Livable Streets

Responsive Margin

Person crossing 800 South on the 600 East neighborhood byway.

Overview

The Livable Streets Program is working with residents to bring neighborhood traffic calming to Salt Lake City. Our goal is to improve the traffic safety and comfort of your local neighborhood streets.

The program established a data-driven, transparent, and equitable process that prioritized funding for traffic calming improvements in areas of the City that are most in need. The City was organized into 113 zones that were ranked based on injury crashes, traffic speeds, access to community assets, and socioeconomic data. Within these zones, 403 miles of candidate streets were identified. Candidate streets are city-owned and have three vehicle travel lanes or fewer with a posted speed limit of 30 MPH or less. These candidate streets will be the focus for implementing traffic calming in each neighborhood.

Traffic calming helps improve traffic safety and comfort by slowing down vehicles with standard tools such as speed humps, traffic circles, and curb extensions. Additionally, the City’s traffic calming toolkit offers non-standard tools like traffic safety education campaigns, street trees, speed trailers, and improved street lighting. Some of the options provide aesthetic and comfort enhancements on neighborhood streets, others create opportunities to correct unwanted behaviors and raise awareness around traffic safety. Community participation is critical to ensure the Livable Streets program is community-focused and effective.

Community engagement focuses on collecting feedback and experiences from a diverse range of residents and community partners. Resident feedback is crucial to establish an effective neighborhood traffic calming plan. This will ensure the plan addresses residents’ concerns and is tailored to each zone’s unique needs.

How to Provide Feedback

The success of the Livable Streets Program relies on public participation. Your feedback will guide us to identify areas of concern and help us implement traffic calming measures that align with the needs and preferences of Salt Lake City residents. There are a variety of ways to provide input:

Take the Livable Streets survey.

Send an email to livablestreets@slcgov.com. Please provide a specific address in your email.

Leave a voicemail at 801-535-6412.

Attend one of our community meetings. We host 2-3 community meetings for each zone. When we reach the zone in which you live, we’ll send out postcards to notify you. You can find the meeting details in the “Meet With Us” menu.

Attend community council meetings. When we reach the zone in which you live, we’ll present at the community council. This is a great opportunity to talk with the team in person.

FAQ

What is traffic calming and livability?

Traffic calming is the deliberate slowing of traffic in residential areas through physical design. It is tool to combat speeding and other unsafe behaviors of drivers and aims to encourage safer, more responsible driving. Visit our traffic calming toolkit webpage to see examples of existing traffic calming around Salt Lake City.

We define livability as the factors that can contribute to a neighborhood’s increased quality of life. It can include both built and natural elements of the environment, community safety, accessibility, connectivity to goods and services, and the equitable distribution of all of these factors.

Is my street a candidate for traffic calming?

The Livable Streets Program identified 403.5 miles of candidate streets throughout Salt Lake City that meet the following criteria:

Have a posted speed limit of 30 mph or less

Are owned and maintained by Salt Lake City

Have three or fewer travel lanes

Are not part of a university campus or contained within a public park

Are not slated for improvements through any other funded program

Are adjacent to areas with a residential land use component

If your street meets these criteria, it is likely a candidate for traffic calming under the Livable Streets program!

When will I see traffic calming implemented on my street?

Traffic calming plans will be developed for each zone in the order established in the Livable Streets program document. The City was prioritized into 113 zones and it is currently not known how many zones can be addressed by Transportation staff each year. We’re a small team and we’re working as fast as we can.

How and why were the zones prioritized?

The zones were prioritized based on crash, speed, and demographic data (the number of households within each zone, and the percent of those households recorded as living below the federal poverty line, identifying as Hispanic and/or non-white, and not having access to a car according to the most recent American Community Survey (2016)). They were prioritized to promote equitable distribution of transportation investment on neighborhood streets where it is most needed. For more information see the Livable Streets Program document.

What are examples of “traffic calming measures?”

Examples of traffic calming measures include roundabouts, speed bumps, traffic circles, speed feedback signals and curb extensions. For a more in-depth review of the traffic calming measures we use, check out the Traffic Calming Toolkit webpage.