City leaders and Utah Transit officials are teaming up to conquer suburban sprawl and gridlock.

Cities along the Wasatch Front are taking the first step in that effort by clustering high-density urban villages along the light rail that cuts through the heart of Salt Lake Valley.

"The quality of life we want is not going to happen if we rely totally on the road system," Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan said. "Light rail development will bring a legitimate lifestyle change along the Wasatch Front."

Alice Steiner, UTA consultant, said that change will relieve highway congestion with increased TRAX ridership and by spreading activity centers throughout the valley instead of cramming them all in downtown Salt Lake.

The trend of focusing commercial and residential town centers at transit stations is catching on quickly, Steiner added, with every city along the light rail line planning for some type of transit-oriented development. Even cities such as Layton and West Jordan are laying the groundwork for transit enclaves in anticipation of light rail extensions in Davis County in 2007 and in West Jordan by 2013.

"It can create psychological anchors and nodes where people recognize the valley not as this amorphous mass of stuff," Steiner said. "We're essentially bringing a center to their city."

Those city hubs are not small endeavors, added Tim Watkins at Envision Utah. In fact, there are 56,000 acres of land within a half mile of all TRAX stations. That acreage, which makes up about 24 percent of Salt Lake Valley's developable land, has the potential to create a substantial corridor along the Wasatch Front offering jobs, shopping and homes at every stop.

That line of possibility, Watkins added, will clear up the highways as more people use mass transit because they live and work within walking distance of the train. Dispersing economic centers along the light rail will also alleviate the traffic funneled into Salt Lake every day, he said.

"Not everyone can work in Salt Lake City or our traffic problems will get worse," Watkins said. "We are connecting communities to these transit links so together we can reach some incredible regional benefits."

Although new developments along the rail will create new job sources and retail destinations, Downtown Alliance Director Robert Farrington is hopeful the "faux urban developments" don't siphon away jobs and shoppers from downtown Salt Lake.

"There's always those centrifugal forces that are pulling things away from the core," he said. "But Salt Lake will still be the only place where all these lines converge."