Overview
Salt Lake City’s Council-adopted, transportation-related citywide plans provide many recommendations for specific projects to transform our city’s transportation network, particularly improving the facilities, conditions, and service for transit, walking, and bicycling. The documented citywide vision, Plan Salt Lake, is also clear about the importance of transportation investments with an eye to improved air quality, sustainability, and livability. Some area or neighborhood plans also recommend specific projects.
Potential projects are also suggested by residents, other agencies, or elected officials. State or regional agencies, such as the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) or the Utah Transit Authority (UTA), also initiate projects, some at the request of Salt Lake City.
With a long list of hundreds of potential transportation projects, questions arise:
- Which projects should be considered when the Transportation Division applies for Capital Improvement Program funds, or external grants?
- Should the loudest voices prevail?
- What about those who are less comfortable interacting with governmental entities?
To aid the Transportation Division and its partner agencies to answer these questions and provide project recommendations to elected officials, the Transportation Division has created a database that looks at equity (through demographic data), safety (through crash data), sustainability considerations, pavement condition, citywide plan recommendations, and the potential for partnering with other agencies.
This tool, along with professional judgment and community knowledge, is used to develop a proposed list of projects for the City Council’s consideration in the annual Capital Improvement Program. Additionally, staff consult the project database to make recommendations for the Capital Facilities Plan, a compilation of likely projects in the 10-year horizon.
Future potential updates to the scoring tool may further consider pavement conditions in the 10-year timeframe, connectivity, and additional citywide plans; move away from heat mapping crash data, and weight particular criteria. The project scoring may also be automated with computer programming.
The result of this technical work is a proposed list of staff-recommended projects for City Council’s consideration, both in the annual budget cycle and short-range documents, such as the 10-year Capital Facilities Plan.
Click the link below to open the All Projects List – sorted by type and score – WORKING DRAFT as of September 2020: