Wasatch Front Regional Council

SYRACUSE -- Members of a panel will publicly air the potential benefits and costs of a proposed development in this community from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday in the council chambers of City Hall.

CLEARFIELD -- The Utah Department of Transportation has written its Christmas list, but it will probably not get everything it has asked for.

At a Wasatch Front Regional Council meeting Wednesday in Clearfield, UDOT officials presented several Top of Utah road projects that, if money were not an issue, should be completed within the next few years.

"It's basically a wish list," said Jesse Glidden, UDOT's Region One support services engineer.

CLEARFIELD -- Traffic congestion has improved in some areas during the past few years, but it will continue to be a major issue in the future, say state transportation officials.

The number of vehicle miles traveled in the state has increased exponentially over the past 20 years, but the amount of infrastructure built to accommodate it has increased only slightly, Bill Lawrence, program finance director with the Utah Department of Transportation, said at a Wasatch Front Regional Council meeting Wednesday in Clearfield.

Utah's population has increased by 62 percent between 1990 and 2010, according to statistics from UDOT.

SALT LAKE CITY -- If the state continues to build as it has in the past, Utahns can say goodbye to locally grown food.

That was the message Leonard Blackham delivered Thursday morning at a meeting of the Wasatch Front Regional Council Regional Growth Committee.

Blackham, commissioner of Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, gave a presentation on the importance of preserving agricultural land in future planning efforts. The WFRC predicts the Wasatch Front will add another 1.4 million people within 30 years, a population increase of 65 percent.

CLEARFIELD -- State planners are hoping to get ahead of the curve when it comes to clean air in Utah.

As the population increases, automobiles on state and local roads will do the same. More people and more cars means it will be more difficult to meet future air-quality standards in the state.

Kip Billings, an engineer with the Wasatch Front Regional Council, said council planners are developing ideas to meet tougher standards, particularly ozone standards, in the future.

If the West Davis Corridor does get built, it's going to be a few miles shorter than road officials first thought.

Thanks to a Weber County project recently added to the Wasatch Front Regional Council's long-range plan, the two alternatives for the West Davis Corridor currently being studied by the Utah Department of Transportation will stop at 5500 South in West Haven and 4000 South in Hooper, instead of extending through Weber County all the way to 12th Street as originally planned.

SOUTH WEBER -- Right now, it is just a yellow, EKG-like line on a Wasatch Front Regional Council planning map.