Can Olympic organizers effectively move 2 million ticket holders from place to place in 2002 without an east-west light-rail line?
Sure they can.Tom Halleran, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's transportation director, said Wednesday the show will go on with or without a rail transit link between Salt Lake International Airport, downtown Salt Lake City and the University of Utah.
But the proposed 10.9-mile, $374 million extension of the Utah Transit Authority's Transit Express (TRAX) could save SLOC some money and hassle, relieve downtown traffic congestion during the 2002 Winter Games and make Halleran's job a lot easier.
And if it makes sense to build the extension as part of a diversified Salt Lake Valley transportation system anyway - Olympics or no Olympics - Halleran and Utah Department of Transportation planners don't see why it shouldn't be completed before the Winter Games.
"Can we do it without (the east-west line)? Yeah, we can," Hal-ler-an said of staging the Olympics. "Can we do it as well? No. Can we do it as economically? Probably not.
"If we don't have east-west light rail, we will need additional buses to move the amount of people we're talking about into downtown - 150 buses that we do not have in this state. We'd have to find 150 drivers, 150 buses and 20 mechanics."
Halleran, speaking to a group of Utah Department of Transportation engineers and consultants, said he already plans to use parking lots on the west side of the city to help manage traffic flow during the Olympics. Motorists would park in large lots and be brought into the city on buses or, if it's available, light rail.
"I've told Mayor (Deedee) Corradini I am all over that thing. I'm all for it," Halleran said of the east-west extension. "But I can't say that in a meeting like this without qualifying that (statement)."
Halleran prefaced his remarks by noting that SLOC has not taken an official position on the east-west extension. Corradini has been pushing for federal funding to construct the airport-university line before the Winter Games, but time is running out.
UTA officials, meanwhile, are willing to consider endorsing the project if someone would just show them the money. The agency says it can't build or operate east-west light rail on its present budget.
Halleran believes the community at-large will realize the need for east-west light rail as soon as the north-south line is in. But by then it will be too late to build it before the Olympics, and construction could not begin until after February 2002 because it would interfere with the Winter Games, he said.
UDOT planners John Njord and Bob Parry told a separate group of engineers here Wednesday there is no time to spare if east-west is to become part of the Olympic transportation framework, which they encourage. Parry said the east-west line would be a significant component of the Olympic transportation plan UDOT and SLOC are developing.
Halleran is thankful UTA will at least have its 15-mile, north-south TRAX line in place by then. He said it could be the best way for local residents to reach downtown events, including the medal ceremonies that will take place nightly.
"It is a very valuable resource for us and we intend to maximize its availability," Halleran said during the second day of UDOT's annual engineers conference at Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort.
Parry said UDOT already is talking with the Federal Transit Administration about borrowing between 900 and 4,000 buses for the Winter Games.
Halleran, who's been on the job for five months, said it will be another year or two before SLOC has drafted a plan for transportation management. But he said the Salt Lake Games are the first to have begun transportation planning prior to the start of the preceding Olympics (in Nagano, Japan, next year). He said Atlanta's Olympic committee began transportation planning just two years before the event.
"We are going to design a system that fits into this environment," said Halleran, who served as assistant director of transportation for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. "We're looking at every single venue very myopically, one at a time, to see what we can do.
"We are not going to shut this place down for 17 days, 24 hours a day, although we may have to alter behavior at a particular freeway ramp or street."
Halleran said there is an advantage to having Olympic venues spread out along the Wasatch Front. "You don't have a continuous congestion problem" he said.
But downtown Salt Lake City, site of figure skating competition and work spaces for 10,000 media members, will present the biggest challenge, Halleran said - a challenge an east-west light-rail line would help him overcome.