of the ROW (3.22km) are
> concrete. Great for streetcars, walking, bicycling
> and such.
> And, the urban planners have created an "awesome
> greenway" within the space. Feels good just to
> read about it.
> https://land8.com/from-forgotten-rail-line-to-awes
> ome-greenway/

wabash2800 Wrote:
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> But why would pedestrians and bicyclists be
> sharing the same right-of-way as the street cars?
> That sounds unsafe.

They might have to clean more than bugs off of the windshield.

The first shot looks like a modern streetcar photo-shopped onto an old right of way.  I hope it's well-patronized.

mapboy

wabash2800 Wrote:
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> But why would pedestrians and bicyclists be
> sharing the same right-of-way as the street cars?
> That sounds unsafe.
>
> Victor A. Baird
> http://www.erstwhilepublications.com
>

They don't, if you look close in the second photo you can see an asphalt pathway on the right. That's the pedestrian walkway that follows the track along the corridor. As for why the train tracks are in concrete, I don't know. But it's not so people can walk or ride their bike along them.

The plan is to extend the track via street running past the current end of the line in Sugarhouse. But the neighbors are quite vocal in their opposition. Which does make sense as the preferred route is on a narrow street when a much wider street is available just a couple of blocks to the east. But then again, UTA (which is having a name change) isn't known for always making the best decisions.

Nathan

atsf121 Wrote:
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> They don't, if you look close in the second photo
> you can see an asphalt pathway on the right.
> That's the pedestrian walkway that follows the
> track along the corridor.

Where is the pathway in the first and fourth images?

Jack

Probably easier to reclaim this right-of-way as a light rail corridor now than allow it to revert to a trail and then try to convert it back to light rail later.

ts1457 Wrote:
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> atsf121 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > They don't, if you look close in the second
> photo
> > you can see an asphalt pathway on the right.
> > That's the pedestrian walkway that follows the
> > track along the corridor.
>
> Where is the pathway in the first and fourth
> images?
>
> Jack

Hey Jack,

In image #4, if you look really close on the left side in front of the black truck there's an opening in the black fence in front of the truck. The trail has dropped down behind the bushes to connect to the street, there are a few connections like that along this route. Some of the grid streets didn't cross the old railroad tracks, and they left it that way when the streetcar line was put in. But they did add connections to the pedestrian trail.

In image #1, erielakawanna was standing on West Temple looking east. I forgot that the trail, called Parley's Trail from what I just looked up, ends about a block or two to the east, in the back of the photo. It was supposed to run the entire length of the corridor, cross the Trax Blue/Red line where the Green line comes in from the west and the Sugarhouse Streetcar comes in from the east, and then connect to a new pedestrian bridge that follows the Trax Green line over the top of Roper yard which is about a mile west of where erielakawanna was standing. I don't know what happened to that part of the connection between the Roper yard bridge and the rest of Parley's trail, it's supposed to connect up to Parley's Canyon at the eastern edge of the Salt Lake valley where I-80 heads up to Park City. Maybe they ran out of money, or they plan to finish it later. I'll have to do some digging and see if I can find out what happened. Haven't ridden that trail yet on my bike, might have to one of these days.

Nathan