Citizen group releases new details on plans to bury SLC’s rail lines
Jul 30, 2024, 7:00 PM | Updated: Sep 14, 2024, 3:47 pm
A shot of the area that the Rio Grande Plan would affect. (Rio Grande Plan website)
(Rio Grande Plan website)
SALT LAKE CITY — A citizen group released new details this week about its plans to bury the rail lines traversing Salt Lake City. It’s part of the Rio Grande Plan, which envisions ways to revitalize the west downtown and Granary districts.
Plan spokesman Nathan Strain said it provides new details about their pitch to bury rail lines downtown.
For example, the plan calls for FrontRunner to run underground from South Temple to 1300 South.
“It would only be 30-some-odd feet deep. It’s not a real, proper tunnel. A trench is something that it could be compared to, although it would be covered on the top for most of its alignment so that the street could continue to exist.”
Strain said the buried lines would create a more welcoming entrance to the city and bridge the east-west divide.
“Imagine not getting stuck behind trains in downtown. Imagine not having all those blocked crossings. That’s the part of this that seems most understandable to people.”
It would cost an estimated $3.8 billion.
Strain said the RGP would open up 76 acres of valuable land for development.
“A combination of it not demolishing a single residential unit and enabling a lot more development means that it would have a much more quantifiable payoff than something like a freeway project,” Strain said.
Proponents of the plan hope to tie the effort to the 2034 Winter Olympics. They believe that if approved, the state could finish it in time for the Games.
The group behind the Rio Grande Plan will present their proposal to the Ballpark community on Thursday.
