The streetcar South Salt Lake
Two miles of tram, and most of it is this city's
The S-Line, read from this end of the track.
Utah's first modern streetcar opened on 8 December 2013 and is almost always written about from the far end. From this end it is a local service: four of its seven platforms sit inside South Salt Lake, it runs every fifteen minutes on a weekday on the ordinary transit fare, and its western terminus is the one station in the state where three light rail lines meet a tram. Here are the stops, the times, the park beside the track and the works at the far end.
Southern Utah is my home turf. South Salt Lake is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
Four of the seven stops are inside a city of under seven square miles.
Almost everything written about the S-Line is written from the other end of it. The line opened on 8 December 2013 as Utah's first modern streetcar, it is generally described as a Sugar House amenity, and the photographs are usually taken at the far terminus. From this end it is something else entirely: a local service with four platforms inside one small city, running two miles of route on 2.74 miles of track, at a top speed of 25 miles an hour, from a junction that does not exist anywhere else in the state.
The four stations here are Central Pointe, South Salt Lake City, 300 East and 500 East. The three at the far end, 700 East, Sugarmont and Fairmont, are in Salt Lake City. That split is the single most useful fact on this page, because it means a South Salt Lake address is far more likely to be within a walk of a streetcar platform than the coverage suggests, and because it explains why the eastern half of this city reads as transit connected on a map without any TRAX line running through it.
Central Pointe is where it gets genuinely unusual. All three TRAX lines meet there, so the streetcar's western terminus is also the one platform in Utah where you can change to a train for downtown, for the university, for the airport, for West Valley, for Draper or for Daybreak without leaving the station. A city with a two mile tram in it is a curiosity. A city where that tram meets three light rail lines is a different proposition.
The S-Line in numbers
8 Dec 2013
the day it opened, as Utah's first modern streetcar
2 miles
of route, on 2.74 miles of track
15 minutes
the weekday headway; 30 at weekends
about 10
minutes end to end, at a 25mph top speed
The stops
Seven platforms, and what each one is actually for.
Two miles is short enough that the stops are close together and the differences between them are about what is beside them rather than about distance. Here they are in order from this city outwards.
| Station | Which city | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Central Pointe | South Salt Lake | The western terminus and the interchange with all three TRAX lines. The mural district, the taproom blocks and the 650 capacity music hall are all walkable from it |
| South Salt Lake City | South Salt Lake | The second platform, in the heart of the redevelopment corridor along the northern edge of the city |
| 300 East | South Salt Lake | The middle of the line and the western end of the double track section built in 2019 |
| 500 East | South Salt Lake | The last platform inside this city, on the residential spine that also carries the park and the county library further south |
| 700 East | Salt Lake City | The first platform in the neighbouring city, and the western end of the new double tracking being built as part of the extension |
| Sugarmont | Salt Lake City | A neighbourhood platform in the neighbouring city's shopping district |
| Fairmont | Salt Lake City | The current eastern terminus, and the point beyond which the line is being extended |
Station list and city allocation as published by UTA, checked 7 August 2026. Four of the seven are inside the South Salt Lake boundary; the three in Sugar House belong to Salt Lake City and are covered on that city's own companion.
The 2019 double track is why the fifteen minute service exists. The line was built with a single track for much of its length, which caps how often a tram can run. A section between 300 East and 500 East was doubled in early 2019 at a reported cost of about 5.9 million dollars, and that piece of engineering is what allows the current fifteen minute weekday headway. It is also why the current extension works include new double track between 500 East and 700 East: frequency on a streetcar is a track problem before it is a timetable problem.
The park it runs through
A linear park with a tram inside it.
Beside the tracks for about a mile runs the S-Line Greenway, and it is the part of this line that a visitor is most likely to remember. It was built as a linear park rather than as a landscaping afterthought: plazas, public art, paved paths, a bocce court and a section of Parley's Trail, put together jointly by two cities, by UTA, which owns the corridor, and by the trails coalition that pushed for the route. The result is a strip of park with a working tram running down the middle of it, which is an arrangement you can count the examples of on one hand.
Parley's Trail itself runs eight miles from the mouth of Parley's Canyon to the Jordan River, and South Salt Lake publishes 2.6 of those miles inside its own boundary. That means the greenway is not a decorative loop; it is a built segment of a genuine cross valley route, and walking or riding east or west from any of the four city platforms puts you on it.
The practical value of this is a February one. A paved, lit, level path that is also a transit corridor works in weather that closes softer routes, and it works at hours when a canyon trail does not. For a household in the northern half of this city it is the single most usable piece of outdoor infrastructure in reach, precisely because it asks nothing of the season.
The greenway is the rare piece of transit landscaping that people use on days they are not catching anything.
What is changing
The line is being extended, and the work runs into 2027.
This is the one part of this page that will go out of date, so it is dated and attributed. Everything below is UTA's published position as of 7 August 2026 and should be checked against current works information before you plan a journey around the eastern end.
| What is published | What it means for a rider | |
|---|---|---|
| The extension | A new station at Simpson Avenue and Highland Drive, beyond the current eastern terminus | The line gets longer at the far end. Nothing about the four South Salt Lake platforms changes |
| The construction window | Spring 2026 through summer 2027 | Works are live now. Expect lane and access impacts at the eastern end rather than here |
| Service start | Around autumn 2027 | The new station is not usable before then, whatever a mapping app shows |
| New double track | Between 500 East and 700 East, as part of the same programme | Track capacity between this city's last platform and the neighbouring city's first |
| Service during works | UTA has said the S-Line keeps running through construction | The line is not shut, but check current information before relying on the far stops |
As published by UTA and correct on 7 August 2026. Dates on a multi year rail project move, so treat this table as a record of the published plan rather than as a promise about any particular month.
This work is at the far end of the line, not at this end. The extension is entirely beyond the current eastern terminus, in the neighbouring city. The four platforms inside South Salt Lake are not being moved, closed or rebuilt as part of it. If you read about S-Line construction and you are weighing an address on this side, the honest answer is that the disruption is somebody else's and the extra station is a small gain at the far end of a two mile line.
Using it
What a two mile tram is actually good for.
Be honest about the scale first. Two miles end to end in about ten minutes is not a commuter railway and it does not pretend to be. What it is good for is the last mile: getting from a residential street in the eastern half of this city to the interchange at Central Pointe, where the actual network starts. Used that way it turns four platforms into access to downtown, the university and the airport without a car, and that is a genuinely different daily arithmetic from most valley addresses.
The second thing it is good for is an evening. The music hall at 195 West Commonwealth Avenue stands opposite the western terminus, and the mural district and the taproom blocks are on the same few streets. A night out that begins and ends on a platform removes the drinking and driving question entirely, which is a practical argument rather than a romantic one. The murals page covers what is within that walk.
What it is not good for is a weekend errand in a hurry, because the headway doubles to thirty minutes at weekends, and it is not good for anything beyond its own two miles without a change. Read it as a feeder into three light rail lines rather than as a route in its own right and it will not disappoint you.
Fares are ordinary UTA fares, and that surprises people. There is no separate streetcar ticket. The S-Line is on the same fare structure as TRAX, and the same passes and cards work on it, so a journey that starts on the streetcar and continues on a train is priced as transit rather than as two products. Check the current fare and pass options with UTA, because fare structures are revised and this page is a snapshot dated 7 August 2026.
Keep reading
More of South Salt Lake on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
Murals on working walls, a 650 capacity hall, a streetcar, and a creek nobody notices.
Read the guideThe murals
Mural Fest and the creative zone
Ten new murals a year since 2018, on the warehouse blocks west of State Street.
Read the guideThe park
Fitts Park and Mill Creek
Ten acres, three creeks, the oldest trees in the city, and a garden you apply for.
Read the guideThe river
The Jordan River edge
A 75 acre natural area, a free bird centre, and the quietest edge of a loud city.
Read the guideMoving here
An inner ring address
Named avenues instead of numbers, and a town that incorporated over a sewer bill.
Read the guideThe companion
South Salt Lake, the whole picture
The murals, the creek park, the streetcar, the river edge and the address, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The S-Line, answered.
Four of the seven. Central Pointe, South Salt Lake City, 300 East and 500 East are all inside the city boundary. The remaining three, 700 East, Sugarmont and Fairmont, are in Salt Lake City. That is an unusual density of rail platforms for a city of 6.94 square miles, and it is the reason the eastern half of South Salt Lake reads as transit connected on a map without any TRAX line running through it.
Every fifteen minutes on weekdays and every thirty minutes at weekends. The whole line takes about ten minutes end to end at a top speed of 25 miles an hour. The fifteen minute weekday service exists because a section of the single track between 300 East and 500 East was doubled in early 2019 at a reported cost of about 5.9 million dollars, and frequency on a streetcar is a track capacity question before it is a timetable one.
The ordinary UTA fare, the same as TRAX, with the same passes and cards. There is no separate streetcar ticket and no premium for it, so a journey that starts on the tram and continues on a train is priced as one transit journey rather than as two products. Fare structures are revised periodically, so check the current fare with UTA rather than relying on a figure from a page like this one.
Two miles east from Central Pointe in South Salt Lake to Fairmont in Salt Lake City's Sugar House neighbourhood, running on an old freight alignment just south of the 2100 South line. Central Pointe is the interchange: all three TRAX lines meet the streetcar there, which puts downtown, the University of Utah, the airport, West Valley, Draper and Daybreak within a one seat ride of the tram's western end.
A linear park of about a mile running beside the streetcar tracks, built jointly by Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, UTA, which owns the corridor, and the coalition that pushed for the trail route. It carries paved paths, plazas, public art, a bocce court and a built section of Parley's Trail. It is a public path with no gate and no season, which makes it one of the more usable pieces of outdoor infrastructure in this city in February.
They overlap rather than being the same thing. Parley's Trail runs eight miles from the mouth of Parley's Canyon to the Jordan River, and one built segment of it runs inside the greenway beside the streetcar. South Salt Lake publishes 2.6 of the trail's eight miles as being inside its own boundary. So the greenway is a mile of landscaped corridor, and the trail is the longer cross valley route that a piece of the greenway forms part of.
Yes, at the eastern end. UTA is building a new station at Simpson Avenue and Highland Drive beyond the current terminus, with construction running from spring 2026 through summer 2027 and service due to begin around autumn 2027. New double track between 500 East and 700 East is part of the same programme. Service is being maintained through the works. All of that is UTA's published position as of 7 August 2026 and dates on rail projects move.
Barely. The extension is entirely beyond the current eastern terminus, in the neighbouring city, and none of the four South Salt Lake platforms is being moved, closed or rebuilt. The one element that touches this city's edge is new double track between 500 East and 700 East. If you are weighing an address on this side and reading about S-Line construction, the disruption is at the far end and the benefit is one extra station on a two mile line.
As a feeder, yes, and that is the honest framing. Two miles in ten minutes is not a commute in itself. What it does is connect residential streets in the eastern half of the city to Central Pointe, where three TRAX lines start, which turns a walk to a platform into a car free journey to downtown, the university or the airport. Read it as the last mile of a bigger network rather than as a route on its own and it does its job well.
A platform within walking distance changes what a household spends on cars.
Four streetcar platforms and three TRAX stations inside 6.94 square miles is the strongest single practical argument for an address in this city, and it is also the reason rail noise lands unevenly across it. The two facts are the same fact. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Salt Lake County partner agent who knows which streets get the benefit without the track, and stay on the file for the homework and the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.