Whose trams are the best? Salt Lake City VS Grenoble

I have never been in Grenoble, but I visited SLC several times in the past 15 years. Besides horrible land use policies common to most US cities (there is no density outside of 10 downtown blocks which are mostly office towers), SLC had a very hot and arid climate, and that explains no grass tracks: no vegetation there would survive there without daily watering and water is precious in that area. But given what they had, and general US taxpayer aversity of spending money on transit and construction bids won by lowest competing bidder, SLC made a system better than in many other US cities.

Great video. I enjoyed it

Live in downtown SLC, born and raised in the area. I use the TRAX system all the time. Agree with your judgement, but theres a few things to add context to. First about things that dont really matter: SLC owns a lot of undeveloped/undevelopable land, such as areas of the Wasatch Mountains and protected wetlands to the Great Salt Lake. It also has its airport in its city borders, unlike Grenoble. This brings the population density down a ton, as probably half of the land people don't live on. Next, when including the whole Salt Lake Valley, SLC is much bigger than Grenoble, including all the other towns around it. And thats not even including the Provo and Ogden areas, which are extremely interconnected with Salt Lake. both these areas are their own metro areas, but are commonly referred to as suburbs of salt lake city. a bit less than 3 million live in this area, called the wasatch front, a lot more than grenobles under a million. Every time something like this is brought up SLC is complimented for how good a system it has 'for its size', but that's all just an illusion, in reality the salt lake area is about the population of Pittsburg or Vienna. so basically less than 10% of the salt lake area lives in Salt Lake City But like I said, that shit doesn't really matter, and honestly only makes it worse for SLC. Its embarassing that a tiny city like grenoble made a much better transit system. Another thing is that SLC is a lot drier and hotter than grenoble. Thats why the suburbs don't make the trams tracks look nice and green, because water is scarce, and getting more so.
Finally, you bring up a couple reasons why ridership may not be as high, namely long distances between stops and all the lines being in one area. But I still doubt anything would change if both is done. It's really confusing to me the number of people here that say they love TRAX and want a less car-centric city, but never use TRAX. I'm sure the american public like trains just as much as europe and asia, but they're so addicted to their cars. The #1 excuse for this and the reason why transit lags behind in the US is because it is so much easier to drive. Last week a coworker said they don't use TRAX anymore because it is a 7-minute drive if she just takes the freeway. That is also why transit use in places like NYC and DC are at the level of Europe and Asia: because it is so hard to drive (and perhaps more importantly park) in manhattan or DC. Speaking of parking, theres more parking spots than people in american cities, and theres spacious driveways/garages for every residence. When your car can be steps away from everywhere you can go, why use a form of transport where you have to take more steps. The only way this is going to change is if driving becomes inconvenient again, like it was when transit ruled american cities. The solutions to this like knocking down freeways, tearing up half of all the stroads, and mandating parking be tolled will just never happen, at least not anytime soon.
And then there's suburbia. Generally, for a bus line to be effective there needs to be 20 res units per acre (I will not translate to european). most of SLC fits this, but like I said most of the Salt Lake Area lives outside of Salt Lake. and that is just for buses. train lines need a lot more. The only solutions to this is doubling the population density in every neighborhood. Once again, not going to happen.
On the less cynical side, Salt Lake is making a few of those changes that you've recommended. They added a new stop last year in between two other stops south of downtown, and they are in the process of making other stops even further south. They are also launching a study of adding a new line that goes from the airport in the west to University in the east, which would run mostly along existing lines, but will add new stops. This line is especially needed because right now, if one wanted to get from fruntrunner to the University, they would have to transfer from green or blue line at courthouse to the red line, which then goes to the university. Also in this study is a realignment of the red line to diverge from the other lines in south downtown to encompass the rapidly growing Granary District, which I assume will have a large student population. The University is also making a lot of progress. The U of U is widely seen as a commuter school, but it is trying to build enough on campus housing to house all freshmen that want. The city has also brought up in their long term goals a trolley that runs up South Temple from frontrunner/downtown to the university. Right now this is where the city's most successful bus line runs.
And then theres the Rio Grande Plan, which would put the Frontrunner and Amtrak trains underground through salt lake and get rid of the expansive railyards that separate the West side from the East. It would revitalize a historic rail depot that hasn't been used as a train station since the 90s. The depot building was damaged by a recent earthquake, so it'll need extensive renovations/seismic upgrades anyways. It's a really expensive project but not as expensive as the interstate expansion that was approved without afterthought. This was a project that was created by a landscape architect and an engineer, and has been popularized to the point that the city set aside money to study it. Personally doubt it will happen now that theyre taking public input on the previously mentioned TRAX projects.

I get really frustrated living in slc with trax sometimes like between central point and ballpark stations there’s a noticeable gap where there isint service because trax is supposed to be a regional fast service but then in downtown there’s stops every block. They really need to just pick if they want a local service that serves a lot of people or an express service which is very convenient if you live close to a station or along a feeder bus

Seulement les francais de France pensent qu il existe un rêve américain ( American dream) …. c 'est plutôt un cauchemard américain. Je suis canadien et USA est un cauchemar,d racisme , violence, politique sans décorum , inhumain … rien n' a faire rêver ….je crois que les francais détestent la France pour aucune raison .

Europeans cities are all dense and built for humans with elegance … all american cites are built for cars not for humans with arrogance and egocentricity . 2 cultures , 2 worlds

I love this kind of comparison video! It actually puts into perspective just how similar US and European cities can be, despite their differences. Street design and land use are definitely major factors into what makes a successful system, even if you have all the bones in place. I would have loved a look at the S Line for street design compared to the rest of the SLC network as well.

Worth noting that Salt Lake City does stand out even among US cities for its wider streets and blocks, that come from the Mormon settlers who wanted to create wide streets.

I would love more of these comparison videos between North American and European tram networks! It would be nice to see comparisons with US/ North American cities that have done more with land use and street design along their tram networks, like Minneapolis-St Paul, Portland, New Jersey or Seattle.

i live in slc and a funny thing is they tried to do grass tram tracks near daybreak (terminus of the red line) and our climate in conjunction with general lack of maintenance meant that all the grass died shortly after

The S-Line tram is actually quite decent, and since it runs on old railway right of way, there’s no car lanes, and only bike and pedestrian paths along the route. The city could do three things to make it a lot better:

1. Eliminate mandatory parking minimums for developments along the line
2. Double track the full line to allow 3-5 minute frequency
3. Encourage developments that face the greenway

The current land use along the path is frustrating to say the least. Most building entrances face the opposite direction of the greenway, and the few that don’t are fenced off from it. The Brixton development is the one exception.

Parking minimums mean that new developments are expensive to build due to the required obnoxiously large parking structures, and create large barriers to people walking.

The single track sections (cost cutting by the city) slow tram speed and the low frequency means it’s way easier just to bike. The city sees the low ridership that results from their cost cutting not as a sign to improve the service, but as a sign that people would prefer to drive.

As a Salt Lake City resident, I agree with all the problems mentioned in this video. One of the reasons the individual lines don't have more frequent trams is because in the core where all three lines run together, the trams are very frequent as a result of three lines converging to one. But if they made the individual lines more frequent, it would cause the core of the system to have too many trams and that would cause major problems. This is an additional reason to separate the lines. There is currently a plan to build more tram tracks to the west of downtown which would significantly increase coverage and separate some of the lines. I think one of the best systems of the current tram network is the s-line. It's called a streetcar but runs on its on track completely separate from the street in a small alleyway with a bike lane beside it. The only problem is that it has is terrible frequency. Also, there are actually three connections to the frontrunner, and not just two. This connectivity is good for people coming in from the suburbs or other cities that want to transfer to the trams, but aside from north temple, the transfer stations aren't that good. The frontrunner is great regional rail for the US, it's completely high floor and very fast. They are currently working on expanding the frontrunner to run every 15 minutes by adding new passing tracks, as well as adding new stations and eventual overhead electrification. The problem with frontrunner is it doesn't run at all on Sundays, this is because Utah is a very religious state with the headquarters of the Mormon church. Frequencies on the trams are also significantly reduced on Sunday. Another great thing about salt lake not mentioned in the video is it has a fairly solid bus network. Also they are adding many new bike lanes, most of which are completely separated from the road. Salt Lake is definitely making solid progress, but right now it will be a long time before we even come close to the tram network of Grenoble.

I had no idea Salt Lake City had a streetcar, quite impressed by the network they have built so far.

Can you do Toronto Canada vs Melbourne Australia next?

Interesting comparison but it really highlights the issues that the US has with transit. The Salt Lake City metropolitan area (MSA) is 25,840 km^2 and 1,257,936 inhabitants, the Grenoble metro area is about 2,876 km^2 and 714,799 inhabitants. To even get to remotely the same area, the Grenoble metro area would have to encompass not only the enitre Isère department, but also the neighboring Drôme, Hautes-Alpes and Ain departments, for a total of 25,272 km^2 and 2,120,017 inhabitants.

Man never thought I would see my home town being compared to a US city in an urban planning video ! It's amazing from a european point of view to see how engrained the car culture seems to be in the US. Makes you think twice about complaining "car culture" in France …

I’ve lived in SLC and it was fairly easy to go car-lite. It might not be the most beautiful or efficient system but it hits all the major places in the area, including the airport which is huge. And coupled with the Front Runner, it’s got a lot of potential. But this should really be the baseline for American cities, instead it’s one of the best in the middle US, which is sad.
Side note: research the “Rio Grande Plan” for SLC rail. If we could get that implemented it would be huge for transit in Utah

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