Salt Lake City opens 400 South viaduct trail with public art

Salt Lake City’s newest city-side trail is now a practical shortcut for anyone trying to move between downtown and the west side without getting pinned by 400 South traffic. The 400 South Viaduct Trail opened on May 27 and runs along the south side of 400 South from 900 West in Poplar Grove to 200 West downtown, with the newly completed 300 West Bikeway extension feeding into the same network.

The point is not just nicer pavement. City leaders pitched the project as a safer east-west connection through one of Salt Lake City’s toughest crossings for people outside cars, especially near Interstate 15 and the blocks changing fast in the Granary District, Post District, Central Ninth, Ballpark, Rio Grande and Pioneer Park areas. Mayor Erin Mendenhall said crossing the 400 South viaduct on foot or by bike had felt unsafe before because of six lanes of traffic and no buffers like trees or grassy medians. The city spent about $10.2 million on the trail and bikeway work, which preserves vehicle capacity while carving out dedicated space for people walking, biking and rolling.

For travelers staging a Salt Lake stop before heading toward the wider Southwest, that makes the corridor a lot more usable. The trail creates a cleaner link for getting from hotels and transit to downtown without a car, and it gives cyclists and families a flatter, more direct city ride than the old workaround across a busy viaduct. The project traces back to the city’s 2015 master plan and grew out of the West-East Connections Study, a Reconnecting Communities-funded effort launched in 2025 after residents repeatedly flagged delays, safety concerns and limited crossings. In phase one, 1,051 community members shared their experiences between May 2 and June 20, 2025.

The trail also arrives with a visual marker that turns basic infrastructure into a destination. Strut, the nearly 2,000-foot public art installation along the corridor, is the single longest continuous artwork in Utah to date. Designed by Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan, it uses steel, powder coat, polycarbonate and retro-reflective film, and was developed through community engagement and work with the project’s engineering team. The artists drew on the Wasatch Mountains, the Jordan River, seasonal change, aspens, the Salt Lake landscape and wild peacocks on the Westside.

There is still a policy wrinkle to watch. Under SB242, Salt Lake City and the Utah Department of Transportation are negotiating possible mitigation measures, with early talks focused on signage, pavement markings and educational videos rather than removing the projects. Even so, the new trail now gives the west side a safer, more memorable crossing, and for a city that once made that viaduct feel like a hard no, that is a meaningful upgrade.