Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski told the City Council on Tuesday that there may be a way for light rail to reach an under-construction terminal at the Salt Lake City International Airport without breaking the bank, but council members wondered why she wouldn’t share more details.
What’s changed? The city previously hadn’t allowed the Utah Transit Authority to contemplate a street-level extension of its airport TRAX line, UTA CEO Jerry Benson said after Biskupski’s Tuesday briefing.
Instead, planners had focused on an estimated $68.5 million proposal that would have elevated the TRAX line so that it met a skywalk to the new terminal, scheduled for completion in 2020. UTA said that was more than it could afford, while Biskupski had stressed the agency’s 2008 interlocal agreement to pay for the city’s chosen designs.
The “at-grade” extension is “going to be much more affordable,” said Benson, who said the airport’s engineers indicated it might cost about $15 million — a quarter of the elevated TRAX plan. “This is a very positive development.”
Biskupski said she was “super excited” about the new proposal. “It will compare very well to any service in this country, and it certainly is better than what we have today,” she said.
But, strangely, Biskupski wouldn’t even tell council members whether the new proposal involved an elevated track, saying that Benson had directed her not to.
Benson said Tuesday that was an apparent “misunderstanding” — he had asked her not to represent UTA’s position on the extension, he said, but not to be secretive about the broad outlines of the plan.
Biskupski’s vague presentation led Councilman Derek Kitchen to repeatedly ask why more details weren’t presented to the council, which had requested more information and had privately contemplated using city funds to help pay for the $68.5 million proposal, when it was thought that the alternative was to stop the TRAX line 1,200 feet short of the terminal.
“Are you aware that this body is entitled to the same confidential information as the executive branch?” asked Kitchen.
Councilman James Rogers asked her: “Yes or no, is it going to be elevated to the second level or not?”
“We have been asked to keep this confidential,” Biskupski said.
“UTA has a board that they need to take this to once it is finalized, with their engineers, and they need an opportunity to present this and try to get some buy-in,” Biskupski told the council.
“I‘m trying to talk to Jerry a little about this, because I’m hearing your concerns,” she added later.
Benson said an “at-grade” extension previously wasn’t contemplated because it would impinge on taxiways on the north side of the facility, and previous Airport Director Maureen Riley had “said it wasn’t acceptable.”
Biskupski told the council the city had gone “back to the drawing board” after Riley’s retirement this summer, under interim Director Russell Pack.
The UTA’s board of trustees next meets Sept. 27.