Mobility Lab Director Tom Fairchild returned from a trip to Salt Lake City recently and raved to me about the public-transportation infrastructure in the big-skied, beautiful Utah capital.
He had also met with a group called Envision Utah, which was the focus of Tuesday’s keynote lunch speaker at the Innovation in Mobility Public Policy Summit.
Jerry Benson, chief operating officer of the Utah Transit Authority (UTA), discussed how the Envision Utah public/private partnership was the successful formula for expanding public transportation in a traditionally conservative – and even anti-public transportation – state.
“Significant population growth was a big reason for the Envision Utah process,” Benson told the downtown Washington D.C. audience.
It was formed in 1997 because community and state leaders and the public were worried by the disconnect between Utah’s highly educated public and the amount of people leaving for jobs in other states. They were also concerned that Utah’s beauty was being dirtied by an air-quality problem.
Envision Utah has brought great change to Salt Lake City. “In 1992, voters didn’t want light rail. It was a failed tax-increase referendum. But in 1993, UTA purchased light rail right-of-way anyway,” Benson said, and this was despite protesters at a light-rail groundbreaking ceremony with banners saying ridiculous things like “Light Rail Kills Children.”
Now, all these years later, Envision Utah has performed a wealth of public-values research and held hundreds of workshops to build infrastructure strategies that incorporate the desires of the public.
Public-transit ridership in Salt Lake City has essentially doubled since the 1990s, with 44 million boardings in 2013 on the city’s bus, light rail, commuter rail, and streetcar services.
Benson said, “Envision Utah was done on a voluntary basis, with cities signing up one by one. It took a long time. Metropolitan planning organizations could then come up with their visions for the future . It took persistence and the hard work of pounding the pavement and going city by city.”
He said Utah still needs help on many issues, including last-mile connections, bike improvements, school routes, fare payments, and customer experiences. Partnerships across the state is the best way to move forward, according to Benson.
He said, “It’s a very conservative approach. If you do good planning, the tax dollars are less for everyone.”
Skyline photo by vxla