Many of the Downtown Salt Lake City stations are located within the Free Fare Zone which allows riders that both enter and exit TRAX and/or UTA buses service within the Zone to ride with no charge. TRAX Park and Ride lots may have as few as six parking spaces or as many as nearly 1200. Nearly all stations, except those in Downtown Salt Lake City, have a Park and Ride lot with free parking. The program has since grown in popularity, and many of the stations constructed as part of the FrontLines 2015 expansion will include public art in their final design. This was the case as the city was initially the only one to take part in the Art in Transit program. At first the program was met with skepticism initially, only the stations constructed in Salt Lake City incorporated public art into their designs. Works of public art included at several stations were developed as part of the UTA's Art in Transit program. Many of the canopies are designed to resemble the canopy at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (which is located Downtown and listed on the National Register of Historic Places). The stations along the UTA TRAX network are open-air structures featuring passenger canopies for protection from adverse weather. There are 50 stations on the 3 lines of the UTA TRAX system, with an overall length of the network being 44.8 miles (72.1 km). As of December 2012, the network serves over 60,600 passengers a day, making TRAX the 9th-largest light rail system in the United States in ridership. The network consists of three lines: the Blue Line (previously referred to as the Sandy Line), which opened in 1999 the Red Line (previously referred to as the University Line), which opened in 2001 and the Green Line, which opened in 2011. (The official name of TRAX is Transit Express, however this name is almost never used.) Communities served by the service include Draper, Midvale, Murray, Salt Lake City, Sandy, South Jordan, South Salt Lake, West Jordan, and West Valley City. TRAX is a three-line urban light rail mass transit system operated by the Utah Transit Authority (UTA), serving much of the Salt Lake Valley in Utah, United States. Half a star.A map of the entire UTA rail system as of August 2013 With the new FrontRunner extension, there was an opportunity for a fresh look at this map, a chance to create something vibrant, modern and attractive that matched the obvious quality of the system itself. To show for it? We’ve got one of the worst transit maps around.”Īnother anonymous submitter simply calls this map “embarrassing”… and it is. A mere fourteen years later, we’ve seen the construction of a 90-mile commuter rail line linking the entirety of the urban conglomeration in which Salt Lake lies, as well as massive light rail expansion. Salt Lake City has made such an investment in its rail infrastructure, beginning with the initial 16-mile stretch of the Blue Line between downtown and Sandy in 1999. One submitter of this map, Garrett Smith, sums it up very eloquently, I think: Speaking of labels, the “FrontRunner” and “FrontRunner South” labels are inexcusably set in completely different fonts: the former in Swiss (a cheap Helvetica clone), the latter in Arial… look at the capital “R” and you’ll see they have completely different shapes.Īnd why does the South FrontRunner route line extend past Provo when it’s the end of the line? Downtown remains cramped and ugly, while the labelling of stations remains a sloppy, disorganised mess – possibly even worse than before – with some station names now a ridiculously long way from their related station marker (such as North Temple Bridge/Guadalupe). What we don’t like: Almost all the flaws from the previous version of the map remain: the one thing that has improved is the removal of the huge labels explaining the concept of a transfer station. Have we been there? Yes, but I haven’t caught any trains. Quite a few people have submitted this new map to me, and they’ve all been extremely critical of it as well. I reviewed a previous version of this map back in July, and I didn’t have much positive to say about it then – and my opinion has not been changed with this new iteration. Today, the FrontRunner commuter rail system opens for revenue service south of Salt Lake all the way down to Provo, and there’s a new version of the map to reflect this new service.
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