History repeats itself
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Sunday, June 24, 2007 | 
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Charles F. Trentelman
Standard-Examiner staff
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By Charles F. Trentelman
Standard-Examiner staff
OGDEN -- The turn of the last century saw communities north of Salt Lake City enjoying booming economies as the railroads connecting them with the state's capital were completed.
Ogden was already a national rail hub and center of commerce. Farmers and ranchers from around the state brought their produce to Ogden for shipment to the rest of the nation.
What tied Utah together was a series of shorter railroads connecting various parts of the state with Ogden and the world.
Farmers, ranchers, coal mines and other Utah industries all moved their products to market by rail because there were few improved roads and no large trucks.
The final link -- commuter and passenger service -- tying the state together socially and politically was finished in late July 1908 when the Salt Lake & Ogden Railway, which eventually became known as the Bamberger Electric Railroad, finished its first line to Ogden.
The Bamberger, in turn, became the central part of an interurban rail system that extended to Preston, Idaho, north of Logan. This allowed someone who didn't own a car in the 1920s to travel across a major part of the state at present-day highway speeds.
Then the automobile -- and post-war interstate highways-- changed everything.
The national railroads survived, but smaller ones died. Trucks and cars became kings. The final Bamberger passenger cars ran in September 1952. By 1958, the entire line was sold and gone.
Coming full circle
Now, with the turning of another century, history is being repeated.
When Utah Transit Authority's FrontRunner comes to the Top of Utah next year, possibly as early as June, it will be 100 years, almost to the day, when that first Bamberger train hit town.
Like Bamberger's train, FrontRunner will carry economic change as well as passengers.
There are differences, of course.
When Simon Bamberger was building his railroad, he was competing with the existing Union Pacific and Denver & Rio Grande Western railroads for high-speed passenger and freight service between Salt Lake City and Top of Utah communities.
At that time, there was little between those two cities. Davis County was farmland. One reason Bamberger built Lagoon was to provide customers with a destination at the north end of the line when rail construction stalled in Farmington in 1895.
FrontRunner, now at Farmington and building north, is entering a completely different world. The communities it is growing into have vastly different hopes for it.
Instead of farms, it will pass a series of growing cities and spreading suburbs. Bevies of city officials hope to capitalize on it for rail hubs in their cities rather than depend on it to provide a way to get produce to market and shoppers into the cities.
Spurring growth
The hope is those rail hubs will spur commerce and city development, reversing the trend of urban flight the automobile made possible. Cities are building a series of commercial centers along the Wasatch Front connected, again, by rail.
The new rail heading north has a substantial push behind it.
Salt Lake City pioneered Utah's urban rail with its TRAX system in 1999, which, from the start, confounded skeptics with more ridership than projected. It played a key role in moving hundreds of thousands of people a day during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
UTA quickly expanded TRAX to a 19-mile, 23-station system that carries as many as 55,000 passengers a day. Spurred by voter-approved tax increases, UTA set plans to build another 26 miles of light rail, 88 miles of heavy commuter rail line and 40 more station stops.
The New York Times, in an article on Utah's booming rail development, said only Denver, which is building a 151-mile system, is building more.
That same article quoted Gloria Ohland, vice president of communications at Reconnect America, saying that new demographic trends are behind much of the growth.
"American households are older, smaller and more diverse. Singles are 41 percent of the population. People who are single and couples that have no children -- those are the people who gravitate to cities."
Utah has other forces as well. Rising gasoline prices, coupled with a predominantly lower wage than the national average, make car travel more expensive.
Plus, the state's 1.7 million registered vehicles are running out of places to drive.
The four-year expansion of Interstate 15 in Salt Lake County before the 2002 Olympic Games has already seen its added capacity filled by new demand. I-15 in Davis County, which 20 years ago was an easy drive any time of the day, is now, regularly, a parking lot.
UNreadable subhed
Faced with that, communities along the new rail corridor are looking inward and planning big.
Farmington officials have their eyes on a 1 million-square-foot retail development around their FrontRunner stop, which would double the city's retail space.
Called Station Park, the development is under way, scheduled for completion in 2009, and will include a mix of small and large shops, housing and office space.
Harkening back to Bamberger's Lagoon, city officials say they hope the new development will also serve as a destination for Davis County shoppers.
Cities in Weber County have great hopes for the new rail line. This is especially true of Ogden, which has been undergoing a massive central-city redevelopment push.
Chief Planner Greg Montgomery said Ogden doesn't have a lot of commercial development around its intermodal hub yet, but is setting aside green space for future growth.
A bigger goal, he said, is for the intermodal hub to serve as a center of the city's new commercial development. It will be two blocks from the new Junction development, he said, and two blocks from Historic 25th Street.
"That's why Ogden is at a unique advantage," he said. "You get to the center of things. You don't have to worry, 'Once the train drops you off here, how do I get somewhere?' The train gets you right there."
The northern terminus of FrontRunner is in Pleasant View. City Planner Bruce Talbot said his city sees the station as both a commuter asset -- to let residents who work in Salt Lake City get to work more easily -- and a commercial draw.
"It's certainly something the home builders and developers are doing," he said.
The station is right in the middle of Pleasant View's only commercial corridor, bordering I-15 and U.S. 89, so "our primary focus is to capitalize on it for commercial development, and we're definitely using that. Coupled with that is the aspect of, your employees and owners could live in this area and have a quick and easy way to get to other things."
The prospect has set off a flurry of development, he said.
"We've certainly had a significant amount of activity. Developer after developer has called the city and said, 'Hey, where can I go and what can I do?' "
Representatives of "all of the big-box stores, Wal-Mart on, Lowe's, Target, Home Depot, just about everybody has been represented. I've had probably 15 meetings with developers in the last six months."
In short, he said, "We're not unhappy."
StandardNET Extra: An interactive showing the progress the Top of Utah has seen and will see in 2007.
See the interactive
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