Unearthed streetcar rail beneath State Street shows the Salt Lake City that was and could be
The Streets
By Benjamin Wood @BjaminWood
I was late to the State Street ghost rail party, since I was out of town at a Boy Scout camp when UDOT exposed the old streetcar line while working on new green medians. As a regular transit user, it was more than a little frustrating to catch up on the local media coverage, which largely treated the buried tracks as the archaeological ruins of some ancient and lost civilization.
It was only 100 years ago that rail travel was ubiquitous for Salt Lakers, as it was for most cities in the Intermountain West. Our country was built using trains—with Utah's famed Golden Spike as the pinnacle of intercontinental connection—only to see those networks systematically dismantled by a many-headed hydra of overlapping attacks, both public and private. For the sake of brevity, just know that it was far from the "free market" at work.
These days, we struggle to expand so-called "fixed guideway" transit. Salt Lake got a new Trax station at 600 South last year, and this month saw the launch of the Ogden Express, or OGX, bus rapid-transit service . Each of those projects took roughly 20 years of planning, lengthy construction and considerable taxpayer cost.
But what if we didn't have to start over from scratch on transit? What kind of city would we be if the streetcars—and passenger rail generally—had never stopped running?
As it happens, I was thinking about exactly that while driving home from scout camp. Utah, Idaho and Nevada are in the early stages of studying whether to restore passenger rail service between our states, and my route home from Wyoming's Camp Loll happened to run parallel to an old Idaho rail line. As the miles rolled by, I daydreamed about how much better the trip would have been were I relieved of white-knuckling a steering wheel for five hours straight, and instead could read a book in the lounge car or take a much-needed nap after a week of stressful chaperoning.
Perhaps we could have had the Scouts' families drop them off at Salt Lake Central Station. Perhaps we could have paid a small charge for assistance with our gear and luggage. Perhaps we could have deboarded in Rexburg, renting an economy van for the final leg of the journey and stopping for a bite at a local establishment instead of spending our money at the roadside fast food franchises that float revenues up the corporate chain and out of the locals' hands.
In that world, driving would still be an option for those who prefer it. But for those of us who prefer not to drive, daydreaming about lounge cars in Idaho or streetcars on State is about as close as we're ever likely to get.
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About The Author
Benjamin Wood
Lifelong Utahn Benjamin Wood has worn the mantle of City Weekly's news editor since 2021. He studied journalism at Utah State University and previously wrote for The Salt Lake Tribune, the Deseret News and Entertainment Weekly
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