The Rio Grande Plan for Salt Lake City - SSP's Biggest Idea

[Atlas]

After the Salt Lake County Council decided to officially support the Rio Grande Plan this week for future study, I think we are at the point now where this deserves a dedicated thread. The Salt Lake City Council also tacitly supports the Plan and the City has funded two official studies.

The Rio Grande Plan is a citizen-driven idea to reroute the heavy rail lines that cut through downtown SLC into a "train box" underground along one of SLC's infamously wide streets. The cut-and-cover trench would hold 6 tracks: three for Union Pacific, two for UTA, and one for Amtrak. Passenger trains would again stop at the historic Rio Grande Depot, built in 1910, and over 75 acres would be opened for redevelopment. 8 grade crossings would be grade separated and 2-3 blocked streets would be reconnected, allowing for greatly-improved access between the two socioeconomically-divided halves of the city.

• Video Link

The Rio Grande Plan was inspired by similar projects in Reno and Denver and was first proposed in 2019 on SkyscraperPage by user Hatman, and in the five years since it has grown a huge following and is now being taken seriously at higher levels of government.

[Busy Bee]

Awesome.

How did I not know about this?

[Atlas]

Some developments over the past week:

• UTA released a plan to build a new headquarters that includes some new station infrastructure. This ignores the Rio Grande Plan but doesn't preclude it. They have been planning to do something like this for ages, so it's not surprising.
• The mayor's staff presented the idea of the "Green Loop" to the Salt Lake City Council. This is a great idea but partly involves rebuilding 500 West to be a linear park, which sounds great but means it could turn into a "sunk cost" and obstacle for the Rio Grande Plan.
• The SLC Redevelopment Agency staff presented the idea of a new Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zone (HTRZ) which would encompass the lands to the west of the Depot and would give a large portion of the tax increment financing to developers. This is an example of giving public money to developers because the site is otherwise not attractive enough to build on. The Rio Grande Plan, on the other hand, would remove many of the barriers that have prevented more natural investment in the area.

All three of these things are not great news for the Rio Grande Plan. However, with the recent support of the Salt Lake City Council and many hundreds letters of support to elected officials, the Rio Grande Plan is far from out of the question. This article from today puts the case succinctly.

The path to getting this done has never been straightforward!

• Video Link