I love how everyone on the east bench (cough, cough U of U, cough, cough) berates west-siders for sprawling on 1/4 acre lots ... through the windshield of their awful Subaru Tribeca as they pull into their spacious Millcreek hillside lot.
Honestly, most people on the west side will eventually drive 4 miles or less to everything they need to do. I watched it happen in my home town of Magna. Today there's a Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart, Kohl's, grocery stores, and plethora of small shops all within 4 miles of my childhood home.
I grew up far, far away from the "core" of SLC. Yet my father only drove 3.7 miles to work. My suburban neighborhood, circa 1960s and 70s was walkable enough for me to walk to school.
That's pretty green, IMO. So don't dog on my suburbs. Once employment and retail move out there, they work as good as any other section of town.
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Originally Posted by Boiseguy
doesn't it seem like a contradiction to proper planning to be clearing land for a new freeway at the same time light rail is being worked on in roughly the same area? In car dependent western USA if you give people the option of a freeway vs. a train they'll take the freeway. So if you're fortunate enough to have trains being built, why on earth would you continue to feed the problem with freeways as well. It sounds terrible, but Vancouver Canada has accomplished great density in their urban center by essentially providing great public transportation and refusing to build mass freeways. People are like sheep.. if you want ridership to go up on expensive public transport systems, quit feeding the sprawl monster that undermines it... just my two cents.. 
putting those freeways through suburban areas creates a new corridor of high traffic for developement that shifts away from where the real traffic and people should be and that's downtown! |
Even at BYU, which is certainly much more of a, well, "libertarian" urban planning program, I still shake my head. As planners, our job is to organize and help keep people's use of their land orderly. It's not to coerce a certain "vision." Utah has families. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of families. Do you really think you're going to pull 80% of the population into urban yuppie areas? You'd be mad to think so, or try and force it. Just as Phoenix how successful it's "anti-freeway = anti-sprawl" campaign of the 1970s. (BTW They are building huge loop freeways like mad now to try and serve an area that grew with or without the freeway). Eagle Mountain is another example of an area that was already exploding with only a single 2-lane road serving it.
People here are going to buy houses, and freeways are a great way of serving it. Initially many people may use the freeways to commute long distances, and it's not our legal place as planners to stop them or socially engineer them. But, as I mentioned above, over time all amenities come within a close range, greatly reducing driving. Eventually employment will head to Cedar Valley, with the mixed effect of increased sprawl, but reduced commuting.
Transit is a great option, and I support more commuter rail in tandem with highways. Especially in Cedar Valley. But
transit will never, ever, ever, ever, ever replace roads. That's like saying oranges can replace chocolate. Sure, they are both food, but they serve relatively different purposes. LRT and Commuter Rail do a great job shipping commuters between two points. But they are AWFUL trying to move people about in multi-node areas.
Can you imagine Los Angeles if it wasn't multi-node? Transit or not, it would be in a much greater mess then it is now. As it stands my cousin works in Downey, and lives in Downey. She drives 5 miles. Does that make her a horrible, Angelino commuter? Absolutely not! Yet, Metrolink and LRT are a total waste to her, because they are designed to take people downtown.
That doesn't make Metrolink a total waste. It serves a great number of people. But even if the most ideal circumstances, I can't imagine a metro handing more than 30% of all trips.
Cars are here to stay my friend. They will get greener over time, though.
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That's good news... for all those that love to drive everywhere and live in their homes in Herriman far away from the city and increase the ugly brown pollution that hangs in the Salt Lake Valley year round.
They already have two freeways on the west side(215 & Bangerter). Isn't that enough?
UDOT to debut 'flex lanes' next spring
I drive one every day in 'pedestrians rule!' Portland. However, I am against the perpetuation of low-density sprawl because it is bad for the environment, a waste of resources, and a whole list of other reasons. I am not against freeways to the extent that there are better land controls to prevent uncontrolled spread of single-family development/strip mall 'monotonous-topia'(I made that one up
).
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