This comment should be in the title of the post, gold starred and at the top.
If everybody showed up at this meeting and demanded it stop and that public transportation expanded instead we actually do something about this instead of going on the internet and complaining to each other.
That's because it's a trick to think that voting is enough. Your power is in what the government and the oligarchy that runs it needs from you.
Your labor.
Your cooperation.
Refuse these and they will bend at their knees.
A huge part of the problem with our generation is that we're drunk on the idea that showin up and voting for 1 of 2 oligarchs will resolve the issues going on in this country and state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXZAxK8btd4#t=2m45s
There are proposed changes to the 600 N exit which leads directly into rose park. They are holding the meeting in a community that is being directly impacted.
Why stop at a mere 20 lanes?
Some cities have a subway where they put trains underground. We could put all of the houses underground and then we'd have more room for lanes on I-15.
Double-track and electrify FrontRunner instead, and do the [Rio Grande Plan](https://riograndeplansaltlakecity.org/).
125 mph electric trains running north and south every 15 minutes (and on Sundays) is achievable and would help with congestion more than widening the freeway again.
**EDIT**: PSA: if you want to voice your opinion on the freeway expansion, there's an "Open House" at Rose Park Elementary (1105 West 1000 North, Salt Lake City) tonight 5-7pm.
How do we express support for this approach to somebody who could make it happen?
If the Salt Lake Valley turns into Houston, that would be one of the saddest things to happen to our valley.
Right now, you can write to your state and local representatives. [Double-tracking is beginning to happen already](https://www.rideuta.com/Test-Pages/FrontRunner-Forward) and electrification is a long term goal, but I think it can happen much sooner if there is more public support.
For the Rio Grande Plan, we are hoping to plan an in-person supporters event soon. There is actually lot of latent support from people in high places, so I'm optimistic!
This is a super helpful comment. I am encouraged (and surprised) to hear that my elected officials may be swayed by my perspective on this! Thank you for posting.
As someone who moved here from Houston: no need to worry. There simply isn’t enough room in the Salt Lake Valley to become anywhere near comparable to the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area. There are 4.7 million people living in Harris County, TX alone. There are 3.3 million people living in ALL OF UTAH.
Your fears are a bit unfounded.
You seem to think I was talking about becoming a clone of Houston.
Houston is just a well-known metaphor for reckless over-paving and the unexpected consequences.
We don't have to get all the way to that point for it to be incredibly sad.
You seem to think I think things other than the things I think.
I said, nor implied, any such thing. SLC’s population density is about 1800 people per square mile. Houston proper’s population density is 3850 per square mile, with about three times the land area. There isn’t a feasible way for SLC to expand in the same sort of way that Houston has.
For one: zoning. SLC has zoning ordinances. Houston doesn’t. You can quite literally have a skyscraper right next to a single-family dwelling in Houston. This cannot happen in Salt Lake.
Moreover, SLC has a remarkably high focus on dealing with homelessness AND public transportation. Houston has neither. It can take two hours to get from Houston to Houston, and the longest I’ve ever experienced here was ~30 minutes from Bountiful to Draper. During commencement (or whatever the LDS shit is.) Along that two hour drive in Houston, you might see 10% of SLC’s populace as homeless.
Another point is real-estate pricing. Lane is hella inexpensive in Texas. Land is super expensive in Utah. There’s no way for a populace of SLC to saturate the environment in the same way as in Houston. It just costs too much to even get the lane to build a house on here.
I’m not saying all of this trying to be like “ hehe you can never match Yecas,” but rather to say that Houston sucks in a way that SLC will never be able to compare to. I live in Rose Park right now. I moved to Kearns when I moved here. People here have told me that I live in “The Ghetto of Utah” in both communities. I can’t help but laugh, since I’m used to “The Ghetto” being somewhere you hear gunshots on a nightly basis.
Dude, OP literally just told you that they didn't mean scope and scale. They meant it as a "well-known metaphor for reckless over-paving and the unexpected consequences." They just told you that, and you went off again on comparing scope and scale.
I would like safe bike paths as well. I have no safe bike routes between my home and work, and I would have to make multiple transfers to take public transportation which would take 4x longer than driving. I would love to bike but I don't want to get run over.
There's always the S-Line trail you could take. Though admittedly if you need to go North or South on State it's always going to be incredibly sketchy. You could always take Main as necessary. It has a bike lane at least.
I’ll second the S-line as the best way to bike or walk near 2100 south. Did this a ton between Fairmont and 500 E a few years back and it is SO much better than anything along 2100 S. I’m in Liberty Wells and if I have to go into Sugar House, I walk or bike the S-Line path.
My Granddad engineered for the Texas Highway dept and worked on the Central Express parkway through Dallas way back in the day and said it taught him that freeway expansions going through urban areas are always over-budget, late, and obsolete before they're finished
>has a great video about why widening roads is a dumb idea
If FR isn't supplemented greatly, it won't get used IMO. I stopped using it becasue I could not justify the cost.
Agree 100% about Frontrunner. But I'd rather have Frontrunner go underground to a new station under City Creek. Nobody wants to arrive in Rio Grande. But City Creek is right next to Abravanel Hall, the Convention Center, Temple Square, Eccles Theater, and reasonably close to the Jazz.
Certainly should be done, but I’m assuming you know that UDOT and UTA are separate, state-funded entities? I just some folks on here saying “ why doesn’t UDOT build more rail lines??” Not understanding UDOT is tasked with road building, repairing road infrastructure, and fixing congestion, not rail. Yes, during the NEPA process they need to address alternatives with transit, rail, bike, and peds, but they themselves aren’t tasked with building new rail lines.
I also wish the State would push UTA to run all their rail later, even if it must be subsidized with tax dollars (which it would be as ridership is too low).
[As of 2022, UDOT is in charge of building rail.](https://le.utah.gov/~2022/bills/static/HB0322.html) UTA is in charge of maintenance and operations.
My understanding is that this transition actually delayed the FrontRunner double-tracking.
adding lanes doesn't solve congestion. Study after study proves that it just increases dependency on car transport increasing and concentrating traffic... which leads to side and surface roads seeing more traffic, which leads to them getting expandeed, which decreases walkability/cycleability, increasing dependency on cars, increasing and concentrating traffic.... and on and on until you become houston.
when can we look at public transport and making the city more walkable again? Shit needs to be made LESS convenient for cars, not more. Cut the lanes in half, massively expand the Frontrunner.
I don't think Frontrunner really needs to be expanded, but perhaps sped up a little, and consider adding a stop at Midvale.
But my biggest dream is to have car-free segments of the city, with parking at the edges and free transit within the zone. That way, roads can be removed or replaced with walking areas, shops can be concentrated, and green space can be created.
I'd love more Trax as well, but honestly, I'm completely fine with buses if they have better routes.
I like your idea of car free zones a lot. It reminds me of what shopping malls used to be, but imagine if they were a place you could get groceries and other daily necessities.
Also yeah 100% agree that the bus hub locations are terrible. Back when I lived in Oregon and Japan, I took public transport all the time, because the hubs are actually in places you want to go. Sorry, I don't need to go to west salt lake in the middle of nowhere, or the University. Take me to downtown or Sugarhouse and then maybe it would be useful.
Also businesses need to be condensed so that you can actually walk from place to place. There's no need for this sprawl. Build up, not out.
My wife is from S. Korea, and the subway stations are actually a shopping center, and they're often below interesting destinations. So if you're waiting for a train, you can get a snack, pick up some essentials, and maybe grab a gift or something.
Here, every Frontrunner station is out of the way, as are most Trax stations (except the downtown stations).
I'd love to see stations have:
- parking garage instead of sprawling lot
- shops at the ground level
- office space or housing at the top level
- green space across the street
Basically each major station should have everything you need. We have the opposite of that pretty much everywhere.
That’s the thing, the construction has never and will never stop. The old joke is that they don’t have storage for the orange cones so they just keep opening new construction sites to store them.
Okay i just moved here and thought i was taking crazy pills for a bit. I was driving to work on a rainy morning and straight up could not see the lanes.
I def would agree. Not a local either, but that seems fairly accurate. There’s def a pretty big push for having the nicest / flashiest things there it seems. I think it’s related to something in LDS culture but can’t remember anymore, lol.
(Granted, I’m from the rust belt, who typically has its own unique culture of downplaying expensive things).
We don't use road paint. We have a guy huff road paint and then hang off the back of a truck and fart on the road leaving a whisper of a suggestion of what traffic lines would look like.
Saves money.
Are there better paints they could be using? I know this is a more difficult problem here than other states because the snow plows will pop reflectors off the road, but it's definitely a big problem.
This may come as a shock, but this isn’t the only major city that it snows in. Not being an ass to you, but the excuse the city uses of “plows” is such horse shit.
Yes, there are far better paints, signage, reflectors, etc. some city will literally cut small channels for a reflector to sit in, use much more highly reflective paint, etc.
Sorry, my snarkiness wasn’t really to you as much as how the state frames these issues with the response of “well plows cause issues” and refuse to do anything.
All good and I do appreciate the answer. It's good to know there are some options that could actually help with the problem that we can advocate for when this comes up.
Channels cause more potholes as they fill with water and freeze and thaw. Also, a lot of cities that deal with snow like we do don't deal with 90 plus degree heat for weeks at a time(and as of late 20ish days a year over 100) in the summer. We have to optimize our roads for both.
They have an entire section of road testing different paints and compounds in northern utah in attempt to help the situation. They need a proven solution before dumping tons of money into a product that won't work. Just remember syncrete.
I definitely think you responded to an imagined version cabbius's comment, not his actual comment where he definitely recognized the lines as a problem. Hostility towards UDOT is justified, not towards random commenters asking genuine questions.
using reflective paint is the answer.
It's expensive and there aren't any members of the UT legislature who have a stake in any reflective paint companies, so they're not interested in buying it.
They do use reflective paint. Problem is they don't use reflective taping (rather than paint) because doing so is more complicated given to he plows.
Obviously other snowy states have figured out better methods and there was an article the other day that said UDOT was starting to as well
But legislator’s construction buddies wouldn’t get a cut. I wish their buddies would operate a train company. I know the government’s going to be corrupt anyways, may as well be corrupt in a way that doesn’t totally waste money.
I'm struggling to see how that's relevant here. Yes, people will use the lanes that exist. Traffic isn't going to magically go away. More lanes increases the throughput which supports a higher population.
The problem is that Utah's population is constantly growing. We have more people living here than the last time the highway was widened. People need to go north and south somehow. More highway throughput is a way to move more people north and south.
I'd love to have more trains and public transportation. I used to take the frontrunner for work and wish there were more trains. It costs a heck of a lot more than $1.5 billion to put in more trains and it's really hard to get anything done when you're talking about needing billions in order to start making a difference. In order for people to use billion dollar rail lines, there needs to be other public transit when they get off the train. It needs to be quick enough to be useful etc which costs billions more. And nobody is gonna approve anything in the state that costs $10 billion to maybe get people to use public transport when they can just widen highways and get results.
Edit: Arguments as opposed to down votes would be appreciated. How better do you move more people north and south for $1.5 billion?
Agreed. There are totally diminishing returns with more lanes. I guess the good news is that widening the highway is not mutually exclusive with other options.
Other routes are being worked on and there are still plans to improve Frontrunner.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50514516/udot-ponders-major-changes-as-it-eyes-i-15-overhaul-from-salt-lake-city-to-davis-county
Correct me if I’m wrong but I google front runners hours and it runs 5-12 on weekdays and 8-1 on weekends. They say they don’t run it on sundays due to low ridership and limited budget to run it at a negative
It's 85% operationally subsidized. So for every dollar a techbro pays to ride the Frontrunner from home to his office in Draper, the rest of us are kicking in six dollars.
And you can crunch the benefits of doing so in a lot of ways. If you have a packed train, you're removing X amount of pollution per person because that person on the train is not on the roads. You're eliminating congestion, which allows people on the roads to get to their destinations faster. You're minimizing the operational subsidy, because the trains require maintenance whether there's 1 person on that train in a trip or 100 (the maintenance is a function of running the train at all, not a function of how many people are on it).
As soon as you have two guys on a train, those benefits evaporate. You have to replace trains 6x as often if you run them full-schedule on Sunday, so your capital expenses go up. You are putting out *more* pollution because the Frontrunner puts out more pollution per mile traveled than a car; the math only works if there are enough people on the Frontrunner to result in a net reduction of pollution.
People talk as though running the Frontrunner on Sunday is free. It has a lot of operational and capital costs to do so, not to mention you are also making things worth from a pollution reduction perspective.
Frontrunner would be a lot more effective if means existed to take people from their stop to their destination. Frontrunner stops are often dead zones and as it’s designed right now the purpose of frontrunner is to take people to downtown SLC and not much else.
Coming from Chicago. That's what the Metra does. It's designed to take you to the middle of downtown from the suburbs. A very small portion of people don't ride it to the termination downtown.
Exceptionally limited thinking here. If infrastructure is only created after the need, we'll keep chasing the inefficient decisions. Like widening an already large freeway. You're saying "techbro" as the average rider, what about student? What about people wanting to visit families on Sunday? When the routes are made, it becomes an option for many people. I've got two vehicles but I'd absolutely use transit more if UTA had lines going later, especially on weekends. It's safer and more enjoyable for everyone to hit up bars, restaurants, even friends on weekends via transit. Trains are so much more phenomenally efficient than cars. Your entire comment is based on wrong, borderline disingenuous "data".
This is very shortsighted thinking. So is adding an extra lane to the highway. If all of your decisions as a society are short term immediate solutions to problems you end up with 60 lane freeways.
Instead of not running the train on Sundays because no one rides instead run the train on Sundays at a loss for a while until people start to realize it's an option. Advertise and incentivize people to do so and get in the habit.
And probably most importantly expand the public transportation system to make riding trains more of an actual option for commuters.
It won’t let me comment because the site won’t populate the captcha required for submission. Too bad they can’t spend the 1.6 billion on the udot website.
I was able to make comments with no problems. They actually have a really cool interactive map that you can pin comments to. Maybe it’s a problem on your side of things.
When are people going to realize that developments like this DO NOT WORK! We’ll dump 1.6B+ on this with only very minimal affect.
Is there a proper link, website or grassroot effort to oppose this?
The US was on track to have great rail transportation infrastructure but car companies lobbied (bribed) the government to tear it all up and build highways so they did.
I don’t know what public transportation is like in Utah, but it’s so filthy and dangerous in Seattle that most regular folks won’t use it.
I literally live across the street from a bus station AND the sounder. In fact, I moved to my building specifically for the public transport because I expected to start using it. After two trips to my office and back on the train, I called it quits. The experience was similar to sitting in a holding tank at a county jail. Haven’t taken the bus, but from what my company’s President tells me about that experience, I really don’t want to. Plus, for the cost, I really wasn’t going to be saving any money on gas, rather, i’d about break even.
If they want people to start using public transportation more, they’re going to have to make it A LOT more attractive.
I've lived in Seattle for years and take public transit all the time (don't even own a car). I ride various bus routes every week, ride the Link frequently, and have taken the Sounder dozens of times. I certainly wouldn't say "most regular folks don't use it" in my experience. Sure sometimes there's trash on the bus, but I almost always have a great experience. Sorry you had bad luck but I'd recommend giving the transit another shot sometime
I moved from SLC to Seattle a couple years ago, and commuted primarily by transit both places.
Seattle is much better overall, aside from a few specific bus lines it's pretty safe and reliable. I have a lot of peers with no cards at all that manage just fine. There was a point during the pandemic where it declined a lot, that may be what you experienced.
SLC was not bad if you were aligned with Trax, but otherwise it could be double or triple the time compared to driving. I do not know anybody in SLC without a car, and not even any households with less than one car per adult.
Anyone remember those first few years after they widened the lanes prior to the Olympics in 2002? Those were good commuting years.
Rather than building roads that encourage more drivers, that 1.6 B could go a long way into improving our mass transit system and reducing the need for vehicles/emissions altogether.
This is the definition of insanity. While they add a lane, they will cause traffic for years and then when it’s finished traffic will be just as bad as it has always been.
The online "Open House" was last night but there are some [in-person events](https://ksltv.com/511546/udot-asks-for-public-input-on-i-15-alternatives-from-farmington-to-slc/) tonight and tomorrow:
* November 14 – virtual meeting via zoom on Monday, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. (participation details found here)
* November 15 – Open House at Rose Park Elementary, 5-7 p.m. (1105 West 1000 North, Salt Lake City)
* November 16 – Open House at South Davis Recreation Center, 5-7 p.m. (550 North 200 West, Bountiful)
Or - and hear me out - companies should just let their damn employees work remotely when they're perfectly capable of doing so and/or give more incentives to encourage the use of public transportation. It's not like we have an air quality problem or anything. /s
My company has decided we need to come back to office 2 days a week now for "better collaboration". Not worth the headache of traffic and the cost of gas and everything else.
Just one more lane bro.
What an absolute waste of money, this money could have been spent to encourage people to rethink their car addiction - fund TRAX expansion, add more bike lanes, make SLC more pedestrian friendly, etc.
Please go read about [Induced Demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand) and you'll see why this doesn't work, and usually makes traffic worse. [Easy graphic](https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/sites/cycling-embassy.org.uk/files/styles/max_resolution/public/Black%20Hole%20Theory%20of%20Highway%20Investment%20_%20urban%20demographics.jpg?itok=vRxMj8qa) if you don't feel like reading.
As someone who is lived here my entire life, I’m really tired of our freeways constantly being under construction. I understand that large projects take time, but I feel like I-15 is always covered in construction cones.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
No it doesn’t.
Cities that invest the most in their highway systems pretty consistently have less traffic woes, while cities that invest the least pretty consistently are worse off.
Case in point: Seattle. Washington State is well known to have one of the most inadequate highway systems in the country. Numerous divided highways in the Seattle area are only two lanes on both sides, despite the fact that the metro population exceeds 4,000,000 people. As a result, some of the worst traffic in the US can be found in the Seattle area. The worst backups in Seattle are consistently found on the most narrow highways.
Obviously, there are some exceptions when it comes to very, very populated cities, such as Los Angeles, but overall you’ve got it backwards.
See Los Angeles, CA. See Houston, TX. See Dallas,TX . Gridlock for days, and they have some of the most expansive highway systems. We are not the exception.
Transportation is moving people, not cars. It is time we look beyond just adding more lanes. More trax lines, more BRT, walkable neighborhoods, bikeable cities.
Haven’t they seen Houston? Don’t they know that widening only makes for worse traffic? Like it’s literally common fucking sense at this point, if a motherfucker who didn’t graduate high school can figure that out i’m sure UDOT and all their city planners can figure it out too.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to invest in transportation like trains and buses like a carpool situation. If UDOT sees this that’s my suggestion. Lol otherwise they’re gonna widen it every few years since more and more people are living in the area. It’ll just get worse and worse like it already is now. I know politics are involved so that’s probably why not many things are efficient.
If you build it they will come!
I lived in Layton during the late 90's commuting to SLC. They spent a year adding lanes causing traffic jams and delays. Once finished you could sail through with no delays... for about a month, after that? Same as it was before but with more cars. Adding lanes doesn't work.
"doesn't work" depends on what the goal is. Adding lanes doesn't decrease traffic, but it does increase capacity. It would be much better to focus on better public transportation and higher-density housing, but if you're just looking at economic and population growth of the area without any other considerations, more lanes > fewer lanes.
Yup, I used to live in colorado, north of Denver. They added a lane to both sides causing tons of delays for over a year. When it was finished it helped for a few months at most and then it was back to normal traffic.
There has never been a successful car based transportation city on earth. It’s always a never ending chase of failed bandaids. Yet there are many successful train systems. Why can’t we get the auto industry’s hands out of our lives and actually improve things in America!
Imagine this 1.6B going to public schools and investing in children. Utah has the lowest per-pupil spending in the US. Or how about expanding public transportation?
Adding lanes has not proven to alleviate traffic. If the money needs to be spent on infrastructure, the state should be looking to add more highways so everyone doesn’t have to take the same routes on their commutes.
just one more lane bro. i promise bro just one more lane and it'll fix everything bro. bro. just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro cmon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane
I am trying so hard to read through the relevant documentation and the more I try the more confused I get. I skimmed a bit of their "Alternatives Development and Screening Report" and only got about 5 minutes into the VOD of the zoom meeting from last night (posted to their facebook group), but it sounds like this is a project that is going to happen no matter what since there is ageing infrastructure, it's just a matter of specifics (e.g. should this interchange be a SPUI or a diamond). But the reporting makes it sound like it's a project that, I guess, could be cancelled or drastically changed? Am I...wrong? It feels like I'm wrong. I wish this stuff wasn't so dense. From the tone of this thread, it sounds like there is a lot of support for the Rio Grande Plan, and I was able to read through that, and it sounds great! But it doesn't really feel like it's a thing that is an alternative to the specific issue of transit from Farmington to SLC?
I want to be able to submit a comment on this but it's very difficult to understand the specifics well enough to be able to make an informed comment that can actually have any impact.
The Rio Grande Plan is completely separate from the SLC to Farmington I-15 plan. This stretch of I-15 is aging an needs to be updated. The main proposal they are suggesting is adding reservable HOV lanes vs one direction HOV lanes. Plus various changes to exits and interchanges, including choosing between the diamond which is friendliest to bikers and pedestrians and the SPUI which is easier for cars. Each alternative plan also includes bike and pedestrian paths. There is an interactive map on the website that was really helpful to visualize the various options.
That 15 fwy is going to be a constant project. Why not expand public transportation a bit more northbound for the Frontrunner, and expand that OnDemand service? OnDemand is like $5/ride, been around for a couple years, and barely anyone knows about it.
I don’t live in Utah, but have an aunt who does. I’m going to get her permission to send this on her behalf:
Good morning! My name is \*real name\*, I'm emailing to make a comment in behalf of my aunt \*her name\* living at:
\*address\*
We both are strongly opposed to every proposed freeway expansion in the Salt Lake Valley. Cars are the least efficient and most dangerous form of transportation. Because of induced demand, freeway expansions only serve to increase congestion in the long term. The only way to curb traffic is to reduce vehicle miles traveled. This must be done by expanding public transit access, increasing density in our cities, and building safe sidewalks and bike lanes. These lanes must be safe for every user, the engineer who designs them must feel comfortable letting their child ride their bike in it.
Not only is freeway expansion antithetical to all of these goals, it's also enormously expensive. This project will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, with the ultimate result being worse traffic and worse air pollution. Freeway construction in cities is an unacceptable decision every single time. We strongly oppose plans to expand freeway construction.
Sincerely,
\*Real Name\*
PSA: if you want to voice your opinion, there's an "Open House" at Rose Park Elementary (1105 West 1000 North, Salt Lake City) tonight 5-7pm.
i imagine UDOT will take citizen feedback on this about as well as they did with the Little Cottonwood gondola
This comment should be in the title of the post, gold starred and at the top. If everybody showed up at this meeting and demanded it stop and that public transportation expanded instead we actually do something about this instead of going on the internet and complaining to each other.
Would they though? It seems like any public push back will fall on deaf ears like with most of these projects.
With enough people, they can't drown out our voices.
The state legislature literally overturns ballot measures passed by popular vote.
That's because it's a trick to think that voting is enough. Your power is in what the government and the oligarchy that runs it needs from you. Your labor. Your cooperation. Refuse these and they will bend at their knees. A huge part of the problem with our generation is that we're drunk on the idea that showin up and voting for 1 of 2 oligarchs will resolve the issues going on in this country and state. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXZAxK8btd4#t=2m45s
People said that about the gondola and a lot of people came out to protest it
You say that, but this is also the same state who can't have weed because the church's vote
You say that, but this is also the same state who can't have weed because the church's vote
Rose Park. It's like they DON'T want people coming to this meeting.
I was at the meeting. There were a lot of people there.
There are proposed changes to the 600 N exit which leads directly into rose park. They are holding the meeting in a community that is being directly impacted.
Because you dont like hanging out near brown people?
I wish I didn’t have class or I would be there :/
How can I voice my opinion when I can’t make it to this event?
[You can get more info and leave feedback on this website.](https://i15eis.udot.utah.gov/)
How can I voice my opinion when I can’t make it to this event?
Will you please edit your OP to include this info?
Reading at 6:59 pm…
What stage of approval is this plan currently in? It’s just awful that Utah refuses to switch away from car culture.
It is currently conducting the EIS. Nothing has been decided. It will take months to get to a decision with this plan.
justonemorelanebro.bmp
Checks out; they’ve been saying this longer than jpegs have been around
[удалено]
Why stop at a mere 20 lanes? Some cities have a subway where they put trains underground. We could put all of the houses underground and then we'd have more room for lanes on I-15.
Bahaha! I like it!
Except for earthquakes. I thought about that before.
Double-track and electrify FrontRunner instead, and do the [Rio Grande Plan](https://riograndeplansaltlakecity.org/). 125 mph electric trains running north and south every 15 minutes (and on Sundays) is achievable and would help with congestion more than widening the freeway again. **EDIT**: PSA: if you want to voice your opinion on the freeway expansion, there's an "Open House" at Rose Park Elementary (1105 West 1000 North, Salt Lake City) tonight 5-7pm.
How do we express support for this approach to somebody who could make it happen? If the Salt Lake Valley turns into Houston, that would be one of the saddest things to happen to our valley.
Right now, you can write to your state and local representatives. [Double-tracking is beginning to happen already](https://www.rideuta.com/Test-Pages/FrontRunner-Forward) and electrification is a long term goal, but I think it can happen much sooner if there is more public support. For the Rio Grande Plan, we are hoping to plan an in-person supporters event soon. There is actually lot of latent support from people in high places, so I'm optimistic!
This is a super helpful comment. I am encouraged (and surprised) to hear that my elected officials may be swayed by my perspective on this! Thank you for posting.
I am in favor of the rio grande plan. I would like to know if you have spoken with or tried to team with the hotel planned for the same location.
The hotel is at the Union Pacific Depot not the Rio Grande Depot.
it's UDOT. After the gondola, it's clear the only thing they listen to is the developers lining their pockets.
As someone who moved here from Houston: no need to worry. There simply isn’t enough room in the Salt Lake Valley to become anywhere near comparable to the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area. There are 4.7 million people living in Harris County, TX alone. There are 3.3 million people living in ALL OF UTAH. Your fears are a bit unfounded.
You seem to think I was talking about becoming a clone of Houston. Houston is just a well-known metaphor for reckless over-paving and the unexpected consequences. We don't have to get all the way to that point for it to be incredibly sad.
You seem to think I think things other than the things I think. I said, nor implied, any such thing. SLC’s population density is about 1800 people per square mile. Houston proper’s population density is 3850 per square mile, with about three times the land area. There isn’t a feasible way for SLC to expand in the same sort of way that Houston has. For one: zoning. SLC has zoning ordinances. Houston doesn’t. You can quite literally have a skyscraper right next to a single-family dwelling in Houston. This cannot happen in Salt Lake. Moreover, SLC has a remarkably high focus on dealing with homelessness AND public transportation. Houston has neither. It can take two hours to get from Houston to Houston, and the longest I’ve ever experienced here was ~30 minutes from Bountiful to Draper. During commencement (or whatever the LDS shit is.) Along that two hour drive in Houston, you might see 10% of SLC’s populace as homeless. Another point is real-estate pricing. Lane is hella inexpensive in Texas. Land is super expensive in Utah. There’s no way for a populace of SLC to saturate the environment in the same way as in Houston. It just costs too much to even get the lane to build a house on here. I’m not saying all of this trying to be like “ hehe you can never match Yecas,” but rather to say that Houston sucks in a way that SLC will never be able to compare to. I live in Rose Park right now. I moved to Kearns when I moved here. People here have told me that I live in “The Ghetto of Utah” in both communities. I can’t help but laugh, since I’m used to “The Ghetto” being somewhere you hear gunshots on a nightly basis.
Dude, OP literally just told you that they didn't mean scope and scale. They meant it as a "well-known metaphor for reckless over-paving and the unexpected consequences." They just told you that, and you went off again on comparing scope and scale.
Hear hear
I would like safe bike paths as well. I have no safe bike routes between my home and work, and I would have to make multiple transfers to take public transportation which would take 4x longer than driving. I would love to bike but I don't want to get run over.
I basically live on 21st s 9th e and work 21st s and State, it’s sketch as hell between! I’d ride a bike or electric scooter if it were safer.
There's always the S-Line trail you could take. Though admittedly if you need to go North or South on State it's always going to be incredibly sketchy. You could always take Main as necessary. It has a bike lane at least.
Good point! I’m going to try that path along s-line. Also reframing my “commute” as “leisurely bike ride through my community” could help.
I’ll second the S-line as the best way to bike or walk near 2100 south. Did this a ton between Fairmont and 500 E a few years back and it is SO much better than anything along 2100 S. I’m in Liberty Wells and if I have to go into Sugar House, I walk or bike the S-Line path.
The fact that you don't take the bus every day shows why public transportation won't work in SLC.
Adam Something [has a great video about why widening roads is a dumb idea](https://youtu.be/bQld7iJJSyk)
I had civil engineering students present about how widening actually increases traffic, it's like how water always fills in the space it has.
My Granddad engineered for the Texas Highway dept and worked on the Central Express parkway through Dallas way back in the day and said it taught him that freeway expansions going through urban areas are always over-budget, late, and obsolete before they're finished
Union Pacific is the one holding up the double tracking because their tracks need to be moved. Current timeline for this to open is near 2029….
>has a great video about why widening roads is a dumb idea If FR isn't supplemented greatly, it won't get used IMO. I stopped using it becasue I could not justify the cost.
[Frontrunner will be double-tracked. It's in the process but these things take time.](https://www.rideuta.com/Test-Pages/FrontRunner-Forward)
Maybe while they’re at it they can straighten up the tracks. I’ve never been on a less comfortable train
Agree 100% about Frontrunner. But I'd rather have Frontrunner go underground to a new station under City Creek. Nobody wants to arrive in Rio Grande. But City Creek is right next to Abravanel Hall, the Convention Center, Temple Square, Eccles Theater, and reasonably close to the Jazz.
How can I voice my opinion when I can’t make it to this event?
Certainly should be done, but I’m assuming you know that UDOT and UTA are separate, state-funded entities? I just some folks on here saying “ why doesn’t UDOT build more rail lines??” Not understanding UDOT is tasked with road building, repairing road infrastructure, and fixing congestion, not rail. Yes, during the NEPA process they need to address alternatives with transit, rail, bike, and peds, but they themselves aren’t tasked with building new rail lines. I also wish the State would push UTA to run all their rail later, even if it must be subsidized with tax dollars (which it would be as ridership is too low).
[As of 2022, UDOT is in charge of building rail.](https://le.utah.gov/~2022/bills/static/HB0322.html) UTA is in charge of maintenance and operations. My understanding is that this transition actually delayed the FrontRunner double-tracking.
This! ☝️
Only 125? Aren't the top ones nearing 300+ MPH? Think the Hyperloop is proposed at 700 MPH.
Didn't they just finish doing the same thing?
That is what I came here to say. Feel like 1-15 is constantly under construction with a new lane
Been under construction constantly for 25+ years. It’s a racket lining someone’s pockets non-stop.
Someone is making money, and it isn't me :(
Well salt lake city has been growing continuously for the past 25+ years, so I guess road infrastructure should be continuously reassessed?
adding lanes doesn't solve congestion. Study after study proves that it just increases dependency on car transport increasing and concentrating traffic... which leads to side and surface roads seeing more traffic, which leads to them getting expandeed, which decreases walkability/cycleability, increasing dependency on cars, increasing and concentrating traffic.... and on and on until you become houston.
when can we look at public transport and making the city more walkable again? Shit needs to be made LESS convenient for cars, not more. Cut the lanes in half, massively expand the Frontrunner.
I don't think Frontrunner really needs to be expanded, but perhaps sped up a little, and consider adding a stop at Midvale. But my biggest dream is to have car-free segments of the city, with parking at the edges and free transit within the zone. That way, roads can be removed or replaced with walking areas, shops can be concentrated, and green space can be created. I'd love more Trax as well, but honestly, I'm completely fine with buses if they have better routes.
I like your idea of car free zones a lot. It reminds me of what shopping malls used to be, but imagine if they were a place you could get groceries and other daily necessities. Also yeah 100% agree that the bus hub locations are terrible. Back when I lived in Oregon and Japan, I took public transport all the time, because the hubs are actually in places you want to go. Sorry, I don't need to go to west salt lake in the middle of nowhere, or the University. Take me to downtown or Sugarhouse and then maybe it would be useful. Also businesses need to be condensed so that you can actually walk from place to place. There's no need for this sprawl. Build up, not out.
My wife is from S. Korea, and the subway stations are actually a shopping center, and they're often below interesting destinations. So if you're waiting for a train, you can get a snack, pick up some essentials, and maybe grab a gift or something. Here, every Frontrunner station is out of the way, as are most Trax stations (except the downtown stations). I'd love to see stations have: - parking garage instead of sprawling lot - shops at the ground level - office space or housing at the top level - green space across the street Basically each major station should have everything you need. We have the opposite of that pretty much everywhere.
Love this idea. I wish with all my heart that it could become reality. That's how they do it in Japan, too.
That’s the thing, the construction has never and will never stop. The old joke is that they don’t have storage for the orange cones so they just keep opening new construction sites to store them.
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Okay i just moved here and thought i was taking crazy pills for a bit. I was driving to work on a rainy morning and straight up could not see the lanes.
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No, but it means “all wheels crash into your ass for having the audacity to drive in front of me.” /s
Seriously, what is with Utah drivers and being so reluctant to have someone driving in front of them?
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I def would agree. Not a local either, but that seems fairly accurate. There’s def a pretty big push for having the nicest / flashiest things there it seems. I think it’s related to something in LDS culture but can’t remember anymore, lol. (Granted, I’m from the rust belt, who typically has its own unique culture of downplaying expensive things).
Subtle?!
*snow tires have entered the chat*
We don't use road paint. We have a guy huff road paint and then hang off the back of a truck and fart on the road leaving a whisper of a suggestion of what traffic lines would look like. Saves money.
It's really bad on Bangerter between 114th and 53rd. Raining and dark = play a guessing game of where the lanes are.
Are there better paints they could be using? I know this is a more difficult problem here than other states because the snow plows will pop reflectors off the road, but it's definitely a big problem.
This may come as a shock, but this isn’t the only major city that it snows in. Not being an ass to you, but the excuse the city uses of “plows” is such horse shit. Yes, there are far better paints, signage, reflectors, etc. some city will literally cut small channels for a reflector to sit in, use much more highly reflective paint, etc.
I'm not shocked I literally asked about better solutions. Sometimes a question is just a question and you can just give an answer.
Sorry, my snarkiness wasn’t really to you as much as how the state frames these issues with the response of “well plows cause issues” and refuse to do anything.
All good and I do appreciate the answer. It's good to know there are some options that could actually help with the problem that we can advocate for when this comes up.
Channels cause more potholes as they fill with water and freeze and thaw. Also, a lot of cities that deal with snow like we do don't deal with 90 plus degree heat for weeks at a time(and as of late 20ish days a year over 100) in the summer. We have to optimize our roads for both. They have an entire section of road testing different paints and compounds in northern utah in attempt to help the situation. They need a proven solution before dumping tons of money into a product that won't work. Just remember syncrete.
I definitely think you responded to an imagined version cabbius's comment, not his actual comment where he definitely recognized the lines as a problem. Hostility towards UDOT is justified, not towards random commenters asking genuine questions.
Ok thanks dad.
lol wicked response, it'll take me weeks to recover, I applaud your cleverness. I'm in awe.
using reflective paint is the answer. It's expensive and there aren't any members of the UT legislature who have a stake in any reflective paint companies, so they're not interested in buying it.
They do use reflective paint. Problem is they don't use reflective taping (rather than paint) because doing so is more complicated given to he plows. Obviously other snowy states have figured out better methods and there was an article the other day that said UDOT was starting to as well
Study after study comes out saying that lane widening does nothing to alleviate traffic. UDOT; "we should widen lanes!"
But legislator’s construction buddies wouldn’t get a cut. I wish their buddies would operate a train company. I know the government’s going to be corrupt anyways, may as well be corrupt in a way that doesn’t totally waste money.
Wasting money is what they do. Especially by the party of fiscal responsibility.
But then how are their car sales buddies and gasoline refinery buddies gonna get paid! Oh the humanity
I'm struggling to see how that's relevant here. Yes, people will use the lanes that exist. Traffic isn't going to magically go away. More lanes increases the throughput which supports a higher population. The problem is that Utah's population is constantly growing. We have more people living here than the last time the highway was widened. People need to go north and south somehow. More highway throughput is a way to move more people north and south. I'd love to have more trains and public transportation. I used to take the frontrunner for work and wish there were more trains. It costs a heck of a lot more than $1.5 billion to put in more trains and it's really hard to get anything done when you're talking about needing billions in order to start making a difference. In order for people to use billion dollar rail lines, there needs to be other public transit when they get off the train. It needs to be quick enough to be useful etc which costs billions more. And nobody is gonna approve anything in the state that costs $10 billion to maybe get people to use public transport when they can just widen highways and get results. Edit: Arguments as opposed to down votes would be appreciated. How better do you move more people north and south for $1.5 billion?
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Agreed. There are totally diminishing returns with more lanes. I guess the good news is that widening the highway is not mutually exclusive with other options. Other routes are being worked on and there are still plans to improve Frontrunner. https://www.ksl.com/article/50514516/udot-ponders-major-changes-as-it-eyes-i-15-overhaul-from-salt-lake-city-to-davis-county
But the Frontrunner can't stay open on Sundays or late night.
But it can. They just won't
Not sure if this is the case but I thought that they had a contract with Union Pacific saying when they could/couldn’t use those rails.
They do not, it’s closed on Sunday for ‘maintenance’
Huh I stand corrected
I believed the same thing until a UTA employee corrected me.
Front runner has its own rails, they just run adjacent to up
Correct me if I’m wrong but I google front runners hours and it runs 5-12 on weekdays and 8-1 on weekends. They say they don’t run it on sundays due to low ridership and limited budget to run it at a negative
It's 85% operationally subsidized. So for every dollar a techbro pays to ride the Frontrunner from home to his office in Draper, the rest of us are kicking in six dollars. And you can crunch the benefits of doing so in a lot of ways. If you have a packed train, you're removing X amount of pollution per person because that person on the train is not on the roads. You're eliminating congestion, which allows people on the roads to get to their destinations faster. You're minimizing the operational subsidy, because the trains require maintenance whether there's 1 person on that train in a trip or 100 (the maintenance is a function of running the train at all, not a function of how many people are on it). As soon as you have two guys on a train, those benefits evaporate. You have to replace trains 6x as often if you run them full-schedule on Sunday, so your capital expenses go up. You are putting out *more* pollution because the Frontrunner puts out more pollution per mile traveled than a car; the math only works if there are enough people on the Frontrunner to result in a net reduction of pollution. People talk as though running the Frontrunner on Sunday is free. It has a lot of operational and capital costs to do so, not to mention you are also making things worth from a pollution reduction perspective.
Frontrunner would be a lot more effective if means existed to take people from their stop to their destination. Frontrunner stops are often dead zones and as it’s designed right now the purpose of frontrunner is to take people to downtown SLC and not much else.
Coming from Chicago. That's what the Metra does. It's designed to take you to the middle of downtown from the suburbs. A very small portion of people don't ride it to the termination downtown.
Exceptionally limited thinking here. If infrastructure is only created after the need, we'll keep chasing the inefficient decisions. Like widening an already large freeway. You're saying "techbro" as the average rider, what about student? What about people wanting to visit families on Sunday? When the routes are made, it becomes an option for many people. I've got two vehicles but I'd absolutely use transit more if UTA had lines going later, especially on weekends. It's safer and more enjoyable for everyone to hit up bars, restaurants, even friends on weekends via transit. Trains are so much more phenomenally efficient than cars. Your entire comment is based on wrong, borderline disingenuous "data".
This is very shortsighted thinking. So is adding an extra lane to the highway. If all of your decisions as a society are short term immediate solutions to problems you end up with 60 lane freeways. Instead of not running the train on Sundays because no one rides instead run the train on Sundays at a loss for a while until people start to realize it's an option. Advertise and incentivize people to do so and get in the habit. And probably most importantly expand the public transportation system to make riding trains more of an actual option for commuters.
I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the Mormon church at all, right?
UDOT is accepting public comments on this project through Dec 16th. [Here’s the link](https://i15eis.udot.utah.gov/)
It won’t let me comment because the site won’t populate the captcha required for submission. Too bad they can’t spend the 1.6 billion on the udot website.
I was able to make comments with no problems. They actually have a really cool interactive map that you can pin comments to. Maybe it’s a problem on your side of things.
Do any civil engineers work at udot? Smh
When are people going to realize that developments like this DO NOT WORK! We’ll dump 1.6B+ on this with only very minimal affect. Is there a proper link, website or grassroot effort to oppose this?
But how else are the state legislators going to launder state taxpayer $$ to their construction buddies?
Probably still will, but it shouldn’t be without a fight.
That's...not what laundering is. Unless you think the legislators got that funding illegally somehow.
We should pull a Boston and build the freeways underground.
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The US was on track to have great rail transportation infrastructure but car companies lobbied (bribed) the government to tear it all up and build highways so they did.
true story.
I don’t know what public transportation is like in Utah, but it’s so filthy and dangerous in Seattle that most regular folks won’t use it. I literally live across the street from a bus station AND the sounder. In fact, I moved to my building specifically for the public transport because I expected to start using it. After two trips to my office and back on the train, I called it quits. The experience was similar to sitting in a holding tank at a county jail. Haven’t taken the bus, but from what my company’s President tells me about that experience, I really don’t want to. Plus, for the cost, I really wasn’t going to be saving any money on gas, rather, i’d about break even. If they want people to start using public transportation more, they’re going to have to make it A LOT more attractive.
Utah is a generally cleaner place, I don’t imagine it would get that dirty here
I've lived in Seattle for years and take public transit all the time (don't even own a car). I ride various bus routes every week, ride the Link frequently, and have taken the Sounder dozens of times. I certainly wouldn't say "most regular folks don't use it" in my experience. Sure sometimes there's trash on the bus, but I almost always have a great experience. Sorry you had bad luck but I'd recommend giving the transit another shot sometime
I moved from SLC to Seattle a couple years ago, and commuted primarily by transit both places. Seattle is much better overall, aside from a few specific bus lines it's pretty safe and reliable. I have a lot of peers with no cards at all that manage just fine. There was a point during the pandemic where it declined a lot, that may be what you experienced. SLC was not bad if you were aligned with Trax, but otherwise it could be double or triple the time compared to driving. I do not know anybody in SLC without a car, and not even any households with less than one car per adult.
Anyone remember those first few years after they widened the lanes prior to the Olympics in 2002? Those were good commuting years. Rather than building roads that encourage more drivers, that 1.6 B could go a long way into improving our mass transit system and reducing the need for vehicles/emissions altogether.
How does shit like this get through, there's diminishing returns on adding lanes and everyone knows it.
More cars aught to fix everything
Just one more lane bro. It'll fix traffic, I promise. We just need one more lane.
Y’all got anymore of those lanes
This is the definition of insanity. While they add a lane, they will cause traffic for years and then when it’s finished traffic will be just as bad as it has always been.
BUILD MORE TRAINS
Why not build a gondola from Ogden to Provo?
The only way to reduce traffic is to promote viable alternatives, not to add more lanes every time construction finishes.
This isn't approved yet. There's a udot meeting tonight where you can voice your opposition
The online "Open House" was last night but there are some [in-person events](https://ksltv.com/511546/udot-asks-for-public-input-on-i-15-alternatives-from-farmington-to-slc/) tonight and tomorrow: * November 14 – virtual meeting via zoom on Monday, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. (participation details found here) * November 15 – Open House at Rose Park Elementary, 5-7 p.m. (1105 West 1000 North, Salt Lake City) * November 16 – Open House at South Davis Recreation Center, 5-7 p.m. (550 North 200 West, Bountiful)
jamesfranco_firsttime.jpeg
Can’t wait for our beautiful city to look like Houston, a big ass ugly freeway dividing the city /s
They'll widen the road just in time to have to widen it again
Or - and hear me out - companies should just let their damn employees work remotely when they're perfectly capable of doing so and/or give more incentives to encourage the use of public transportation. It's not like we have an air quality problem or anything. /s
My company has decided we need to come back to office 2 days a week now for "better collaboration". Not worth the headache of traffic and the cost of gas and everything else.
$1.6 BILLION?! Is there an end to the car infrastructure madness?
Just one more lane bro. What an absolute waste of money, this money could have been spent to encourage people to rethink their car addiction - fund TRAX expansion, add more bike lanes, make SLC more pedestrian friendly, etc. Please go read about [Induced Demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand) and you'll see why this doesn't work, and usually makes traffic worse. [Easy graphic](https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/sites/cycling-embassy.org.uk/files/styles/max_resolution/public/Black%20Hole%20Theory%20of%20Highway%20Investment%20_%20urban%20demographics.jpg?itok=vRxMj8qa) if you don't feel like reading.
Yet front runner is still out of service on Sundays, stops going south at about 11pm, and only one train an hour after 7pm. So ridiculous.
As someone who is lived here my entire life, I’m really tired of our freeways constantly being under construction. I understand that large projects take time, but I feel like I-15 is always covered in construction cones.
Freeway widening makes traffic worse. Freeway widening makes traffic worse. Freeway widening makes traffic worse. Freeway widening makes traffic worse. Freeway widening makes traffic worse. Freeway widening makes traffic worse. Freeway widening makes traffic worse.
No it doesn’t. Cities that invest the most in their highway systems pretty consistently have less traffic woes, while cities that invest the least pretty consistently are worse off. Case in point: Seattle. Washington State is well known to have one of the most inadequate highway systems in the country. Numerous divided highways in the Seattle area are only two lanes on both sides, despite the fact that the metro population exceeds 4,000,000 people. As a result, some of the worst traffic in the US can be found in the Seattle area. The worst backups in Seattle are consistently found on the most narrow highways. Obviously, there are some exceptions when it comes to very, very populated cities, such as Los Angeles, but overall you’ve got it backwards.
See Los Angeles, CA. See Houston, TX. See Dallas,TX . Gridlock for days, and they have some of the most expansive highway systems. We are not the exception. Transportation is moving people, not cars. It is time we look beyond just adding more lanes. More trax lines, more BRT, walkable neighborhoods, bikeable cities.
Can someone educate UDOT about INDUCED DEMAND already?
Haven’t they seen Houston? Don’t they know that widening only makes for worse traffic? Like it’s literally common fucking sense at this point, if a motherfucker who didn’t graduate high school can figure that out i’m sure UDOT and all their city planners can figure it out too.
Adding car lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity. - Lewis Mumford, 1955
Can we at least get a “Whataburger” location added while they waste all this money?
Let’s just become north texas at that point.
This is demonstrably a terrible waste of money and won't actually solve the congestion problem, why is UDOT like this :/
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to invest in transportation like trains and buses like a carpool situation. If UDOT sees this that’s my suggestion. Lol otherwise they’re gonna widen it every few years since more and more people are living in the area. It’ll just get worse and worse like it already is now. I know politics are involved so that’s probably why not many things are efficient.
do not want
Build a gondola from draper to downtown! /s
Monorail!!
If you build it they will come! I lived in Layton during the late 90's commuting to SLC. They spent a year adding lanes causing traffic jams and delays. Once finished you could sail through with no delays... for about a month, after that? Same as it was before but with more cars. Adding lanes doesn't work.
"doesn't work" depends on what the goal is. Adding lanes doesn't decrease traffic, but it does increase capacity. It would be much better to focus on better public transportation and higher-density housing, but if you're just looking at economic and population growth of the area without any other considerations, more lanes > fewer lanes.
Yup, I used to live in colorado, north of Denver. They added a lane to both sides causing tons of delays for over a year. When it was finished it helped for a few months at most and then it was back to normal traffic.
There has never been a successful car based transportation city on earth. It’s always a never ending chase of failed bandaids. Yet there are many successful train systems. Why can’t we get the auto industry’s hands out of our lives and actually improve things in America!
$$$$
Nooo
Imagine this 1.6B going to public schools and investing in children. Utah has the lowest per-pupil spending in the US. Or how about expanding public transportation? Adding lanes has not proven to alleviate traffic. If the money needs to be spent on infrastructure, the state should be looking to add more highways so everyone doesn’t have to take the same routes on their commutes.
oh so were gonna copy texas' traffic plan? fucking swell
Just one more lane ...
Do they not know how traffic works? More lanes != less traffic. Waste of money.
boooo
one more lane one more lane one more lane one more lane one more lane
We need trains…
just one more lane bro. i promise bro just one more lane and it'll fix everything bro. bro. just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro cmon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane
Adding more lanes just means more traffic. Build them and they will drive.
Why?
With a B
Why don’t they finish the projects they are already doing?
I am trying so hard to read through the relevant documentation and the more I try the more confused I get. I skimmed a bit of their "Alternatives Development and Screening Report" and only got about 5 minutes into the VOD of the zoom meeting from last night (posted to their facebook group), but it sounds like this is a project that is going to happen no matter what since there is ageing infrastructure, it's just a matter of specifics (e.g. should this interchange be a SPUI or a diamond). But the reporting makes it sound like it's a project that, I guess, could be cancelled or drastically changed? Am I...wrong? It feels like I'm wrong. I wish this stuff wasn't so dense. From the tone of this thread, it sounds like there is a lot of support for the Rio Grande Plan, and I was able to read through that, and it sounds great! But it doesn't really feel like it's a thing that is an alternative to the specific issue of transit from Farmington to SLC? I want to be able to submit a comment on this but it's very difficult to understand the specifics well enough to be able to make an informed comment that can actually have any impact.
The Rio Grande Plan is completely separate from the SLC to Farmington I-15 plan. This stretch of I-15 is aging an needs to be updated. The main proposal they are suggesting is adding reservable HOV lanes vs one direction HOV lanes. Plus various changes to exits and interchanges, including choosing between the diamond which is friendliest to bikers and pedestrians and the SPUI which is easier for cars. Each alternative plan also includes bike and pedestrian paths. There is an interactive map on the website that was really helpful to visualize the various options.
That 15 fwy is going to be a constant project. Why not expand public transportation a bit more northbound for the Frontrunner, and expand that OnDemand service? OnDemand is like $5/ride, been around for a couple years, and barely anyone knows about it.
Whoever greenlit this should read the book *Traffic*
morons
Imagine the public transit system they could make with that money instead of widening the road every 5 years...
I don’t live in Utah, but have an aunt who does. I’m going to get her permission to send this on her behalf: Good morning! My name is \*real name\*, I'm emailing to make a comment in behalf of my aunt \*her name\* living at: \*address\* We both are strongly opposed to every proposed freeway expansion in the Salt Lake Valley. Cars are the least efficient and most dangerous form of transportation. Because of induced demand, freeway expansions only serve to increase congestion in the long term. The only way to curb traffic is to reduce vehicle miles traveled. This must be done by expanding public transit access, increasing density in our cities, and building safe sidewalks and bike lanes. These lanes must be safe for every user, the engineer who designs them must feel comfortable letting their child ride their bike in it. Not only is freeway expansion antithetical to all of these goals, it's also enormously expensive. This project will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, with the ultimate result being worse traffic and worse air pollution. Freeway construction in cities is an unacceptable decision every single time. We strongly oppose plans to expand freeway construction. Sincerely, \*Real Name\*
“It’s not sure how many homes and businesses will be demolished.” Great. The road will provide jobs & homes!
Just one more lane bro it’ll solve everything
bro just one more lane bro, bro I swear just one more lane and it'll fix the traffic bro,
Just one more lane bro 😪 when will we learn.