I don't want to diminish that, from a brief skim of wikipedia this looks like a typical American light rail with vast suburban extensions, "park and ride" stations rather than dense development around station.

This sort of transit just allows for further sub-urbanization and car culture when the highways fill up. It doesn't promote cross-sector density (just larger central business districts), and it doesn't reduce the externalities of the American way of living.

To be fair, this is by no means a mistake exclusive to red states. The WMATA in DC, and LIRR and Metro North in NYC all commit the same sin.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Salt_Lak... Guess the mountains hem it in one some sides; that gives me some hope. Maybe someday it will look more like https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/659/32455034626_dc15a3023b_o.j...

You're not wrong, but underfunded transit agencies taking on highly entrenched land use laws in order to build slightly more optimally kinda falls into the category of boiling the ocean. It's not something they control, let alone have any sort of influence over. But what they can control, they did, and for a red state, they have a pretty comprehensive and rapidly growing rail system that is quite enviable compared to much bluer cities like San Jose or Minneapolis.

It should also be noted that Calgary faced similar challenges to SLC, and they optimized for it in similar ways: optimizing for total system length and highest frequencies per dollar spent, and often developing suburban park and ride stations. And over the last 40 years, Calgary has become more dense as a result. It has become one of the highest ridership per mile systems in north america, better than any in the US, besting even a 125 year old line with significant subterranean sections right through the dense core of Boston.

Well the transit agency cannot change zoning laws, but they can refuse to build the parking lot.

I will hand it to Calgary though. Reading around, it does look like the job density is in the central business district is exceptionally good for such a late-developed North American city. The park and rides don't dent housing sprawl at all, but at least they allow people to commute to the same place. Hopefully that does create demand for dense housing around the central business district eventually.

I don't think refusing to build a parking lot is a good idea. However they should be careful to build it on one side (probably the freeway side knowing how hard it is to put transit anywhere else), so that the other side can develop. They can/should put their stations in places that are at least semi-multi-use as well, meaning the border between zoned commercial and zoned apartments. When/if things get more transit oriented they can sell the parking lot.

I mean if it was 1990 sure. But global warming is kinda urgent and I don't really want to wait for the morons with their zoning?

I think at this point we also need to massively raise the gas tax, pay it back as a universal dividend to avoid right-wing revolution. And simultaneously, we need to build a bunch of transit so people trying to win the gas-tax-dividend arbitrage have a valid strategy. Make the demand, make the supply.

Our political situation doesn't allow for that, but I don't really see the choice? Trying to electrify all the cars is perhaps easier on the American psyche, but much less efficient, and will not help with all the non-global-warming major externalities we need to fix nearly as urgently.

Fight battles you can win. Your way results in transit nobody rides (because it isn't useful to anyone ) and proves you hate cars, which gets you voted out and your taxes repealed.. if you give them their parking lot there is at least enough that some people ride while you wait the 20 years or so it takes to redevelop the area. Once the area is developed take away the parking lot for more valuable uses.