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SALT LAKE CITY — It's "back the future," as the streetcar makes a comeback across the country and right here in Utah. A groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday marked the official start of construction on the new Sugar House streetcar line.
The new line will be built right in the historic rail corridor Utahns used for generations: the path of a rail line from the old Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.
Doug White, a rail enthusiast and the Sugar House streetcar planner, thought it always made sense to bring it back.
"I had a dream one night about having a street car here," White said. "From then on I just took it on, kept talking to people, kept promoting it, got it in the newspaper, in radio and the press, and now we're here today."
A network of trolleys will once again provide a vital service, not to mention a certain irreplaceable charm.
"It was a horrible idea to get rid of it. Salt Lake City had a fantastic streetcar network; and due to the powers that be at the time, they ripped it all out," White said.
In many ways, Salt Lake is rebuilding the kind of extensive rail system it once had. Decades ago, Utah boasted one of the nation's best trolley systems, with line extending outward from downtown in all directions.
If you build it, they will come. You watch what happens along this corridor.
–Ray Lahood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation
"If you build it, they will come," U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood quipped. "You watch what happens along this corridor."
The $55 million project will link Sugar House via a 2-mile line, with the main north-south TRAX line and mixed use development planned at each stop.
"People have been talking about the idea of building a trail along with a new form of rail since the early ‘80s," said Lynne Olsen, with Friends of the Sugar House Streetcar.
White said he had no doubt the the streetcar line would come to fruition, he just didn't expect it so soon.
"It's better than the dream I had of this day," he said.
The new line will include seven stations. The project will take a little more than a year to build and is expected to open by late 2013.
