Perspective III - Traffic

We used to imagine that we could control development with our limited water supply, but if you have privilege or wealth in the west, you have water.  Water flows to priority and money.  We solved that problem with regionalization, cooperation, conservation, good engineering, and money.  Well done.  I vacation in small Central Coast towns that have little water, want no extra water and control growth with water shortages.  This is an effective but a cowardice way of confronting development.

We thought that traffic would be the equitable, growth limiting factor in PC because you can’t use privilege or buy your way out of a traffic jam.  We told UDOT years ago that we were not ‘Flyover people’ so they redesigned Kimball Junction in just two doomed dimensions.  Then we put a two mile center lane planter box in the middle of our other entry corridor on 248. 

We have 10,000 – 20,000 units to be built around here over the next ten to twenty years.  More and more of these people will live here full time.  That’s 100,000 to 200,000 new car trips a day!  We already have grid-lock on weekends, powder days and during festivals.  While it is reprehensible to the locals what has become of our crowded streets, new people don’t think it is that bad compared to where they came from.  Perspective is everything.

We still have redundant double-wide shoulders, huge empty center-lane dividers, bike lanes AND bike paths on our major roads when shoulders could be used for traffic flow, turning movements or for bus lanes, as they were during the Olympics.  We also have a one lane exit ramp from I-80 east to UT-40 south that worked better as a 2 lane exit during the Olympics.  The Olympic traffic that we saw in 2002 is our daily traffic now and the traffic for the next Olympics is the traffic of our future and should be considered now. 

We have crazy, painted impressionistic bike lanes on the Pinebrook Frontage Road and on Park Avenue that no one understands or can follow.    We can’t pave our way out of traffic jams, but we can be consistent with road widths to avoid unnecessary pinch point constrictions and ineffective zipping.   We have competing and redundant bus systems (with empty buses and unobtainable park-and-ride lots out on the perimeter) that go no faster than traffic and have no bus lanes to drive in during peak hours. 

We have traffic light systems that are not fully coordinated or actuated with simple sensors and microprocessors, and we have traffic planners depending on Apps, bogus studies, social media, mapping and ebikes to solve our problems.  We still have busses, trucks and utility vans trolling over Guardsman, through old town and residential areas, looking for the quickest routes on their Google-Maps App.  We have traffic consultants pushing data and reports that they have not analyzed or even read.  Luckily, we have Randy Barton to tell us of the true traffic catastrophes on the radio or we would all be doomed.

Traffic is about trip generation and trip attraction, pressure, flow, velocity, and friction.  It behaves just like water and electricity.  It is iterative and adaptable, changing constantly, living, and responsive, psychologically correcting and compensating, dependent mostly on one critical mechanism – the nut behind the wheel.  We could all do better by hanging up, paying attention, and driving safely.  Yield to the right and to roundabouts, green means go, red means stop, yellow does not mean ‘punch it’.

In the end it is about supply and demand.  We need to provide more supply or less demand for our hydrologic and transportation systems.  Don’t count on water or traffic to control growth.  It takes leadership with vision and spine.  So, we ask our new and old leaders to think ahead, sac-up and save this town from itself and its success.