If you’ve driven anywhere along the Wasatch Front lately, you’ve seen how much our communities are changing. Utah is growing and continues leading the way. People are choosing Utah because it’s a great place to raise a family, start a business and build a future. As we prepare to host the 2034 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, we know that growth is not slowing down anytime soon.
With growth comes a critical responsibility to plan for our current and future transportation needs. We want families to spend less time in traffic and more time together. We want businesses to succeed and help maintain our strong economy. We want our communities to grow in a way that protects, and even enhances, the quality of life that means so much to us. As mayor of a dynamic city in the heart of the Salt Lake Valley, these are things I work on every day. As chair of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, I also see how much foresight goes into planning for growth years before the need is right in front of us.
Transportation projects do not happen overnight. They take years of planning, coordination and prioritized investment. Local communities do their part, and the state may dedicate resources, but major projects, particularly transit projects, often depend on a partnership with the federal government.
That is where we run into a challenge.
Helping communities get federal funding for transit projects
The Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program is the primary source of federal funding for major transit projects. Today, the program places a great deal of emphasis on existing transit ridership.
That works well for metropolitan regions where legacy transit systems with established ridership patterns have been in place for generations. Utah’s situation is different.
Our challenge is not catching up to decades of deferred maintenance. It’s building the infrastructure we need ahead of tomorrow’s demands.
Legislation recently introduced by Sens. John Curtis, R-Utah and Mark Kelly, D-AZ, the “Promoting Access to Transit in High-Growth Communities Act,” or the PATH Act, recognizes that difference.
Their bill would allow projected population growth and local planning efforts to be considered when communities compete for federal transit funding. This is an important change. Communities that are planning ahead should not be at a disadvantage simply because they are preparing for growth instead of reacting to it.
Preparing is exactly what we have been doing in Utah.
Metropolitan Planning Organizations, like the Wasatch Front Regional Council, work closely with the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), Utah Transit Authority (UTA), local governments and many other partners to plan transportation investments well into the future. Good planning means thinking about where families will live, where jobs will be and how people will get from one to the other, years before those roads or transit lines are built.
The PATH Act recognizes that kind of critical planning. It gives fast-growing communities an opportunity to better compete for federal funding.
I am grateful that this effort is led by Utah’s own Curtis and Congressmen Mike Kennedy and Burgess Owens. I am also encouraged by the bipartisan support this legislation has received, particularly from a congressional coalition of our Intermountain West partner states who face similar growth patterns and challenges.
Utah has earned a reputation for planning ahead. We work together. We solve problems. We look for practical solutions that will serve not only today’s residents but future generations of Utahns as well.
The PATH Act is one of those practical solutions. This is important for our state and I hope Congress will move it forward so communities like ours will have access to the tools we need to keep Utah moving for many years to come.