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SALT LAKE CITY — The first streetcar line for South Salt Lake and Salt Lake City has a name.
The Sugar House streetcar line will be called the S-line.
“The name both unites the communities, but also the corridor,” Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker said Thursday. “This will be a beautiful corridor for people both to move through, to live by and to do business in.”
The name was unveiled Thursday during a press conference near 2225 South just east of 800 East. The project is a partnership with Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake and the Utah Transit Authority.
“UTA is excited to introduce the first modern streetcar to the community,” UTA Chief Capital Development Officer Steve Meyer said. “This line will run from the Central Pointe TRAX Station to the heart of Sugar House, providing connectivity between business districts, neighborhoods and a regional transit system.”
The two-mile line will have seven stops. Along with the Central Pointe TRAX Station stop on 2100 South, there will be stops on State Street, 300 East, 500 East, 700 East, 900 East, McClelland Street (1045 East) and Sugarmont Drive (2225 South.) Trains will run in 20-minute service intervals.
UTA is excited to introduce the first modern streetcar to the community. This line will run from the Central Pointe TRAX Station to the heart of Sugar House, providing connectivity between business districts, neighborhoods and a regional transit system.
–UTA Chief Capital Development Officer Steve Meyer
Passengers will buy fares the same way they do for UTA. They can purchase a ticket or use the FAREPAY card, which allows customers to purchase a reusable, electronic fare card, load it with cash and use it to tap on and off of UTA trains and buses systemwide.
The S-line is scheduled to open on Dec. 8. Testing begins early next week with crews running the trains at slow speeds. Then they will test the trains at top speed, which is 20 mph.
Along with the construction of the streetcar line, a greenway is being built. It includes plazas and a linear park, which will have extensive landscaping.
It will also include a parallel trail called Parleys Trail. It will connect Parleys Canyon and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail with the Jordan River Trail, Becker said.
“This will be, maybe in many respects, the most critical link in the whole trail system,” Becker said.
The trail and the greenway are also expected to open in December.
“You will see as the design really emerges here in the next few months that we're focused on the industrial history theme, and it reflects the history of this corridor as a neighborhood where it has primarily been a blue-collar neighborhood of honest, tough and really timeless kinds of endeavors,” Becker said.
The Sugar House Streetcar project is funded in part by a $26 million U.S. Department of Transportation TIGER II grant that was awarded in 2010. UTA began construction in April 2012.
