Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Utah

Robert Grow on Utah’s Decision to Build Transit and Shun Sprawl

By Tanya Snyder | Dec 3, 2013 | 7 Comments

In the late 1990s, an organization called Envision Utah brought together a broad spectrum of people to figure out how to plan for major population growth. They started by asking participants to mark out areas that shouldn’t be developed — wilderness, national parks, agricultural land. Then, they had to figure out how to fit future […]

Q&A With Robert Grow: How Utah Decided to Embrace “Quality Growth”

By Tanya Snyder | Dec 2, 2013 | 1 Comment

If you’ve ever wondered how a deep-red state like Utah has managed to build some of the most ambitious transit expansions in the country, the short answer is: Envision Utah. Starting in the late nineties, the non-profit Envision Utah brought together an incredibly broad spectrum of interests, including plenty of people without a specific stake in […]

A Transit Ad That Puts Car Commercials to Shame

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 8, 2013 | 10 Comments

This new ad from Västtrafik, Sweden’s second-largest public transportation company, has all the well-worn cliches of a good car commercial: the baritone narrator, the stunning landscapes, the empty roads. What’s different about this ad is that what it’s selling will help preserve that natural scenery, rather than pave and pollute it. If only public transit […]

Salt Lake City: How a Remote Red-State City Became a Transit Leader

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 5, 2013 | 29 Comments

It’s number one in the nation in per-capita transit spending. The only city in the country building light rail, bus rapid transit, streetcars and commuter rail at the same time. And that city — Salt Lake City — is a town of just over 180,000 in a remote setting in a red state. It’s a […]

How States Are Adapting to MAP-21’s Changes to Bike/Ped Funding

By Tanya Snyder | Nov 28, 2012

The current transportation law dealt a few hard knocks to bicycling and walking programs. One big one was the restructuring of the Transportation Enhancements program into something called Transportation Alternatives, which has to fund more types of projects with less money. The idea is that each state’s TA money will get split in half. Fifty […]

Streetsies 2011: The Local Edition

By Tanya Snyder | Dec 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

Yesterday, we started our year-end 2011 round-up. We lamented transit cuts in places where transit is more important than ever, cheered the successful ballot initiatives that will fund transportation lifelines, took a moment to explore the nuances of some difficult issues, and called out Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin for some hare-brained ideas about the […]

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