I have been asked by several members of the community to share the realistic side of the proposals to bring a train into Park City from Salt Lake. Having extensive experience in the rail industry and being an avid reader of various publications concerning the entire rail industry, it is obvious that some of the proposals to bring rail to Park City lack sufficient realism to be seriously considered as viable options.
The first point is that rail systems cost money. By way of example, recent streetcar projects ranged from $20 million per mile in St. Louis for a one-track extension to $50 million per mile in Seattle and Tucson. These are systems where only the surface was disturbed and there was no tunneling or purchase of right of way.
The Los Angeles underground extension from the end of the Blue Line to Union Station came in at about $500 million per mile; and Toronto, Canada which had both surface and subway, came in at $400 million per mile.
If so-called heavy rail is considered the cost skyrockets even further. In San Jose, California, the BART subway ended up costing over $2 billion per mile.
None of these figures include the cost of vehicles, maintenance facilities, environmental mitigation or operating costs. According to the Federal Transportation Agency, which funded the 28 light rail vehicles currently being purchased by Salt Lake, the cost of those vehicles was $107 million alone. Those vehicles are not being designed to cover the grades necessary to reach Park City, nor are they equipped with the passenger comforts necessary for an interurban line traveling the distance proposed to be covered.
I cannot even begin to address the environmental, design and engineering challenges. The line cannot just take a lane of the I-80 corridor. Reducing I-80 to two lanes will not address the current traffic one encounters when going into the canyon in the morning and at night. Finding another route will compel the purchase of property, the use of tunnels and dodging environmentally sensitive areas. An aerial route over I-80 will be much like the JFK Airport-Jamica AirTrain built 20 years ago which cost $1.9 billion to cover approximately four miles.
There is nothing wrong with ideas, especially good ideas. Being realistic, however, is important.
Thomas N. Jacobson
Park City