So what is the real scoop about waiting in SLC?

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andersone

andersone

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Dec 19, 2013
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Jackson. Ohio
I have done a lot of juggling with the car rental folks and they agreed to let me drop of the renter at the airport.(their downtown office closes at 8, Amtrak doesn't open the station until 10) I had planned on showing up about midnight for the 3 AM Eastbound Zephyr and waiting on the station for it. My comrades on Trip Advisor are telling me to have nothing to do with the station until directly before departure . They were blunt about the neighborhood and those who hang out there even being more direct about a nearby homeless shelter. They advised renting a hotel room to hang out in. Even though I was raised at Austin and Madison in Chicago in the 60's I have spent the last thirty years living five miles outside a town of five thousand. I may have lost many of my city social skills, and I don't want She Who Must Be Obeyed to be uncomfortable.

So what exactly is the real scoop about SLC and would you get a hotel room ?
 
I have waited inside the SLC station for a couple of hours with no concern waiting for the eastbound westbound Zephyr. A group of us was there last July. We checked out of our hotel in the morning and rode commuter rail during the day and then had dinner. We waited in the hotel lobby until about midnight (I think) and the hotel shuttle drove us to the station. I do not think any of us were uncomfortable with the surrounding neighborhood or the station itself.

Edit: to change eastbound to westbound. Thank you Jis for reminding me we were going west at that time (because the trip was planned westbound due the fact the eastbound departure time was awful).
 
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I have not been in SLC in 40 years (except to pass through while asleep on the Zephyr) but Amtrak is there twice a day. I suspect we would have heard about it plenty if there was a problem of any scope waiting at the station. Take New Orleans, for example.....not to mention San Antonio. :help:

Homeless people, by the way, are not dangerous per se. They may not be pretty to look at and they may be bothersome but they are not inherently threatening. This is strictly my personal experience of which I have a lot.
 
I was on the same trip with penny and co. But I was in a different hotel. I also hung out in the hotel until past midnight and then managed to get the hotel to drop me off at the Amtrak station. Apparently this is something that the hotels in downtown SLC are quite used to. As I recall though our problem that day was trying to catch an extremely delayed westbound and not an on time eastbound. Since as I recall we were going to Reno to have lunch and then board the eastbound there. The idea was to avoid the odd hour boarding at SLC, but Amtrak took ample care to scuttle the well thought out plan.
 
I don't like the area around the station. There's 5 homeless shelters around the station and loitering suspicious people everywhere. Last year, some cops came over and arrested some people who were loitering and doing drugs.
 
I was on the eastbound Zephyr one late night and outside getting air as it was a long layover. A guy smoking approached me and asked if I wanted to huff it over to Temple Square to see the sights. I said no and advised him not to huff it too far from the train as stuff happens. He said he had lots of time and tried to convince me. Naaaaaa, but thanks anyway. Soon after he left, I heard the train whistle blow twice. I never saw Mr. Huffer again! Find him and you will know for sure what it is like late at night at the SLC Amtrak Station.

Not only did he miss the train, as we left, the lights went out at Temple Square.
 
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So, I just wrote a little clip on the California Zephyr. I went on to cruise the net and found the 10 worst cities in California to visit and the next lines are a qoute from those articles of mostly pictures.

"Emeryville is a pretty small town, with just 10,000 people comprising the entire population. However, its crime rate is at a high 12.54. 981 property crimes and 128 acts of violence were reported in 2010. If you are thinking of visiting this city for the quiet and peaceful atmosphere, you’d better think twice. Emeryville is anything but those two things."

This qoute is from Yahoo.

I print this only because of the Zephyr goes to Emeryville.
 
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Swadian Hardcore said:
I don't like the area around the station. There's 5 homeless shelters around the station and loitering suspicious people everywhere. Last year, some cops came over and arrested some people who were loitering and doing drugs.
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I think I might worry more if the cops did not come over and arrest druggies and loiterers.
 
We stayed at a Hampton Inn a few blocks from the station and the hotel did offer a shuttle ride over to the train station at 3am when the train arrived eastbound.

But if you are thinking of just hanging out at the station for three hours, would it make more sense to just stay at the airport until closer to the arrival time of the Zephyr and then have a taxi take you downtown. The seats at the airport can't be any more uncomfortable than those in the tiny station at SLC.

Not sure if you are allowed to be in the airport without a ticket? But security would certainly not be an issue there.
 
I don't know why the Emeryville post above in this SLC subject but I would like to counter the warning about Emeryville. I travel regularly on the CZ to Emeryville and stay at the Hyatt House Hotel across tracks from station. I walk quite a bit in the area. There are other hotels plus a very nice modern shopping area with upscale merchandise and restaurants including California Pizza and Fuddruckers plus a very nice multi-screen all stadium seating movie theater with an IMAX screen nearby. I have walked back and forth between my hotel and the shopping area every time I visit Emeryville and there is also a free Emery Go Round shuttle bus that I have taken to BART station and to a Target store, etc. Plus there is a very nice coastal walking path on peninsular with great views across the bay to SF. As I suspect in SLC and Emeryville, one simply must be aware of your surroundings and not put yourself in compromising situations wherever you travel. As with auto accidents, most bad things happen within your local area wherever that might be mainly because we are familiar and often take unnecessary risks.
 
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Tennessee Traveler said:
I don't know why the Emeryville post above in this SLC subject but I would like to counter the warning about Emeryville. I travel regularly on the CZ to Emeryville and stay at the Hyatt House Hotel across tracks from station. I walk quite a bit in the area. There are other hotels plus a very nice modern shopping area with upscale merchandise and restaurants including California Pizza and Fuddruckers plus a very nice multi-screen all stadium seating movie theater with an IMAX screen nearby. I have walked back and forth between my hotel and the shopping area every time I visit Emeryville and there is also a free Emery Go Round shuttle bus that I have taken to BART station and to a Target store, etc. Plus there is a very nice coastal walking path on peninsular with great views across the bay to SF. As I suspect in SLC and Emeryville, one simply must be aware of your surroundings and not put yourself in compromising situations wherever you travel. As with auto accidents, most bad things happen within your local area wherever that might be mainly because we are familiar and often take unnecessary risks.
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That's the same feel I've gotten the few times I've been to Emeryville. My guess is that whatever site claimed it has a high crime rate could well be accurate, but that it is not particularly indicative of the actual situation - relatively small resident population but significantly larger daytime population with quite a few major employers, so whatever crimes do occur are "distributed over" a population larger than what the official resident population figures indicate. Or perhaps the areas near the station are fine but there are other areas of the municipality that do experience much higher crime rates. Or maybe I'm completely wrong.
 
Re: SLC:

I was waiting there in the wee hours in the morning a few weeks back. The 6 was a few hours late and the station (a crappy little Amshack) was ghastly hot so me and a few others sat outside on the benches immediately outside the station close to the tracks, as the weather was quite nice. In those two or three hours we were approached by three different panhandlers, each with a different story, one of whom went into the station itself and had to be ejected. In addition a bum wearing no pants approached the station, was told to leave by the woman behind the desk who happened to be outside at the time (one of two employees there at that time, as far as I could tell--the lady behind the ticket desk and the baggage guy), started cursing at her, went into the station and (I am told) attempted to break through the glass at the ticket window; later he was escorted from the area on a stretcher. It was not an unentertaining two or three hours.

So me personally I would try to arrive at the SLC station as close to departure as possible, unless you want to engage with SLC's rather colorful vagrant population.

(My understanding is SLC used to have a real train station, but someone in charge decided train riders deserved a lousy experience so it was located to this Amshack. I would suggest the SLC city fathers look to the success other cities have had with revitalizing their old train stations and, you know, imitate that.)
 
Justinslot - You may be familiar with this, but there are two very nice station buildings near the current Amshack, the former Rio Grande station, which I believe is now mostly a museum building, and the UP station. I took trains to and from those stations in 1981, although I think only a small part of the Rio Grande station was in use at that time. The UP was a beautiful building, now part of a shopping mall. The tracks were removed from both station areas, which shoots your suggestion in the head. The Amshack is a rather sorry excuse, but it could be a worse dump.
 
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