The Salt Lake Tribune

A new TRAX line will connect Salt Lake City International Airport to the University of Utah campus by 2030. The exact route the new Utah Transit Authority “orange” line will travel won’t be selected until August. But right now, there are four options drawn up. The public can comment on the design options through May 1, though transit times and cost estimates aren’t yet available for all the proposed routes. Read the full story for maps and descriptions of all the proposals. #transportation #publictransportation #rail #lightrail By Jordan Miller

The Utah National Hockey League (NHL) team had a whirlwind of a first day in their home. Players and their families, coaches and other staff members landed at Salt Lake City International Airport at around 10:30 a.m. and received an uproarious reception from hundreds of youth hockey players. They went to their hotel for a while, then toured Zions Bank Basketball Campus and the Delta Center, where they’ll start play later this year as a new hockey franchise. And when they saw the ice on the arena, the design of the seats and everything in between, it seemed like they were already imagining what it would be like to play there. “It looks unbelievable,” right wing Clayton Keller said. “It’s kind of unique with the seats kind of being right on top of you. Everything that we’ve heard is the building is always super loud. They’ve had 250 straight sellouts for the Utah Jazz. So that’s super exciting.” #NHL #hockey #Utah #sports By Alex Vejar

Childhood poverty rates improved overall in Utah between 2021 and 2022, based on the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates. But in a handful of Utah’s school districts, the number of kids living in households making less than the poverty threshold increased by double-digit percentages. Two school districts — one with an estimated decrease in childhood poverty, and another with an estimated increase — said they use different data to track how many children are economically disadvantaged. Those data are based on the federal poverty level, instead of the poverty threshold, and also often depend on people applying for such programs as free and reduced-price lunch. Alpine School District added they don’t typically analyze what’s causing changes in income levels, but instead focus on providing “the very best educational experiences available.” Washington County School District #poverty #childpoverty #education #UtahEducation By Megan Banta

Despite their nearly identical names, Clint Betts doesn’t want Silicon Slopes to become Silicon Valley in one way: housing costs. “I think that we need to avoid the pitfalls of Silicon Valley,” Betts, the CEO of Silicon Slopes, said, “in Silicon Valley, if you don’t work in tech, you’re priced out. You can’t afford to live there. We need to be doing everything in our power in the state of Utah to avoid that happening here.” Utah may not be quite as expensive as California’s tech hubs, but home and rental prices are inching closer. A 2023 report from The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute found that only 15% of Utah’s renters could afford a home between $300,000 to $400,000. The report also found that housing prices in Utah increased by 72% since the beginning of 2018. Still, it’s not California. The median-priced home in San Jose is $1.4 million, per data from Redfin. The heart of Silicon Valley is one of the most competitive markets in the country — with most homes selling within 10 days. The heart of Utah’s tech industry is still far more affordable by comparison. Redfin data shows that the median home price in Lehi is $534,000. The median household income in Lehi in 2022 was a little more than $117,000 a year, according to the U.S. Census. That’s much higher than what residents of Salt Lake City make — where the median household income is a little more than $72,000 a year but the median home price is higher than Lehi’s at $555,000. #housing #affordability #SiliconSlopes #SiliconValley By Sofia Jeremias

Utah is now home to a National Hockey League (NHL) franchise. The NHL on Thursday announced that the Arizona Coyotes will relocate to Salt Lake City starting in the 2024-25 season. Smith Entertainment Group — led by Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith and his wife, Ashley — will take over the team in a transaction that includes Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo selling the team to the league, and Smith buying it from there. Smith reportedly paid between $1.2 and $1.3 billion, some of which will be distributed to the other NHL owners as a relocation fee. “As everyone knows, Utah is a vibrant and thriving state, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a news release. “We are also delighted to welcome Ashley and Ryan Smith to the NHL family and know they will be great stewards of the game in Utah. We thank them for working so collaboratively with the League to resolve a complex situation in this unprecedented and beneficial way.” The deal includes the Coyotes franchise transferring its full Reserve List, roster of players and draft picks and its hockey operations department to the new Utah franchise. #hockey #NHL #NationalHockeyLeague #prosports #relocation By Alex Vejar

Could apartments for sale be the new starter home, the new ticket to the American Dream and retirement? Although the first condominium in America was built here, the more affordable form of homeownership is now rare in Utah. “Condominiums can be one of the most affordable ways to get into homeownership,” Austin Taylor, member of The Congress for the New Urbanism, told a crowded auditorium at the Salt Lake City Public Library on Friday afternoon. “Condominiums are a critical piece of what we need to do in our state,” said Steve Waldrip, the governor’s senior advisor for housing strategy and innovation. The governor is pushing for the construction of tens of thousands of new starter homes. Homeownership and the opportunity to buy and sell property is important for Utahns who someday want to retire, Waldrip said. But Utah is now one of the most expensive markets in the country and the majority of renters in the state are now priced out of homeownership, explained Dejan Eskic, senior research fellow at The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. “Right now it is significantly more affordable to rent than it is to purchase,” Eskic said. But is that still the case for condos? #housing #condos #housingaffordability #developers #housingmarket #homeownership By Sofia Jeremias

The organizers of the Sundance Film Festival, which has called Park City home for more than 40 years, are taking a hard look at the independent film event’s future — including whether it will stay in Utah or move elsewhere. The Sundance Institute, the nonprofit that has presented the Sundance Film Festival since 1985, announced Wednesday it is starting a process to “explore viable locations in the United States to host” the festival, beginning in 2027. Eugene Hernandez, director of the festival and head of the institute’s public programming, said the move was prompted by the fact that the festival’s contract with Park City is up for renewal. The institute is obligated to inform Park City by October whether it will start negotiating a new contract. “This hasn’t happened in over a decade,” Hernandez said, “so in really trying to think about how to be the most responsible to our festival, … we created this [Request for Information] and [Request for Proposals] process that can help us really develop the right process to evaluate and consider about how we build the future of the festival.” #sundance #filmindustry #entertainment #filmfestivals #sundancefilmfestival By Palak Jayswal

Clean energy and adequate water are among Utah’s biggest challenges, and a federally funded experiment will try to address both by placing solar panels over a northern Utah canal. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced it will invest $19 million to turn canals in California, Oregon and Utah into floating power plants. Utah will get $1.5 million to put the panels on a quarter-mile stretch of the Layton Canal in the Weber County city of West Haven. The canal feeds water from the Weber River to farms west of Ogden. “There are several positive impacts,” said Scott Paxson, CEO and general manager of Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, which controls the canal and is overseeing the project. The project will generate about one and a half megawatts of clean energy that will be used by the district to run pump stations. Any excess will go to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a consortium of public power systems that includes the water district. It will also save an estimated 1.2 million gallons of water annually simply by shading that small section of the canal. And it is expected to improve water quality in the canal because “we’re not growing things in the canal like algae,” Paxson said. Algal blooms, which have grown more common in Utah, are caused when sunlight penetrates warm water. #cleanenergy #solar #water #waterconservation By Tim Fitzpatrick

If women in Utah’s tech industry were paid what men make, they could stop working sometime in late October and take home the same paycheck for the year as they do now, according to an analysis of industry salaries nationwide. Utah’s female tech workers earn, on average, 76.2% of what their male counterparts do, says an analysis by the internet marketing service DesignRush, which looked at industry salaries in every state. Mapped out across the 262 workdays in this year’s calendar, the analysis concluded that women in Utah’s tech industry will work 62 days unpaid, compared to their male colleagues’ salaries. The analysis used census data from 2022 — the most recent numbers available — to compare industry salaries nationwide and by state. Utah ranked eighth in states with the biggest tech pay gap. It adds to a growing body of research that suggests Utah is one of the more difficult states for women to work in. Utah, according to census data, has one of the country’s highest gender wage disparities for full-time employees, regardless of industry. And in tech, specifically, the disparity is nearly 10% higher than the national average. #wagegap #genderbias #genderwagegap #technews #techindustry #SiliconSlopes #womenintech By Shannon Sollitt

Their four-wheeled contraption had worked perfectly before reporters showed up, Utah Valley University students promised, as they tinkered with it at the Provo Airport - PVU. The creation, a welded frame encased in two wooden compartments roughly the size of coffee tables and powered by two electric engines, was supposed to tow the Diamond DA40 XLT — a single-engine prop plane weighing around 2,500 pounds — hitched to it. This model was just the prototype, a culmination of a school year’s worth of work from UVU engineering and computer science seniors. When it works it will be able to tow airplanes to and from their gates, controlled remotely by airport ground crews, pilots and its own autonomous driving abilities. The traditional taxiing process, Stone said, is noisy, dangerous and wasteful. It requires planes to burn precious fuel and asks tarmac employees to come dangerously close to the spinning blades of aircraft engines. “Jet engines are meant to be at 30,000 feet,” UVU professor and project mentor Brett Stone said. “They’re not meant to push things around on the ground. And so, the way engineers think, I guess, I was like, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’” The goal is to build a “tug,” as the contraption is called, robust enough to taxi commercial jets — and bring it to market. #airlines #airtravel #innovation #tech #environment #safety #airports #planes By Shannon Sollitt