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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's largest transit operator has big plans ahead of the NBA All-Star Weekend in Salt Lake City.
Utah Transit Authority already waived ridership fares for all of its modes of transportation starting on Sunday. It's also offering some new service at all hours of the day for the first time ever, as well as rare FrontRunner commuter train operations on Sunday. Both the fare-free transit and special service hours will remain in place through Feb. 21.
"We've got our game face on. We're ready," said UTA spokesman Carl Arky, with a chuckle.
Here's a taste of the major service changes coming up this week:
- Green Line TRAX light-rail trains will run every 15 or 30 minutes at all times of the day from the Salt Lake City International Airport to 600 South in downtown Salt Lake City through Feb. 21. Green Line service will also be offered to all stations (including West Valley City) up until 2 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, running every 15 minutes at peak times.
- Service to Red (University of Utah to South Jordan) and Blue (Salt Lake Central Station to Draper) Line TRAX trains will also be extended to 2 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with a 15-minute frequency during peak times.
- FrontRunner service will also be offered until 2 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. FrontRunner has only run on Sundays a few times before.
- Route 2 will be broken up into Routes 2A and 2B, which will run in clockwise and counterclockwise routes every six to nine minutes from 6 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and from 6 a.m. to midnight on every other day through Feb. 21. The service connects downtown Salt Lake City with the University of Utah campus, where some of the events are taking place.
- UTA will create a special Route 500 to shuttle people from downtown hotels to Vivint Arena and Salt Palace Convention Center every 15 minutes. The service will run from 6 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and from 6 a.m. to midnight on every other day through Feb. 21.
The changes, according to the agency, are meant to handle the traffic and parking challenges around Salt Lake County that this weekend's festivities will likely cause because the previous NBA All-Star Game Weekend in Cleveland drew in over 120,000 visitors. At the same time, it is an option that could improve the air quality by taking all those additional vehicles off the road.
Arky said the changes are only possible because there are "a lot of volunteers" who pledged to either work longer hours piloting vehicles or working as UTA ambassadors to help people get where they need to be.
But it also has some riders wondering: Is it possible for UTA to provide these types of enhanced services in the future?
All-Star Weekend and UTA's future
A pair of the changes are actually on UTA's near-term radar. The agency included the idea to break Route 2 in half with faster frequencies in its five-year service plan updated late last year. It's marked as one of the implementations slated for sooner in the future.
Arky said there are also plans for a late-night/early-morning connection between downtown Salt Lake City, the airport and the Northwest Quadrant in the near future but that would be through a bus and not by TRAX. This one might not come as soon.
"We're going to work with the airport. There are going to be some discussions coming up in the months and years to come about trying to provide more bus service along that Green Line area, so that more people can use that to get to work at the airport," he said.
Those are the only major changes that UTA expects anytime soon that are comparable to anything being rolled out this week, he added.
There are several factors that go into these decisions, which are mostly influenced by worker supply and transit demand. For example, UTA cut its ski bus service in half this season because it didn't have the workforce to handle normal operations. Expanding service hours would require that there isn't only high demand in the late hours but that there are enough employees to keep the service running.
FrontRunner's schedule is impacted by a pair of other factors, too. UTA has operations agreements with freight trains to use some of the track alignments for most of the day but not all of it, while it uses Sundays to complete maintenance work that also factor into the regular FrontRunner schedule, Arky said. In short, it's why Sunday service only runs on special occasions.
This is also why Arky believes most service time expansion will come either through buses or UTA on Demand. However, it's always possible that the future of transit in the region will change with time.
"I don't think UTA rules the possibly out on anything," he said. "I think we'll take a look at things and assess them and what's feasible or not."
As for transit fares, Gov. Spencer Cox proposed that the state fund a one-year pilot program to test if eliminating public transit fares can help alleviate the region's growing transportation challenges, which some other lawmakers agree on. That's up to the Utah Legislature to decide on, though, and it wouldn't guarantee that it is a permanent fixture.
For now, Utahns and visitors alike will have fare-free transit service and longer service hours through Feb. 21.
