Wasatch Choice update: WFRC outlines timeline for preferred scenario, adds 'exploratory' layer for transportation concepts

The Wasatch Front Regional Council's Regional Growth Committee on Jan. 16, 2025, heard an update on work to develop a preferred scenario for the Wasatch Choice Vision and the related 2027 Regional Transportation Plan, including a new process for capturing transportation ideas that are not yet ready for formal plan inclusion.

The preferred scenario is the draft blueprint staff will use to model where growth, jobs and housing could be located through 2055, and it will feed the transportation project testing that follows. Ted Knowlton, Deputy Director at the Wasatch Front Regional Council, told the committee the process runs through 2027 and that the Regional Growth Committee (RGC) acts as a steering committee for the work.

"In spring of 2025...we'll say, 'look, we've heard from the communities. This is the land use they want to work towards,'" Knowlton said, describing a work plan that locks a land-use aspiration to enable more meaningful transportation testing.

Why it matters: the land-use framework determines travel patterns used in modeling, so locking in a preferred scenario before rigorous transportation testing helps staff and partners evaluate which multimodal projects perform under the region's stated goals.

WFRC st…