Reader comments
Ceremony launches construction of West Valley TRAX line

I am thrilled that we are building more rails. Kudos to UTA, local cities, and we, the taxpayers who are paying for this wise investment!

If UTA would lease out their station grounds to private business, these things could be a reality a lot faster (or we could avoid fuel surcharges). Imagine if the intermodal hubs were actually locations where you could do more than just stand around and wait. McDonalds, Starbucks, and Hudson News all available within a 2 minute walk from the platforms. Imagine little kiosks at the Trax platforms where you could grab a snickers bar and a copy of USA Today just as the train was pulling up. How about vending machines at bus stops? Suddenly, just missing your bus or train becomes infinitely less painful because you actually have something to do while you wait.

This is what life is like in Tokyo, except there some stops were full blown shopping malls. We probably don't have quite enough people for the shopping mall station. But a few small shops that will help riders fill in the wait time will do wonders for making mass transportation acceptable.

And UTA can just smile and collect the rent (and spend it on transportation of course).

Nate Daniels is right - they should sublease some of that platform space to vendors. The economic benefits are obvious, as well as the benefits of convenience to riders.

But there's another benefit that we could use: Added safety and security.

I lived in Buenos Aires for a long portion of my life. They have a very good subway system, but it was always plagued by high crime. When they began putting in vendors, crime went way down because suddenly there were employees with their eyes on everything. Now the subway is incredibly safe, and the larger stations are practically malls - I even bought a luggage set at one of them.

Great idea Nate.

Too bad the new trax line to West Valley will probably run down one lance of 21st South. Trax would be infinitely better (faster, less onobtrusive) if they did it over head or underground instead of using lanes of road (like the Metro in DC or the BART in SF). Right now the expansion plan modus operandi is to just add more conjestion to regular traffic and increase commute times. They've totally messed up the downtown area. If your going to do it, at least do it RIGHT!

I second the suggestion to commercialize the stations. Of course in Japan you can eat and drink on the trains (when they aren't standing room only). Is that allowed on TRAX?

This is a good start for what is going to be our future as car travel gets progressively more expensive and the Wasatch Front ever more crowded. I suspect that within about five years all this will be accelerated and there will be new trax lines going up all over the place. It will be enormously expensive, but I'm not sure there will be a choice.

Why on earth is it only going to be completed in 5-15 YEAR???? That's absurd!

Why would it take 78 months to build less than 30,000 feet of track and wire? Anywhere else in the civilized world this would be a one year project !

I really love the Tongan brass Band. They are really great!!!hope to hear them somewhere again!!