TMAC pushes to update transportation master plan to address micromobility and safety

Members of the Provo City Transportation Mobility Advisory Committee (TMAC) urged staff to add language and design guidance for micromobility to the city's transportation master plan and to pursue a safe-systems approach to reduce near-misses and crashes.

The discussion centered on what TMAC can recommend in the master plan, and whether the city should pursue an amendment or an appendix to address devices and shared mobility that have grown in use over the last five years. Staff said TMAC has the authority to recommend amendments to the transportation master plan and explained how some amendments may trigger a larger technical review depending on scope.

A number of members recommended a focused goal: translate the committee's work on micromobility into suggested plan text (an appendix or targeted amendment) so that future roadway projects explicitly reflect the city's values for multimodal design. One member said the committee had spent a year gathering information on micromobility and that producing a concrete set of recommended changes to the transportation master plan would be "very meaningful from a safety and mobility perspective."

Public Works staff described grant and planning opportunities tied to that recommendation. Staff reported that Provo plans to apply for a Safe Streets for All grant in the coming cycle to fund a new safety action plan. Staff summarized the expected grant scale in the meeting: "This next funding cycle ' will apply for about a $200,000 grant, requires a 20% match. So projects likely to be a $240,000 to $250,000 project," and said the city's anticipated plan would incorporate safe-systems concepts.

Committee members asked staff to arrange a presentation on the safe-systems approach from an outside expert (for example, a university researcher or UDOT safety staff) and to return with an implementation matrix showing which TMAC recommendations have been adopted, which are pending, and which are not being carried forward (with reasons). Staff agreed to draft potential amendments or an appendix and to bring the topic back for focused discussion.

Members also discussed enforcement and education but emphasized that research shows engineering and design changes typically have greater safety effects than education or enforcement alone. The committee proposed items to consider for plan language: clarifying how micromobility is categorized (bicycle vs. motorized device), design guidance for sidewalks/lanes/charging infrastructure, and recommended enforcement or reporting practices (for example, adding near-miss reporting to private vendor rider surveys).

The committee directed staff to evaluate whether proposed changes would require recalibration of the city's travel demand model and to return with a list of recommended text changes and an implementation timeline. Staff said some active-transportation or micromobility components can be amended without redoing the full travel demand model; larger network changes might require model updates.