If Salt Lake it ever going to connected to HSR, it will be through Green River...

...which basically means never.

As Jarrett Walker of Human Transit puts it, "BE ON THE WAY". As the map shows, SLC is a culdesak off of any HSR route. (Darn Wasatch Mountains, always getting in the way).

 It's not by accident--the Mormon pioneers chose SLC for it's isolation. Even when the interstate were being built, they detour around that big pair of bulges that are the Wasatch and Rocky Mountains.

Talk to someone who is old enough to know, and they still recall the changes that happened when I-80 reached the Salt Lake Valley. (Last bit completed was in 1986!)