Expanded public transit encourages beneficial growth
Highways, transit, even local connectors, are the arteries that deliver the lifeblood of people, and without them, no new subdivisions, no new big-box stores and no new businesses would happen.
Many people believe that a new or expanded highway will relieve congestion, making their commute easier. That's only true for a very short time. What really happens is that new or expanded highways encourage new subdivisions and new commercial growth farther and farther away from central areas.
When new people move in, they add to the freeway traffic, and the congestion level once again rises, usually even higher than before. It's a simple mechanism that has been demonstrated all over the world. We can see it here: Traffic delays in the Wasatch region actually rose significantly after I-15 was completed.
If new highways are not about reducing congestion, then why do we bother?
Transportation decisions dictate the ultimate shape of our community, enabling more and more growth. Building a new highway — like the Mountain View Corridor — is the same thing as saying that we want a lot of new development on the valley's west side. Building Legacy Highway north to Davis County will support more sprawl there, but it won't reduce congestion for long. When we build a highway, we are dictating where, when and how growth will occur.
The Avenues and other parts of Salt Lake City are examples of compact development, where the basic land use generated by old streetcar networks tended to favor a mix of houses, schools and businesses. It was easier to use the streetcar then (or the TRAX today) if you lived and worked close to a stop. Then, and now, an extensive public transit system encouraged people to live, shop and recreate close by — and it builds a sense of neighborhood, too.
Even if you don't use the transit system, the compact neighborhood it creates is beneficial. I live near downtown and work a few miles away at the university. Within a very short walk or drive, I can find all the goods and services I need, partly because these places grew up next to a convenient transit system. As a result, though I drive to work every day, it's a short distance to everywhere, and I only put 8,000 miles on my car last year.
That's an important factor. The more spread out our community becomes, the longer and more frequent are our daily trips. In the past 10 years, our population has increased 27 percent in Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties. But the number of miles we drive has increased 50 percent in these same four counties. More people driving even more miles equals more traffic congestion on the highways and more air pollution. If living closer to more compact neighborhoods could reduce the number of miles we drive, we might not need to expand highways at all. And we'd all have cleaner air as a bonus.
Though it may not be possible to avoid building more highways forever, the expansion of public transit into more areas should be given a high priority since it supports and encourages development patterns that benefit us all.
Brenda Case Scheer is dean of the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning and a member of the Envision Utah steering committee.
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