Utah Transit Authority officials are urging people to brace for delays if they plan to ride TRAX to or from Salt Lake City International Airport this weekend.
Delays of 30 to 45 minutes are possible on Saturday and Sunday, while Utah Department of Transportation crews carry out maintenance work on the I-215 bridge over North Temple, which is located over UTA’s green line.
The agency says it will suspend light-rail service and rely on a bus bridge between its Airport and North Temple Bridge/Guadalupe stations. The bus will also carry passengers to the Jackson/Euclid, Fairpark, Power and 1940 W. North Temple stations located west of the temporary light-rail endpoint.
Regular service will resume on Monday, but a pair of similar weekend shutdowns are expected in July and August this summer, before UDOT completes the bridge project in the fall.
Other TRAX projects to be carried out this year
This weekend’s closure essentially marks the beginning of the transit construction season, which includes a few other essential maintenance projects on light-rail and commuter rail throughout the next few months.
Delays are expected along another stretch of the green line in West Valley City, March 26-28, as well by the line’s Decker Lake Station. A bus bridge will carry passengers between the River Trail and West Valley Central stations, creating 15- to 30-minute delays at that time. A similar closure is anticipated for a few days in September.
Delays of up to 10 minutes are expected along the red line later this month, while UTA works on a tunnel project toward the southern end of the Salt Lake Valley. The project will cause trains to share the track between Fashion Place and Bingham Junction stations from March 22 through March 29.
A few other maintenance and infrastructure upgrades will also cause a few other delays this year, but none might be bigger than a project to rebuild the grade crossing at 2100 South — a section of the line shared by all three TRAX lines.
The project, slated to begin on May 24 and last nearly a month, will force riders to use a bus bridge to connect between Salt Lake City and the southern and western ends of the valley. All southbound trains will stop at Ballpark Station (1300 South), and bus bridges will be used to take red and blue line passengers to Meadowbrook Station or River Trail Station for green line passengers.
It’s slated to end on June 20.
S-Line set to begin this spring
Meanwhile, UTA is expected to begin work to extend its S-Line streetcar farther into Sugar House this spring. Construction on the $43.2 million project is anticipated to begin by late April, said Danny Walz, director of the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency, in a meeting on Tuesday.
The agency is working to finalize a funding agreement with UTA over the project before construction begins, as it includes the demolition of some Reinvestment Agency-owned properties in the area.
The expansion was originally supposed to continue along Sugarmont Drive to Highland Drive when state officials granted the first $12 million in 2021, but plans have since changed. It will now travel south toward Simpson Road, before crossing Highland Drive and stopping at the western edge of Sugar House Shopping Center.
Service to the new station is expected to be available as early as 2027, according to UTA.