This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Drive I-15 along the Wasatch Front from 7 to 9 a.m. or 4 to 7 p.m. and you see the future: congestion that often becomes a temporary eight-lane parking lot.
With Utah's population projected to double in the next three decades, that rush-hour gridlock could be 24/7 reality in the state's most populous counties. Planners are busy drawing scenarios to anticipate, and mitigate, the ubiquitous bottlenecks.
The Utah Transit Authority believes the solution lies in transit-oriented development, or TOD — clusters of housing, shopping, offices, and entertainment near light rail and commuter train lines. Make it so people can go from home to work to the store to the movies without getting in a car. At the same time, increase density, build up, not out, with commercial on the ground, housing and offices above — all close to a TRAX or Front Runner stop. Think smaller versions of City Creek in downtown Salt Lake City.
Futurists at Envision Utah say their extensive polling shows Utahns agree with the idea. The Wasatch Regional Council, charged with big-picture transportation planning across city and county boundaries, insists such development is essential if we are to maintain quality of life.
UTA long has been an advocate of TOD, but for other, more self-serving, reasons. The agency, by its own admission, wasn't so concerned with addressing Wasatch Front congestion as it was with increasing its own coffers with profits from high-density development on land it owns, and building an infrastructure to increase ridership fares. That strategy painted an image of an agency that serves special interests and individuals instead of the public.
Now, it says it has embraced a larger mission — finding strategies to handle inevitable growth. It's a good sign.
To do this right, UTA and other agencies whose work crosses municipal and county boundaries must work hand in hand with city officials, community advocates and the people who will actually live and work in these TODs. Lessons must be learned from Sugar House, where high-density development has far outpaced the transportation infrastructure to accommodate it, and where a new streetcar doesn't appeal to enough passengers, and therefore is not helping alleviate the problem.
Planning for 2050 requires big-picture vision. But it also needs grassroots buy-in — from the people in the neighborhood about to be transformed, the people who will start their day by climbing aboard.