'It's mind-blowing'—Free SLC student transit program expanded to include parents after runaway success 

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• Benjamin Wood
• Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall—joined by City Council, school district and Utah Transit Authority representatives—announces the expansion of a free transit program at West High School on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.

CAPITOL HILL—Since he was a seventh grader in West High School's ELP program, Derek Wilhelm has relied on the Utah Transit Authority to get around. In those days, riding transit to campus left his parents free to "work or sleep as needed," he said. But over time, he learned to use transit to access after-school jobs and other destinations inside and outside the city.

"Being able to go to work, school and home, I was able to accomplish a lot independently," Wilhelm said on Thursday. "When you’re getting picked up by a vehicle that’s worth a couple hundred thousand dollars, you must be doing something right."

Wilhelm was something of an early adopter, but he's now just one of thousands of Salt Lake City School District students who regularly travel on public transit. Beginning in the fall of 2022, all district students were eligible for a free UTA transit pass, which saw the monthly number of school-aged riders jump from 400 to 3,000—a more than sixfold increase in a single year—according to Carlton Christensen, chairman of the UTA Board of Trustees.

And thanks to the success of the program, it's being expanded. Free transit passes will now be available to one parent or guardian in each SLC student's household, as well as to school district faculty and staff.

"Getting to school has never been easier, safer or more convenient," Christensen said.

With school buses typically running twice each day—to school and from it—many families are forced to rely on private transportation for things like after-school activities and parent-faculty meetings. That dynamic, by extension, can have the effect of excluding families—and particularly low-income families—from extracurricular participation.

"This is more than just a free ride for our families—this affects their bottom line," district Superintendent Elizabeth Grant said. "More than half of our students are low-income. Every dollar saved on transportation makes a great deal of difference."

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall noted that without the option of free transit, many of the tens of thousands of transit trips taken by students last year would have required the use of a car, adding to the city's air pollution levels and contributing to greater traffic congestion on the roads.

"It's mind-blowing," Mendenhall said of the program's success. "But also, it isn't—because our young people adopt and adapt easier than most of us do after we get our diploma."

UTA has increasingly dabbled in no-fare services, partnering with private employers to distribute passes and with event promoters to count things like concert and sporting tickets as transit fare. In 2022, Salt Lake City worked with UTA to offer a full month of free-fare services in February, an effort that was partially repeated for a little more than a week during the NBA All-Star events in February of 2023.

Data released following each of the Free Fare February pilots showed a significant uptick in transit riders, particularly on weekends and on the system's passenger rail services.

Those free-fare periods also capitalized on major transit improvements implemented in recent years, including new Trax and Frontrunner rail connections, higher-frequency services on key routes and better pedestrian and cycling facilities around bus and train stops, mitigating the so-called "last mile" service gaps that keep transit out of reach for many would-be riders.

"This is changing lives, it’s changing families today and their budgets as they pay for ever-growing costs around gas and ownership of a car and insurance," Mendenhall said. "It’s changing opportunities for our students who don’t have to go home because they don’t have another way home after school."

Christensen noted that the new guardian pass, like the student pass, is not limited to the academic calendar and can be used year-round. In June and July, he said, more than 2,500 students took a combined 62,000 trips on the UTA network. There are a little more than 20,000 students, total, enrolled in Salt Lake City School District.

Christensen said the success in Salt Lake City could be an "example" to other school districts in the UTA service area—which includes all of Salt Lake County as well as portions of Utah County, Davis County, Weber County, Box Elder County, Summit County and Tooele County.

"Clearly, this is a pattern that we as a transit agency—and certainly as a community—hope to see continue," Christensen said.

City councilmember Chris Wharton, whose district includes West High School, said the student ridership data "speaks for itself."

"The impact has been so great," he said, "and we're already expanding it."