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The "commuter" in commuter rail is all business, but come the weekend, Utah's new train is a surprisingly popular pleasure trip.

FrontRunner trains started rolling between Ogden and Salt Lake City in April and, until last month, Saturday was by far the biggest day for a ride. That weekend surge has waned with Utahns' curiosity about the fast trains, but Saturday riders still number just several hundred fewer than their workday counterparts.

Saturday trains carried an average of 7,113 people in June, compared with 7,809 on weekdays. FrontRunner does not run on Sundays.

The train has inspired a wave of intrastate tourism, and as many day-trippers are heading north to Ogden as are riding south to the bigger city, said Paul O'Brien, Utah Transit Authority rail general manager.

"People get off the train [in Ogden] and ask, 'Where's a good place to eat lunch around here?' " O'Brien said.

Richard Arbogast and his grade-school daughter Olivia were heading the other direction Saturday in search of food in Utah's capital. He said that while his work sometimes takes him from Ogden to Salt Lake City on weekdays, the train is more attractive on Saturdays, when he has leisure time. Work usually means trying to hit meetings on a tight schedule.

"It's relaxing," Arbogast said of the weekend train, though for Olivia the goal clearly was the excitement of train travel. She circled her father on the Ogden platform, pestering him to board 15 minutes before the train left.

Besides the weekend train's pace, Arbogast said, it's gas savings that draw him. His wife was working in Salt Lake City on Saturday, and he didn't want them to have to drive two cars home after dining together.

At Salt Lake Central platform, people pushing strollers swarmed between FrontRunner and its TRAX light-rail connection before the 2:25 northbound train left. On board, the cars were about a third full (and near capacity later) as were park-and-ride lots along the route.

Part of the allure is UTA's family pass: A round trip on trains and buses for $14.50 that's good on weekends and after 5 p.m. on weekdays.

"It's like three generations," O'Brien said. "It's not just kids, it's grandparents as well that are out there going for a ride."

Though Ogden Union Station officials couldn't provide numbers this week, attendant Diana Call said there's an upswing in Saturday ticket sales at the station's Utah State Railroad Museum, Browning-Kimball Classic Car Museum and John M. Browning Firearms Museum.

And, she said, "A lot more people are on the streets walking around."

UTA has seen this kind of weekend curiosity before, when there was a rush of Saturday riders after TRAX opened from Sandy to downtown Salt Lake City in late 1999. A year later the agency added Sunday TRAX service - something O'Brien said isn't likely anytime soon for FrontRunner, especially with the slump in sales-tax receipts that subsidize service.

Eventually, he expects, the wave of weekend FrontRunner riders will decline further, though not by a lot. UTA has better midday, night and weekend service than a lot of train systems around the country, and also sees a greater share of off-peak riders than most, he said.

May riders

176,012

Average weekday

6,419

Average Saturday

8,262

June riders

192,441

7,809

Average Saturday

7,113