Salt Lake City is spending more than $3 billion to renovate its airport. So what’s another $50 million (1.7 percent) to bring TRAX into the airport on an elevated track?
That’s one argument. The flip side is that the city may not lose that much with a ground-level station, and it’s looking tough to get anyone other than city taxpayers to come up with the extra money.
A fully up-to-date Salt Lake City International Airport is absolutely essential for the city and for the entire state. The airport is an economic engine that helps power so many other engines in the Utah economy. Its importance cannot be overstated.
And the renovation, which won’t be completed until 2025, is largely funded by passenger fees and federal funds. City taxpayers only pay those fees when they fly in or out.
Meanwhile, the Utah Transit Authority, which operates TRAX, has indicated it can commit only $15 million or so to building out a station at the new airport. That isn’t nearly enough to cover the estimated $65 million for the original plan to bring TRAX into the airport on an elevated line, which would give departing passengers a straight shot to airline check-in counters without any escalators or stairs. (Arriving passengers, who will leave the airport on the ground floor, would have to ride an escalator to get to TRAX.)
UTA and airport officials have come up with a cheaper option, one that keeps the train at ground level and ends the line about 150 feet short of the terminal. Riders would have to walk the rest of the way under a covered walkway, but UTA’s $15 million would be enough to cover the costs, thanks in part to a willingness by Delta Airlines to move its planes around. Even the chairman of the airport’s advisory board, who once championed the elevated station, thinks the cheaper option is adequate.
The airport can’t just dig deeper into the pockets of passengers for this. Those fees have strings attached, and paying for mass transit facilities is not one of the allowed expenditures. So Salt Lake City would have to come up with a new source.
Honestly, to justify the more expensive station, we may eventually to have to throw in even more money. Specifically, the trains need to start earlier and run later to catch more airport employees and travelers. (Current ridership to the airport is about 1,100 per day.) Longer hours for UTA service should be a high priority for reasons that extend far beyond the airport, but that isn’t even on the table at this point as UTA has struggled to convince voters to increase its sales tax revenue.
It likely will be decades before Salt Lake City takes on another airport expansion. If the city wants the raised station, it will need to base that decision on 2030’s wants and needs. In the current world, the $50 million may be better spent elsewhere.