Route planning gap analysis-Meadowbrook Division: 900 West/700 West in Salt Lake Valley.

The Utah Transit Authority has announced a major realignment of routes effective in late August. This is going to do some good in many areas, but some important areas are being grossly neglected in the matter, and this post details one of these.

There is a major road, sometimes it has four lanes, but largely it has just two and maybe a center turn lane in spots, that runs to the west of I-15. This road is for the most part 900 West although access to 700 West and maybe on occasion 500 or 600 West is found necessary in spots until the road picks up again further down. This road services alot of industrial locations on its north end, some housing throughout, and some high-tech businesses on its south end. It curves around at times following the contour of the freeway at times although almost always there are businesses and houses between it and the freeway, and in places it changes name several times, and other things before it ends somewhere past 106th South.

This is a serious flaw in the plan to not service this road. There was a bus route that was discarded, the route 81, that ran as far down as 39th South. But that was the problem, not enough of this road was serviced in the right way for it to do any good for either UTA or the ridership.

Here is the gap analysis audit for this deficiency.

Suggested route numbers: 107 (south end), 109 (north end).
ISO QPMS and EMS categories: SD 1, SD 14, SP 25.
Difficulty: Moderate.
Other needs: Half-hour service, six buses will be needed.
Time of day service required: 530am-8pm.
Needed: Immediately
Implementation required by: November change day 2007.

Routing should run from Downtown via North Temple, down 900 West as far as it goes, if necessary use parts of 700 West or where that does not exist use whatever major road runs directly to the WEST side of I-15 to 106th South at least. Go over on 106th South to State, go to 100th South and EOL at Sandy Civic Center TRAX station.

Benefits: Significant benefit to many businesses along the entire route, including UTA itself, meaning their employees can now get to work via public transit. Residences in those areas will benefit by allowing residential connections to other buses in an area where there is about a 3-mile gap between major east-west routes. Remember, the block spacing in Salt Lake County is deceptive, there are only six to the mile versus the traditional eight to ten blocks to the mile many other places, which explains why it's so far from State Street to Redwood Road.