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AMUTA Names New Train 'FrontRunner'Commuter Rail

Posted on: Thursday, 9 March 2006, 21:00 CST

By Patty Henetz, The Salt Lake Tribune

Mar. 9--"FrontRunner" was always the front-runner in the Utah Transit Authority's in-house name-the-commuter-rail contest.

Wednesday, Utah Transit Authority General Manager John Inglish announced the name for the heavy-rail trains that will cruise 44 miles between Weber County and Salt Lake City.

The agency rejected several suggestions for the train's name and accompanying acronyms, including Salt Lake Urban Transit, Wasatch Area Rapid Transit. Nor did they want anything ending with 'X' so as to keep it distinct from the TRAX light rail system in Salt Lake County.

FrontRunner, Inglish said, "is much more in keeping with the kind of agency we are."

The name first came up about three years ago when UTA was undertaking environmental studies for the $581 million project, said UTA spokeswoman Andrea Packer. Inglish said he latched on to it about a year ago.

But there was a problem: TTX Inc., a freight train car manufacturer, used the name for one of its boxcar models. Through friendly negotiations, UTA and the Chicago company agreed to share the name.

With commuter rail about to connect two of the state's major urban centers, Inglish predicted Ogden would become as much a destination as Salt Lake City. "The beauty and the value of these kinds of systems is filling the trains both ways," he said.

Brenda Clark, Cecile Praitano and Vicki Kerzic, Augusta, Ga., residents who travel to Ogden to ski Powder Mountain, said they would use the train to visit Salt Lake City. But they didn't quite get the name, even when they were told its connection with the Wasatch Front.

"It's OK but it should be something more catchy," said Kerzic.

"I'd probably call it 'The Train,"" said Clark.

"Or 'The Runner,"" said Praitano. "You know, 'Let's take The Runner.""

The double-deck Bombardier train cars are being manufactured now, and will be painted to match UTA's deluxe express buses. Other cars, secondhand from Chicago's Metra rail, will be remodeled to match.

The transit agency still hasn't decided whether to turn over the commuter rail operations and maintenance to a private company. Training to be a certified commuter rail engineer takes a full year, and the maintenance segment will be larger than anything else the agency handles.

UTA operators want to keep it in the public system. Because of the rail's construction schedule -- it's to be up and running by mid-2008 -- the decision on who operates the system needs to be soon, Inglish said.

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Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

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