For the week of May 21 - 27, 2003

The traffic lesson
of Salt Lake City

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Faced with snarled fender-to-fender, bumper-to-bumper traffic on metropolitan Salt Lake City’s high-speed intra-urban freeway, exasperated urban planners and taxpayers finally realize the obvious.

Only a rail transit system can possibly bail out commuter demands along the booming Wasatch Front. In fact, a poll in March by the Mountainland Association of Governments found that 70 percent of voters in Utah County (Provo) support a modest tax increase for a light rail system.

The painful lesson in Utah, of course, is planners failed to include light rail when charting transportation for the growth explosion that has led to traffic nightmares.

As The Salt Lake Tribune observed editorially, "It makes both political and practical sense to design public transit into any highway project from the get-go."

Planners at the Idaho Transportation Department should note metro Salt Lake City’s travails.

As ITD wraps up its vision of Highway 75’s future in the Wood River Valley, it should include provisions for future light rail.

Make no mistake: although south central Idaho will never be another Salt Lake City, heavier vehicle traffic volumes are inevitable as Wood River Valley population trends upward.

Building an intra-valley rail system with more advanced technology might be years away. But providing for it now as a future add-on will give valley communities a head start when the crush begins and they need to finance light rail.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.