- Add Your Name to Support the Utah Trail Network
- Provide Feedback on Planned Transportation Projects in Your Community
- WFRC Awarded Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Funds
- Congratulations to New WFRC Council Chair, South Jordan Mayor Dawn Ramsey
- Ballpark Station Area Plan Certified
- Connecting Transportation, Land Use, and Economic Development in Davis County
- Government Affairs Update
- From Our Partners
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Add Your Name to Support the Utah Trail Network | |
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A broad coalition of community leaders is urging the State Legislature to support the Utah Trail Network proposed by the Governor. The vision is to build and maintain a network of paved trails that connect Utahns of all ages and abilities to their destinations and communities throughout the state.
Our state is already a world-class place for recreational biking and is now poised to make the leap to be a world-class place for biking as a means of transportation and commuting. Biking and walking are universally recognized for their many personal and community benefits:
- Better air quality
- Decreased traffic congestion
- Increased physical activity
- Decreased healthcare costs
- Improved access to social, educational, and job opportunities
- Expanded recreational opportunities closer to home
Investing now in the Utah Trail Network will extend these benefits to more Utah residents.
Please take a minute and click HERE to read the full letter and add your name in support of this effort.
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Provide Feedback on Planned Transportation Projects in Your Community | |
RTP project map pictured with images from WFRC’s fall Wasatch Choice Vision workshop series | |
The Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC), in close collaboration with the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) and the Utah Transit Authority (UTA), invites you to provide feedback on the Draft 2023-2050 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP).
The Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is the transportation element of the Wasatch Choice Vision, our region's shared vision for the future. The RTP identifies the roadway, transit, bike, and pedestrian projects needed in our region over the next 25 years. Each RTP takes four years to create and involves collaboration between WFRC, cities, counties, transportation partners, businesses, community organizations, and the public. So far, WFRC received and reviewed more than 2,000 comments over the past three years while developing the upcoming RTP.
WFRC invites your input on the projects via an interactive map. Click here to review the RTP and provide your comments, which will be accepted through February 26, 2023.
Click here to read a brief summary of how the RTP relates to transportation in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
And to learn more about the interactive RTP map, click here to read our January Map of the Month feature that explores it further.
For additional up-to-date information, visit the RTP project webpage and/or contact wfrc@wfrc.org.
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WFRC Awarded Safe Street and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Funds | |
The U.S. Department of Transportation today announced a historic $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program. WFRC has been awarded $775,200 to create an SS4A Action Plan to work with communities and partners within our region in efforts to build a roadway safety plan to reduce roadway fatalities and lay the groundwork for a comprehensive set of actions. Once that plan is created, individual cities and counties will be able to apply directly to USDOT for capital funding to implement the safety plan. We congratulate our neighbor Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG), as well as other MPOs and jurisdictions across the state, on their successful SS4A grant applications.
Keeping the most vulnerable safe on our roadways is important now more than ever. In Utah in 2022, there were 53 pedestrian fatalities, 15 bicyclist fatalities, and 50 motorcyclist fatalities, each more than in 2021. There were also 202 motorist fatalities last year.
We thank our transportation and community partners for their support in helping us achieve this successful SS4A grant application. In the near term, WFRC will work with the USDOT to establish and execute a grant agreement. Moving forward, we will work with our community and transportation partners on next steps in our shared endeavor to create an SS4A Action Plan. For additional information on today’s announcement, click here.
|  | Congratulations to New WFRC Council Chair, South Jordan Mayor Dawn Ramsey | |
WFRC is excited to announce the selection of South Jordan Mayor Dawn Ramsey as the Council’s new Chair. This milestone marks the first time in WFRC history that a woman has been nominated and selected by her peers to lead the Council. Previously, Mayor Ramsey served as chair of WFRC’s Regional Growth Committee. She also recently served as President of the Utah League of Cities and Towns (ULCT).
Currently in her second term as Mayor, Mayor Ramsey has strived to maintain the City of South Jordan’s high quality of life by keeping a determined focus on public safety, economic development, housing, transportation infrastructure, education, preservation of open space, overall management of rapid growth, access to opportunity, and representation at every level. The City continues achieving extraordinary progress and success thanks to her service and collaboration on more than 30 boards and committees across the state, holding top leadership positions on many of them. Mayor Ramsey’s elevation to WFRC Chair was effective as of the January 26, 2023 Council meeting. We congratulate Mayor Ramsey and look forward to working together to continue to address our region’s most pressing transportation and growth challenges.
At the same January 26th Council meeting Davis County Commissioner Bob Stevenson was selected Council Vice Chair. Congratulations Commissioner Stevenson!
WFRC also thanks former Chair Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini for his dedicated service!
As a reminder, WFRC brings together local elected officials, transportation agencies, and other community stakeholders from Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Morgan, Tooele, and southern Box Elder Counties to plan for the future of our region.
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Ballpark Station Area Plan Certified! | |
Reimagined design of 1300 S at the TRAX crossing | |
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On Thursday, January 26th, the Wasatch Front Regional Council passed a resolution to certify Salt Lake City’s Ballpark Station Area Plan. The plan was created with the support of our Transportation & Land Use Connection program, and adopted by the City in October of last year. The plan aims to create a neighborhood that is lively and active year-round. Exciting things are happening in this neighborhood already; in light of recently announced changes in the Ballpark neighborhood, the City is hosting a visioning and design competition, Ballpark NEXT, to help determine the future of the site of the current stadium! Learn more about the transformative work taking place around our region’s transit stations at wfrc.org.
Station area planning around TRAX, FrontRunner, and bus rapid transit (BRT) stations along the Wasatch Front works to accommodate our state’s rapid population growth in areas that make sense. The vast majority of station areas are located within Wasatch Choice centers - neighborhoods that have been identified by their local governments as places to concentrate activity, whether it be residential, employment, commercial, or recreational. This strategy not only supports the higher development intensity needed to increase transit ridership, but also restrains the horizontal expansion of urban development, leaving more of Utah’s natural beauty intact. For more information, check out our Station Area Planning Progress Update!
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Connecting Transportation, Land Use, and Economic Development in Davis County | |
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Davis County and five Davis County communities recently completed a project through the Transportation and Land Use Connection (TLC) for a market study along the West Davis Corridor.
The study looked at the highest and best uses surrounding several West Davis Corridor interchanges. The corridor runs between Glovers Lane in Farmington and State Route 193 in West Point. This corridor will have seven nodes and 12 miles of trails. The study used market data to understand the land use and economic development options around seven interchanges nodes, assisting community decision-makers on the opportunities created by the State's transportation investments.
Davis County is home to 15 cities and is 634 square miles in size (299 land area acres). It is Utah’s smallest county by land area but third-largest by population. From 2010 to 2020, the population grew by more than 18% and is expected to increase by another 157,000 (or 43%) by 2050.
Overall, the potential impact to Davis County, the 7 interchange nodes will support:
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Industrial/Retail/Office - 7.87 million new square feet of development
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Residential - 4,353 new residential units
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Total Revenue to County over the next 20 years - $71,323,827
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Total Revenue to Cities over the next 20 years - $93,305,043
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Jobs to the County - 9,500
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Residents - 15,853
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State
The 2023 General Legislative Session is here! Lawmakers convened on January 17th and will meet for 45 days until March 3rd as they legislate and appropriate. The House Majority Caucus, and Senate Majority outlined their priorities going into session, which shares some similarities with Governor’s budget recommendations. The legislature now begins their third week of appropriation subcommittee meetings, and will continue to hear and prioritize funding appropriation requests.
Some funding items that are being considered that you should know about include:
- $100 million for a proposed Utah Trail Network
- $100 million for Point of the Mountain transit
- $100 million for corridor preservation
- $400 million in transportation debt payments
- $25.5 million for a statewide zero-fare transit pilot program
- $100 million to match federal infrastructure funds
- $150 million for housing affordability
- $500 million for water conservation and Great Salt Lake efforts
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$1.58 million for a local Administrative Advisor Program
WFRC is also working on a number of pieces of legislation that relate to transportation, air quality, housing, and land use. If you’d like to see what bills WFRC is watching, you can stay up to speed by following along with our WFRC Bill Tracker. There, you’ll find a brief bill summary and position taken on the bill by WFRC’s members. You also can sign up to receive our WFRC Government Affairs emails.
Federal
Several members of WFRC leadership and staff, along with our partners at the Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG), attended the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC) Conference of Regions in Washington DC this past week to learn best practices on working regionally and to help Utah take best advantage of federal programs and policies that relate to transportation, housing, energy, etc. WFRC and MAG also had the opportunity to meet with each of Utah’s Congressional delegation members to talk with them about the unified planning we do here in Utah for our transportation and infrastructure needs, including in the Wasatch Choice Vision. Additionally, the group shared our joint federal infrastructure priorities, including FrontRunner strategic doubletracking, and the first/last mile RAISE grant application.
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The US Forest Service and Salt Lake County are partnering to develop a Tri-Canyon Trails Master Plan. Their goal? Identify opportunities to protect watershed and ecosystem health while providing diverse, year-round recreation opportunities for Little Cottonwood, Big Cottonwood, and Millcreek Canyons.
Insights and ideas to inform the first draft are currently being developed. Learn more at tricanyontrails.org.
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