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No Comments [ Add Comment ]The ins and outs of transit
On Sunday
, we wrote in this space about the Top of Utah's transportation needs -- specifically, improved roads. And while everyone is familiar with the obvious projects that need attention, others have not received the attention they deserve.
The thing is, the various state, county and local officials who oversee the transportation grid in our part of the state realize the system is interdependent. But managing the system to ensure complementary results can be a challenge.
For example: Commuter rail has been in the planning stages for most of a decade. But actually designating locations for stations along the route came much later in the process. It's unavoidable, because each subsequent stage of the rail development depends on what was decided before.
So it wasn't until years into the process that Roy city finally knew where its commuter rail station would be located. And part of the station design has to include a parking lot with 580 stalls, and eventually more than 900.
Well, Roy settled on a spot for the station -- the most logical, by the way -- but it's not perfect because the parking lot is near only one major collector street, 4000 South, and as such has only one entrance/exit on the east side of the tracks. For those who aren't familiar with that section of 4000 South, it's a two-lane road between Midland Drive and 1900 West. Kids walk to school along the street, and it's heavily used right now by commuter traffic in the morning and evening.
In other words, when commuter rail is up and running, the cars trying to get in and out of the park-and-ride lot will likely jam up 4000 South, especially if there are no restrictions on traffic turning left across the center line. Potentially, it could be a real mess. And it's Roy's problem to solve, since that section of 4000 South is owned and maintained by the city.
That means the pressure is on Roy's traffic engineer and other officials to work with the Utah Transit Authority and figure out how best to handle all those expected automobiles every day. A stop light seems improbable, but so does median curbing to prevent access into the parking lot from westbound traffic.
That could, then, prompt planners to investigate punching 2675 West through some agricultural land to the parking lot. Such an inevitability is already built into the city's master plan, but it involves private property the owner is not ready to sell. That could mean a possible municipal taking by eminent domain. Furthermore, 2675 West currently dead-ends at the aforementioned agricultural land, and the street is lined by homes with people living in them who are understandably not thrilled at the idea of having commuters speed up and down their quiet residential street in order to meet the next train; master plan or not, they'll resist a change.
The take-home lesson today about transportation issues in a rapidly growing community: There are no simple answers, only headache-inducing compromises. Sometimes government work can be a giant pain in the tuckus.
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