Utah State Route 269 - History

History

As I-15 was being constructed through the Wasatch Front, the State Road Commission designated three routes—SR-268, SR-269, and SR-270—in 1960 as direct connections into Salt Lake City's downtown.

All three had viaducts connecting the freeway to a road closer to the city center. In SR-269's case, the viaducts were necessary to pass over active railroad mainlines: the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad operated a line along 500 West as well as the line along 600 West now used by Union Pacific and UTA's FrontRunner and Union Pacific operated its old main line along 400 West. Rio Grande's duplicate parallel lines perhaps could have been combined at that time, though the 500 West track would have needed to stay in place for the Rio Grande Zephyr or similar infrequent passenger trains to continue to access the Rio Grande station; Union Pacific, however, had no alternative route for its 400 West mainline.

The initial extent of SR-269 was only the elevated viaducts, stretching from I-15 east to 300 West (SR-176), which then carried US-40, US-89, and US-91 through downtown. Since the final design included a bridge over SR-176 on 600 South, the eastbound direction was extended one block to 200 West in 1963. The state legislature extended both directions further to SR-271 (State Street, now US-89) in 1969.

As Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, I-15 was reconstructed. As part of the reconstruction, SR-268 and SR-269's viaducts into the city were set to be reconstructed and shortened. Mayor Corradini wanted to revitalize an industrial portion of Salt Lake City with her Gateway project. A part of her project included demolishing the almost mile-long viaducts of SR-269, as she felt a freeway bridge passing over the area she was trying to revitalize would be a hindrance to the project. The pair of viaducts were demolished in late-1998–early-1999, replaced with much shorter viaducts in 2000. This replacement was made possible by the agreement of trackage rights during the 1980s allowing Union Pacific to use Rio Grande's line between Salt Lake City and Provo, and the subsequent acquisition of Rio Grande by Southern Pacific and then by Union Pacific itself. Mitigation for the removal of the lines was nevertheless necessary; most notably, the Salt Lake City Intermodal Hub was built at 600 West to replace the functions of the Rio Grande and Union Pacific stations, both of which are now isolated from the former mainlines that connected to them from the south by traffic streaming to and from I-15 on SR-269 (as part of the Gateway development, the lines from the north were cut too).