The roads most traveled.

• Author: Haraldsen, Tom
• Position: Business BOOM

A quarter century ago, motorists in the Salt Lake Valley were pretty much funneled onto either I-15 or busy collateral roads. The I-215 belt route was not fully completed, and public transportation alternatives were limited to just a few hundred buses operated by the Utah Transit Authority (UTA).

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How things have changed in 25 years--both within the valley and within the state as a whole.

Officials at UTA and the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) have presided over the growth of Utah's transportation system--new highways, the advent of light rail and improvements along arterial streets and roads--and the subsequent increases in roadway usage. The numbers are impressive.

"In 1988, there were 25,168,898 vehicle miles traveled on UDOT roads," says Tania Mashburn, a spokesperson for UDOT. "In 2010, that number had grown to 48,131,188." For all Utah roadways, the numbers jumped from 36,246,175 vehicle miles in 1988 to more than double--72,880,504 in 2010.

"We finished the interstate system in Utah in the late 80s," says Carlos Braceras, deputy director for UDOT. "Obviously the accessibility to more roadways has helped elevate the number of traffic miles. What we've seen is evidence that we've become a more mobile society over the past 25 years. We want to do things in a shorter amount of time, and new roads and increases in the use of public transportation in Utah have allowed that to happen. We get places quicker."

UTA's growth story is much the same as UDOT's over the past quarter century. The agency operated with just a few hundred buses in Salt Lake, Weber and Davis counties in 1986, and had just recently annexed Provo and Orem into its system.

"Since then, other Utah County cities followed suit, a few at a time, until every major municipality became part of the transit district" says Gerry Carpenter, a spokesperson for UTA. In 1990, Tooele County joined, soon followed by Brigham City, Perry and Willard in Box Elder County.

UTA began looking at a north-south light rail concept as early as 1984 and started planning a multimodal system in the early 90s. In 1999, TRAX light rail opened its first line and extended a second line to the University of Utah in time for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. During those Olympics, TRAX alone had more than 4...